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How To Snag A Major League Baseball by Zachary Hample Aladdin, 1999 | Buy the book « 1|2|3|4|5|6

SNEAKING INTO THE FIELD-LEVEL SEATS

Suppose you are at a stadium where you're not permitted to go to the field level without a field-level ticket. You have a cheap seat in the upper deck and you decide you want to get down to one of the dugouts. You could try to pay one of the ushers or security guards to let you in. You could also beg and sweet-talk him, but it'll work only if you're about ten years old or if you're with a kid who's ten years old. Finally, you could do like me and learn where there are cracks in the system.

At Shea Stadium, there's a restaurant called The Bullpen Lounge, which has two unwatched doors. One door leads to the main concourse inside the field level. The other door goes out the side, which happens to be outside the gates that lead to the field level. Cheap ticket in hand, I walk down the "up" escalator, enter The Bullpen Lounge from the side, and walk out the front.

Major league stadiums are huge. They normally have room for about fifty thousand fans, and there are plenty of nooks and crannies that are good for both sneaking around in and for finding balls.

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