Commercials exaggerate. That Seinfeld would recklessly debit his Amex simply because two front-row Knicks tickets blew through the roof of his limo–yeah, right. It’s about as believable as a turkey successfully bribing its ravenous hillbilly executioner with a single cold Budweiser. Maybe that would work on a humid 4th of July afternoon, but on Thanksgiving morning? Yet it makes perfect sense when a flat-lining patient sits up and grins on the operating table or a zillion-dollar deal with a hard-nosed Pacific Rim CEO is agreed to only when Bulls tickets are offered. Most of us sit there and wonder: This is supposed to be humorous?
The Bulls, after all, represent. Not only is this team the best, the most riveting team ever assembled–probably in any sport–this year’s model is also the most culturally intriguing. A Croatian, an Australian, a Canadian; some middle-class black guys; some young guys, some old guys, including a relic from the great Celtics teams of the short-pants era; a guy who packs heat, guys who surf; golfers and fishermen and a volleyball player; a few guys who used to be poor. A whiz kid, a moron. Four Hall-of-Famers. Two players whose fathers were murdered. The league’s most skilled, obsessed rebounder, and its most often suspended. The most libidinally peculiar, bankably outre persona in sport whipping outlet passes to sport’s most bankably conservative spokesman. The most erudite coach.
The end of the era of Jordan and Pippen and Jackson–unimaginable, like having Davis and Coltrane and Bill Evans in the same band for almost a decade. And the greatest athlete in history in what is probably his final campaign.
To see them play live is the moral equivalent of having witnessed Hendrix at Woodstock, Sherman in Georgia, lions on the floor of the Colosseum, Achilles and Hector beneath the walls of Troy, Odysseus inside the walls. We could honestly tell our great-grandchildren that, way back when, in the previous millennium, we stood in the numinous presence of deities.
The fact is that mere mortals on coolie salaries like ours can still come into possession of the sacred red and gold tesserae–by a variety of means. (Obtaining Bulls tickets, as Al Neri advised Michael Corleone (in “The Godfather II”) about the chances of assassinating Hyman Roth while he was under federal protection, is difficult, not impossible.)
The father-in-law of our boss, who has season tickets, gets rushed at 6 p.m. to Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s with gall stones on the evening the Bulls host the Lakers. We win 19 of 24 hands at the hundred-dollar blackjack table and, for once, have brains enough to immediately get off the boat and call Mr. B’s Ticket Service, whose number is right on our speed dial. It’s our silver anniversary. It’s our 21st birthday. Our aunt works for NBC Sports, or we go to kindergarten with the grandson of one of the owners. Our girlfriend is a Lovabull. We get straight A’s or maintain perfect attendance or buy the right raffle ticket or rewire the electricity in the basement of a season-ticket holder, presenting a modest invoice in exchange for. . . . And as if the tickets aren’t miracle enough, they happen to come with a parking pass to the brightly lit, high-prestige lot next to Gate 3 1/2.
At this point, however, we realize we have a big problem. Because the thing is, we’ve got only the deuce. We could use about 75, but at the very, very least we need three. Do we take our middle or eldest daughter? Our spouse, who barely notices unless Michael has a breakaway dunk (most likely in a commercial), or our best friend, a knowledgeable fanatic with whom we have watched every 10th-of-a-second since 1987, including the pre-season games? Nine-year-old Jack or his twin brother Matthew? The friend who loaned us $1,200 when we got laid off three years ago, or the one who took us to a Sox game last week?
Sometimes floor seats to a playoff game are offered to us at face value, which is like being paid $2,000 apiece to go to the game of the year, but we have a prior engagement, a conflict even a department full of tenured ethicists couldn’t resolve.
We have gallstones, for example. Or the tip-off is at 7:42, while the graduation ceremony for our firstborn namesake begins at 6:30, the party for which 17 family members have flown into town at 8 o’clock sharp. What calculus of utility can possibly determine the right thing to do in such cases?
For 11th-hour tickets to games we can make, our best bet is scalpers. We arrive on West Madison Street at 6:45 with a couple of weeks’ take-home pay in cash on our person, cruising the very epicenter of the athletic galaxy. Along the brand new and crumbling sidewalks, folks have got their strut on. Confident vendors stand ready. A two-foot-high stack of silk-screened XXL T-shirts await.
