I am an obsessive planner.  Up until this point in my life, I had always wanted to know as early as possible the plans- where we’d be sitting, where we’d be eating, etc.  There was little room for spontaneity, much to Joel’s chagrin.  And while I still love to plan, the trip was a turning point for me from obsessing about booking things as early as possible to getting the best deal possible, even if it meant waiting at times.  This is because if we’d bought our tickets when the Red Sox first made the World Series, or even when we booked our flight, we would have paid more than we ultimately did for far worse seats.  I mean it literally that we paid what I would have for nose bleeds if I would have insisted on paying when the World Series matchup was first set.  It makes sense- for major sporting events like that, all the face value tickets from the team get snatched up right away.  Especially in the playoffs, teams want to treat their committed fans and season ticket holders well, so they have ticket presales that most of the general public can’t get on, so it’s nearly impossible to get the tickets at face value.  Then, people who bought those face value tickets and want to make money on them (or can’t go) post them on the secondary market.  They hope for the best at first, listing them for some crazy amount in the hopes that they get it, and then as the date grows closer, they get more desperate and drop the price.

For us, we bought the tickets at the airport the morning we left.  The timing was perfect- prices had dropped significantly, but by the time we landed, inventory had gotten so low that the only tickets left were the folks who had stayed overpriced the whole time (I always assume these people have the mentality that they will go to the game unless they get an offer they can’t refuse).  Our seats were amazing- a couple of sections up behind home plate.  Better than I’d even imagined that we’d get when we were first talking about going.  Don’t get me wrong, we still splurged- to this day, it’s the most we’ve ever paid for seats, and it takes that title by a pretty significant amount.  But again, it could be the last chance we get, and I would pay for that every time for what we got to experience.
​
For those of you who aren’t Red Sox or MLB fans, game 5 ultimately was the close-out game.  The had won game 4 and went up in the top of the 1st inning and never looked back.  I was surprised when I looked at the box score and saw how long it had been 2-1, because my memory is that I was never really worried.  The entire game felt like a party- we stood the whole game, sang along to California Love, and watched my favorite baseball game I’ll probably ever see (Red Sox, feel free to prove that statement wrong).  Chris Sale literally brought Manny Machado to his knees with the final out, and the celebration was on!  We were among the last non-team related folks to leave the stadium, I think.  We didn’t want the night to end!

​A couple of years prior we’d done something called Red Sox DestiNations at Fenway Park and absolutely loved it.  When preparing for this trip, we saw that they were doing DestiNations on the Road trips, and this was one of the locations!  We of course signed up and got to meet some great like-minded Red Sox fans and have a luncheon with Brock Holt, who is my favorite underdog/under-appreciated Red Sox of all time.  Did you know he’s the only player in the history of MLB to hit for the cycle in a playoff game?  Now you do.  We also got a field tour with the package, which was great.  Some may describe the stadium as boring, but once you learn that they designed it with the intent of it looking like a monument, I think you gain some appreciation.

We got our tickets for the first 2 games of the series in the package, and we had great seats that were in the second section up behind home plate on the 3rd base side.
​
Highlight of the first two games was seeing Rick Porcello, aka Ricky Raindrops, hit a bases clearing double.  Again, 2022 baseball fans, remember a time when the NL required pitchers to hit?  I hated that rule, and thankfully I never really had to deal with it too much being an AL team fan, but despite my dislike of the rule, I have to admit that there are few things more exciting than a dude who has no business hitting in a major league game running into a big hit.

Lowlight of the first two games was getting pooped on by a bird.  I had to go wash my hair in the bathroom, which oddly had no mirrors.

For the 3rd game we opted to get our own tickets so we could check out a different location on the other side of the field.  We were in Section 131, which was just past first base down the line.  This was the 4th of July game, and the vibes were immaculate.  Plus it helped that the Red Sox secured the sweep.
​
We had only been planning to attend those 3 games, but one day during a break between our museum exploring, we for curiosity looked at the tickets for the Nationals vs. Marlins games and saw that we could get Diamond Club tickets for $150 each.  This shouldn’t have been super surprising since both teams were terrible and they were midweek games, but we were still a bit shocked.  We didn’t think we’d ever have the chance to get that level of seats for that cheap again (we have yet to), so we pulled the trigger.  And then we had such a great time the first game that we decided to do it again!  When in DC!