It’s three weeks before Ohio State kicks off against Navy and our season tickets are nowhere to be found. As an unemployed 33-year-old living in my parents’ house, I make myself useful by lurking near the mail slot every day around noon, peering out in anticipation of the postman’s arrival. Sometimes I spot his blue sack ambling down the street, then resist the temptation to walk over and request a peek into his mailbag.
In fact, one set of tickets had already arrived, a pair of faculty tickets in C-deck. But another set, two prized A-deck 50-yard-line tickets, were missing. These tickets had been in our family for as many years as my dad had worked for Ohio State, thirty and counting.
These were the tickets that allowed me to see Keith Byars rush for 274 yards and five touchdowns in a 1984 game against Illinois, to watch as Eddie George eclipsed that mark by steamrolling the same Illinois team for 314 yards in 1995. Three decades of memories from the Horseshoe were embedded in these tickets; the anticipation of their arrival began in the spring when applications for tickets were sent out. The day of their arrival was looked forward to with as much zeal as Christmas morning.
Today could be the day. When the postman reaches our house, I stay clear of the windows lest he see me and discover what a ticket-stalker I’ve become. I wait for the sound of the mail swooshing down through the chute, then I make my move toward the slot. But the hunt returns no bounty. The magic manila envelope bearing a red-lettered return address never arrives.
Now, two weeks till kickoff and the whole family is starting to sweat. Repeated phone calls to the Ohio State ticket office end in a familiar refrain: The tickets have been mailed out, we’re told, and they’ll be there soon. The trouble is, the tickets were all mailed out a week ago. Friends and fellow Buckeyes have already received their season tickets, which only compounds our fears that ours have been lost.
We begin to assume the worst: our prized tickets have been fumbled, perhaps intercepted at the line of scrimmage. But who? And how? Can they be recovered? Another call to Ohio State answers the latter question: even if our tickets never arrive, they can be reprinted with new barcodes and picked up at will call on game days.
This is very reassuring, but then this thought occurs: the original tickets are still on the loose. Two real Ohio State season tickets, somewhere within I-270. I am no longer a mail stalker – I’m now part of a CSI Columbus investigation.
My sister Sara becomes my co-conspiracy theorist. One afternoon we sit down to hash out the crime and its web of consequences. We agree on a couple of things: the original tickets have definitely been stolen, must be en route to a local ticket broker. Those tickets are officially hot, and, if Stub Hub’s current prices can be trusted, the set of two could fetch as much as $4000 on the open market. For the USC game alone, comparable tickets are going for almost $1500 for the pair. There is a lot of money at stake here, so we follow the money down its dirty trail.
Sara and I imagine this scenario: Someone pays $1500 for tickets to the Ohio State – USC game. An exorbitant price, yes, but maybe it’s a once-in-a-lifetime purchase, an anniversary gift or an extravagant birthday present for a Buckeye fan from someone who really, really loves this Buckeye fan, knows what it means to go to this game. The new owner of the now-voided tickets makes preparations for game-day. A full day of tailgating in the shadow of the ‘Shoe, of reveling in fall’s glory, of hoping aloud that the tickets are worth it, that they’re OSU-Miami worth it and not OSU-Florida worth it. This is the year, the night that we will reverse our fortune.
Night falls and voices rise as fans make their way toward the stadium. The illegitimate ticket-holder arrives at the gates and is told, sorry, you can’t come in, that these tickets, worth so much only minutes ago, are now worth no more than the cardboard they were printed on. A week of game-day dreams vanishes in a poof of scarlet and gray. Somewhere in the deep and dark forest of Craigslist, the seller reclines on a bed of cash.
Sara and I hope this all can be avoided, and we really hope the buyer of the black-market tickets won’t track us down. We consider sending out a blast email to Columbus area ticket vendors, telling them not to buy or sell these tickets; maybe a public announcement in the Dispatch could prevent it all. But we try to be realistic: this will not end well for some unlucky Buckeye fans. It may not end well for us.
It’s five days before Navy and Ohio State take the field. Though our new tickets are guaranteed, I have no leads in our investigation of the lost tickets. The case has stalled. We fear an inevitable confrontation at the seats, maybe with a guy who had too much to drink, got in the stadium somehow, wants to find out who is sitting in the seats he paid for. It won’t be pretty.
Back at home, the phone rings. This could be the break I’ve been waiting for, the one piece of information that will help me crack the case.
“Hi Steve, it’s Mom!” says the cheery voice on the line. She’s always cheery, no reason to think she has a lead.
But there is news, a suggestion for me to check an envelope that has been sitting on her desk for a few weeks now, the one containing the C-deck faculty tickets. Cordless phone in hand, I walk toward the desk, knowing what a discovery of the tickets would mean: the irrational flu has stuck again. I find the envelope, feel its thickness, know immediately that it’s fatter than one set of tickets should be. I reach in, pull out, and unfold not one but two sets of season tickets, all attached in a series of perforated sections.
“They’re here,” I tell my mom, and we both acknowledge how collectively stupid we feel as a family.
Maybe we were stupid for not checking, for letting our minds wander down such a sinister path when the tickets were in our presence all along. But maybe we were just being irrational, as irrational as we all get when football season comes to Columbus.
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