Some sharp gray and black ones declare Yo, Spike, Eat Your Heart Out. On others is an image of Knicks’ Coach Jeff Van Gundy’s hair-plugged head. The air is so ionized outside the building, we can only imagine what it’ll be like inside once the game starts. We’re jacked. We also understand that any transaction “at a price higher than that printed herein is grounds for seizure or cancellation without refund or other compensation.” Worse, we have witnessed scalpers and their customers, persons who looked alarmingly like ourselves, being violently wrenched by policemen over the trunks of blue BMW 328is, wrists secured with white plastic handcuffs, doomed to make bail just as the British Airways post-game interview is getting underway.
So. Do we optimistically park in a $12 lot, the better to negotiate at close range, or try to suss out undercover detectives and fair ticket value from inside our car? We opt for the latter because sidling up to our window is a guy with a plaid corduroy hat and kickin’ breath selling two for $500 in section 334; he’s even considerate enough to show us exactly where they are on his laminated seating chart.
Now the letter-equivalent of 334 was a pretty good place to sit–or even to stand near the back of–in the steep, compressed, supercharged Stadium. But we know that from the second level of the United Center, where the seats are pitched so much less steeply and are stacked behind luxury suites (in place of the Stadium’s generous balconies), the game is a virtual rumor. We may as well lease our own skybox and watch the game from there on closed circuit.
And now it turns out that the guy wants $500 apiece.
Is he kidding?
He isn’t. He’s also impatient.
We need time to think. One “large” for two in the rafters of Reinsdorfuburbia, from which Michael Jordan can more than a little resemble Jud Buechler? We also remind ourselves that Home Game H this is not; it’s the Knicks in mid-April. Even if it were the finals, our spouse would hardly countenance such extravagance; the in-laws, not to mention our creditors, would be scandalized.
Yet friends of ours cheerfully drop $300 on scalpers to see the Monet show at the Art Institute, twice that for June Anderson at the Lyric or Cassandra Wilson at Park West or the Pumpkins in Rosemont, twice that again for a case of good ’90 brunello, 10 times that for an Ed Paschke drawing. . . .
But what if Michael gets ejected in the second quarter for throttling John Starks, or loan sharks or his “book” try to whack him, or he simply cracks a small bone in his foot? What if Van Gundy intimidates him from the sideline? What if Kukoc–The Waiter–is passing a gallstone, Scottie is out of Dodges or fries or Ginsana, or Ringworm has kicked a photographer in the groin? What if everyone plays and they lose?
There are other factors to weigh, but we don’t have all night–though maybe the price will come down if we stall Mr. Corduroy till just before tip-off, when he can go buy himself more nacho cheese Doritos. While we struggle to make up our mind, a well-dressed couple arrives alongside him. A seven-word conversation ensues, money and tickets change hands, Corduroy books round the corner. We watch the couple parade toward Gate 5 with unseemly spring in their step, their year made with one swift transaction.
For our part, there’s nothing to do but drive home with the radio on, listening as the Bulls go up by 14, making plans for the money we’ve saved. Braces for Zoe? A couple of half-decent suits or, at the annual 40-percent-off sale? What about five golden rings?
Back in our living room, los toros are up only two, and it looks like it might be a game. We dash to the keg that we keep in the kitchen and draw off a pint of Guinness, pricey but more or less free compared to what we would have paid for frostbitten Bud in the United Center. Michael buries a turnaround fade over Allan Houston from the baseline. Up four. Sipping contentedly, we nestle down into the Naugahyde.
In the meantime a Charles Oakley 18-footer rims out; Rodman snags the rebound. Bulls set up the triple-post with Michael down low on the strong side, and four butter passes and cuts lead to a Toni Kukoc finger-roll in the paint over Larry Johnson. Late whistle. After Toni clanks the first one, we notice his goatee has been trimmed more than a little unevenly. When he manages to sink the second, Phil Jackson unleashes the Dobermans, trapping Starks and denying the ball from the passing lanes. And it works.
After an ill-advised Knicks in-bounds pass, some ineffectual dribbling and a travel (no call), Pip strips the Spaulding from Patrick and lobs to Randy Brown for the alley-oop. And a free throw. Even Red Kerr’s babbling can’t diminish the pleasure we feel as the Knicks burn another timeout and a witty commercial comes on.
It’s time to shut up and drink some beer.
