Although, we’re only midway through the spring, at the very moment you’re reading this, every local baseball lover’s attention is laser-focused on the ‘boys of summer’, and most particularly that this coming week is the time to order your tickets for the Vancouver Canadians baseball season!
As every Vancouver Canadians fan knows, during the season every single Canadians evening home game sells out, with single tickets harder to come by than hen’s teeth. Unless, you’re committed to acquiring a 10-or-15 game Nat Pack — allowing you to choose the date of the game(s) you want to attend, and your preference as to section, row and seat — or a 38-game home stand Season Ticket order — ranging from $495 to $725, a pittance when compared to a Vancouver Canucks Season Pass, that starts at $1500 for nosebleed seats, and proceeds from there into the stratosphere, and another galaxy — you’re either going to have to bite the bullet, or find yourself just plain ol’ out of luck if you have any designs whatsoever on attending a baseball game at Nat Bailey Stadium this upcoming summer.
Why on this sunny Sunday — a day of rest, isn’t it supposed to be? — is there pressure on you, and Vancouver Canadians season ticket or Nat Pack holders? Take a look at the Nat Pack graphic directly below …
Tomorrow, Monday, May 7th is the day you can commence the critical process of ordering specific tickets, on specific days, in a specific section, in a specific row and the specific seats of your choosing.
At 9am Monday morning, the box office phones lines at Nat Bailey Stadium will be ringing off the wall, with hundreds of Vancouver Canadians fans ordering their tickets for the entire season. Have a favourite section, row and seat (we do!), either you get on the blower Monday morning, or line up at the Canadians’ box office, or you can kiss your chances of securing tickets for you favourite section, row and seat(s) good-bye, sayonara, been nice knowin’ ya … cuz ya just ain’t-a-gonna get the seats you want.
Boo hoo, so sad … it is to weep.
Okay, okay — we exaggerate just a little, but not much. Wouldn’t want to cause undue alarm to the nicest guy in baseball — that’d be the phenomenally social-skilled-and-organized Vancouver Canadians Ass’t GM Allan Bailey, who oversees the box office (and myriad other tasks), and for a great long while now has been widely acknowledged as the heart and soul of Vancouver Canadians baseball, in our town. We’re sure Allan would tell you not to get your knickers in a twist (he wouldn’t use such decorous language, though) — there’ll be tickets for ya and seats you want, probably throughout the week, and maybe, just maybe you can pick up a single ticket or two during the upcoming Vancouver Canadians baseball season.
Now we get down to brass tacks — the 2018 Vancouver Canadians baseball season promotional schedule!
Fireworks! There are spectacular fireworks to gladden the hearts of children and adults alike included in the price of your tickets, the best fireworks you’ll see anywhere. This upcoming season, you can see fireworks at the end of the Vancouver Canadians opening night game on Wednesday, June 20th (the first 2500 fans to arrive get a magnetic schedule to stick on the fridge!) — and there’ll be more fireworks nights after that: a fireworks extravaganza on Saturday, June 30th, a pre-celebration of Canada Day — and again on Saturdays July 7th, 21st and 28th. After that you’ll have to wait til Saturday, August 18th for the second-to-last fireworks night of the season, which honour goes to an end-of-season fireworks extravaganza on Saturday, August 25th, when the sun will set at 8pm, the night air chill.
Where’s the poetry in today’s post, you ask, as there is always poetry when one writes about baseball, isn’t there? Yes, there is.
We just take it for granted that you’re a Vancouver Canadians baseball fan, that you can see the poetry in the videos above, and that you have come to appreciate the changing weather of the summer baseball season, sitting out in the open stands to feel the warmth and cool of the season, from the often sweltering opening June 20th day, through to the “it’s getting darker earlier, I better bring along a jacket with me, summer’s ending and I can feel the chill in the night air as the sun sets earlier than it did two months ago,” the verdant green of the grass of the field darkening as the night sky darkens into purple, the 5th-inning sushi race, the 6th-inning chicken dance, and mid-7th inning when the entire crowd stands, singing a rendition of Take Me Out to the Ballgame that is nothing short of goosebump-inducing, a warmth and solidarity in the crowd that if politicians were able to bottle it, all of us would be in a much better place socially, environmentally and politically, on our way to baseball nirvana on Earth.
VanRamblings is looking forward to seeing you at a Vancouver Canadians baseball game or two or three or four this summer. We know that our friend, Bill Tieleman, will be standing by his phone first thing Monday morning to purchase Canadians’ tickets for his family for this upcoming season, as we know is the case with Mel Lehan and every progressive person of conscience in our town, who loves baseball for the camaraderie, the warmth of spirit of the crowd, the conversations with those sitting near to you, and the palpable sense of hope that emerges over the course of a game, a hope that promises more, better, kinship, peace & understanding.
