Free Fenway Fever by John Ritter Page A

caught his eye.
    “Whatcha working on, Pops?”
    “Oh, nothing. Just doing a little figuring.”
    “That’s my department. What do you need to find out?”
    “No, forget it. Not important.” He tried to gather and sort the pages, placing a couple on the breakfast tray, then folded the rest up small enough to stuff into his shirt pocket.
    Stats saw dollar signs. “Is that how much all this is gonna cost?” He knew about medical bills. Mark once mentioned that even though insurance paid most of Mama’s bills, it still cost the family a ton.
    “Oh, no, no.” Pops shook his head. “Insurance is so much better nowadays. This is …”
    Mark walked back in, distracting him a moment as he tossed the sports pages onto the bed.
    Stats did not take them. “This is what, Pops?”
    “Oh, like I say, it’s nothing.” Pops quickly folded the remaining pages into another square. “I just thought maybe our season tickets could help me pay down some of that debt.”
    Stats and Mark exchanged glances.
    “How much are they worth?” asked Mark.
    Pops seemed resigned to addressing the subject. He sat back. “Well, they’re not cheap. They run about eleven thousand dollars a year.”
    “Oh, my gosh!” Stats cradled the sides of his head with his hands. “I never knew it was so high. That’s five thousand five hundred dollars each!”
    Pops shook his head. “No, no. Eleven thousand—that’s per seat. It adds up to over twenty-two thousand potatoes a year.”
    “Whoa!”
    “Well, they are very good seats.”
    “Does that include play-off and World Series tickets?” asked Mark.
    “Oh, those. Don’t ask.”
    Stats took a moment to imagine all the money Pops shelled out for the tickets. No wonder he couldn’t afford to meet his bills.
    Pops slumped. “Problem is, we need a lot more than those tickets are worth.”
    Stats thought a moment, knocking the numbers around his head. “Well, maybe not.”
    “Oh?” Pops smiled. “What do you suggest?”
    “I know.” Mark already had a plan. “Why don’t you give thetickets to the bill collector to sort of ‘lose’ your file? He’s gotta be a Sox fan, right?”
    Stats appreciated the ease of that solution. “Yeah, bribe the guy.”
    “Ah, geez,” said Pops, “what am I raising, a couple of mobsters?”
    “Well …” said Mark. “It could work.”
    Stats kept figuring. “No, but wait, Pops. I was thinking something else. What if you sold the tickets for what they’re really worth?”
    His father looked at him with a start. “They’re worth more than what I pay?”
    “Pops,” said Mark. “These days? With the Sox selling out every game, every year since May 2003? If you sold those tickets on the open market, you could get, like, a thousand bucks a game. Maybe more. And there’s eighty-one games a year, not counting the play-offs.”
    “That’s a lot of money.”
    “Yeah,” said Stats. “The seats all around us get resold all the time. And I’ve heard the buyers talk about the prices they paid. Never less than four hundred dollars per seat. And sometimes a lot more.”
    “Right,” said Mark. “The Yankees series is worth a mint.”
    “Not only that,” Stats began, even as his mind whirled in calculation, “if you sold the remaining tickets for this season and, say, the rights to next year’s tickets—it could be enough to pay off the whole bill.”
    Pops brought his fingers to his chin. “That much, huh?” Then just as quickly, he waved his hand, shooshing the suggestion right out of his brain.
    “I could never do that. It’s not honest.”
    “Actually, Pops, it is,” said Mark. “People do it all the time.”
    “People do a lot of things. But my own father never made a profit on those seats, and I’m not about to start looking at them like pieces of merchandise.”
    “But times are different now.”
    Pops was not having any of it. “No, no, forget I ever brought it up. Those seats are sacred. Either
we
use them, or I give them