Fenway 1946 by Michael Connolly

Author:Michael Connolly
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lyons Press
Published: 2019-12-11T16:00:00+00:00

Following the sweep of the Yankees, the Red Sox were now leading their nearest competitor by 15.5 games. All over the city Red Sox Royal Rooters were talking about World Series tickets. Every day, operators at the park were inundated with calls from fans pleading for information on ticket availability. The pressure on the team and their 20 employees assigned to the distribution of tickets was combustible. Finally, on September 4, Boston’s management relented and issued a press release concerning the availability of postseason tickets.

Around the city, people cringed. It had been a long three decades since the home team had won the pennant. Seasoned Red Sox fans had been conditioned to expect the worst. Now the team’s management was commenting on postseason tickets before clinching the American League flag. The fandom could only hope that the baseball gods weren’t offended.

Pennant in hand or not, Red Sox management had determined that the fairest way to distribute tickets was through a lottery. Fans would be allowed to apply for two grandstand tickets starting at 12:01 a.m. on September 10. Their letter of application had to originate from a New England post office and be accompanied by a certified check for $12.50 made out to “Boston American League Baseball Company.” Each application had to indicate which of the three games the applicant would like to attend (game 3, game 4, or game 5 if necessary). In addition to reserved seats, before each game at 8 a.m., 22,000 tickets would be made available for sale, including 8,500 grandstand seats, 12,000 bleacher seats, and 1,500 standing-room-only passes.

Management would set aside 675 grandstands tickets for league players, coaches, and administrators of the other teams. Opposing players were allotted 5 tickets each, while Red Sox officials set aside 4,000 tickets for their own players and administration, as well as public officials.

By September 9, bank lines across New England extended out the revolving doors and on to sidewalks with customers looking to procure a certified check to submit with their applications. Later that night hundreds of thousands of Red Sox fans started to queue up at post offices across the six New England states to mail their applications one minute after midnight. The post office extended office hours to accommodate the midnight rush. Fans were fed by vendors who sold peanuts and popcorn to the masses. A post office worker remarked, “The day before Christmas-rush was never like this.”

AP articles would later report, “New England’s rabid baseball fans eclipsed all of wartime’s cigarette, butter and nylon queues as they flood post offices and telegraph offices with applications for Red Sox World Series tickets.”

The Red Sox pennant season would actually cost Western Union money after being forced to staff offices for 24 hours to serve the thousands of fans who were wrapped around the block “resembling a ration line.”

The following day’s newspaper would call the World Series ticket lottery “the maddest ticket rush in the history of Boston entertainment.”

On the very first day, the Red Sox received 35

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