Two weeks ago I went to Fenway for the Red Sox midweek day game against the Pittsburgh Pirates. I paid $10 to get into the ballpark, and, with the place barely half-full, I snuck down to the front row behind the Red Sox dugout. (Don’t tell John Henry about the latter, though he and the project manager overseeing the construction of his whatever-number-vacation-home are surely already aware of the former.)
About halfway through the game, three other fans did the same thing I did, moving up to the completely empty row behind me. They were teenagers — in fact, they were Boston Latin students skipping school, and they spent the rest of the game talking trash to Pirates players, trying desperately get a baseball, and strategizing about how they’d sneak back into school before the bell rang at the end of the day.