2010 All Star Game Tickets: Let The Games Begin!

Well... a year from tonight, July 13, 2010, the All Star Game will be played at Angels Stadium of Anaheim. Would you like to be there? Consider how much you would like to invest in this once-in-a-lifetime achievement (as the previous All Star games in our stadium in 1967 and 1989 may or may not correspond with your lifetime) and start planning for the occasion now!

How Many Tickets Will Be Available?

Of the 45,000 tickets that will exist for this event, 15,000 will be scooped up by Major League Baseball. That leaves 30,000 tickets available for the general public. The current season seat holder numbers are somewhere between 20 - 25,000. That is number of tickets, not number of seatholders. Many season seatholders have 4-10 season seats. A corporation's luxury box at the park may have over 30 seats. Some - but not all of these season seat accounts will not be allowed to buy more than 2 tickets per account.

Additionally, there will be some season seat holders who cannot come up with the dough for their All Star Game Package - which will be tickets not only to the game itself but will be a sheet of tickets to the Futures Game, the Home Run Derby and probably another event or two that MLB will be adding on - the cost of the ticket package could wind up being half the cost of a season seat. It is a safe bet that not every season seat holder will participate.

My assumption is that 15,000 season seat ticket packages will be sold, leaving 15,000 in the hands of the Angels brass to sell or distribute. Angels exec John Carpino has lots of billboard industry buddies who root for the Yankees who will be getting their swag to cheer for Jeetah just like Carpy used to before he switched sides (assuming he really did). So of the 15,000, let's suppose 10,000 ticket packages will be made available to the public for sale at the Angels box office.

So acquiring a ticket to the game is a doable proposition

• Angels ticket window ($80 - $500)
  
• Become a season seat holder (about $1400 per seat minimum next year, plus about $800 for the All Star Ticket Sheet bundle)
  
• Be Arte Moreno
• Get a job as an usher or peanut vendor
• Wear a Gannet Outdoor shirt to the stadium and hug Dennis Kuhl in the concourse, reaching into his back pocket and casually lifting out some of the All Star Game tickets he will be weighted down with.
• Just try to sneak in, walking in like you own the place
• Get plastic surgery to look like Tim McCarver, or walk bottomless on your hands with lipstick on your ass and be let in to the stadium as Joe Buck.
  

So what does a guy or gal who just want to witness history do? Will tickets be made available online?

The one thing you will want to avoid is a bootleg ... ticket -scalpers will be photoshopping masterpiece renditions of actual game tickets, but they barcode scan tickets in Anaheim, so you are out of luck if you walk up with a computer reprint (but you may have a valuable collector's item to pawn off on an esaily scammable collector).

In St Louis, tickets are going for 12 - 20 times their ticket window price days before the All Star Game on StubHub, your only reputable online option (this is the sad truth,I was not paid to say this). This is where season seat holders will be selling their tickets. That would make the cheapest ticket for the Anaheim All Star Game of 2010 about $180. And don't count on the recession being this bad then.