BRING BACK PAPER TICKETS - The MLB Ballpark App Went Down Temporarily This Weekend And It Was A Reminder That Sports Should Go Back To Paper Ticket Stubs

Technology really does have us by the balls now. Everything we do is virtual which always leaves a chance for something to go wrong and render us helpless, like when the MLB Ballpark app goes down (possibly suffered a data breach) on a holiday weekend and you're trying to scan your ticket on the way into the ballpark. That happened at a few ballparks around the league it sounds like this weekend and just look at the lines and commotion it caused outside of Fenway. Folks missing the game because the systems went down and they couldn't get access to tickets, what a nightmare.

Back in my day, you didn't whip your phone out and have them scan the QR code to get in. We got the actual physical copy of a ticket stub and they ripped off the end of it and that's how you went into the game. None of this sending and transferring shit. Your dad took them out of the envelope and that was it. 

But sometimes in this new age you get a nightmare situation like you had with the Ballpark app and you're left high and dry missing the beginning of the game. The fans who weren't able to use the Ballpark app had to go physically print out their tickets, I'm assuming at the box office or somewhere at the ballpark so they'd be let into the game. Is it convenient to have everything you'll ever need in the computer in your pocket? Yes, yes it is. But man was a physical ticket stub better than a screenshotted QR code. 

I saved a ton of ticket stubs from as far back as I can remember. Crumpled up, folded ticket stubs from the Orioles - Yankees 1996 ALCS, Manny Machado's first game as an Oriole, big time playoff games, the game my brother and I were help up at gunpoint and pistol whipped at, Chris Davis walk-offs, some really fun games and memories. I started writing down a summary of the games on the back of a few of the tickets so I wouldn't have to go back and google the box score to see what happened in the game, they were a great collectable. Your dad holding onto the tickets all game and you getting to keep them, kids these days won't have that memory. No one will have a ticket stub from when they went with their grandpa to see Paul Skenes pitch, or when they saw Ohtani hit a 430 foot homer. And sure, some teams allow you to go to the box office and print them out, but we used to already have them with us and didn't need to take a trip to the customer service area to pay to get it printed out. 

The tickets today sucked, people my age will never forget getting their tickets for a game and finding out their favorite player was on the ticket. Now it's a graphic. Some teams will do it for special games, I know the Orioles printed out 30,000 or 35,000 tickets for Adley Rutschman's debut and gave them to you as you left the ballpark, a cool move but we should be able to have that for every game. 

I know why it's not done anymore, it's a convenience and money thing. I can only imagine how much a team spent on printing each season, that stuff is expensive and it's all about dollars and cents to the upper management. So naturally you cut out physical printed tickets and make everyone go virtual. Same shit at the bars and restaurants now, I don't want to scan a QR code to see what food you have, give me a god damn physical paper menu and let me read it.

I'm a sucker for nostalgia, but I think a lot of folks around my age would agree with me. A lot of our childhood was spent going to games and saving those tickets in a shoebox or some sort of container, was just what you did after going to a big game. I'd love to be able to save the stubs for my daughter as a physical reminder of all the cool games and events we've gone to, now you can just log them on app and call it a day. It's not the same, it'll never be the same. Charge me an extra $3 and send me a ticket in the mail so I can keep it. I can't remember when the Orioles stopped doing the whole paper ticket stuff, I think post covid? But it was such a fun piece of memorabilia to hold onto, was a built in souvenir. Technology has improved almost every aspect of our lives, but I wish this was one thing we could back to. Bring back the old traditional ways.

PS. As a kid did anyone else's dad pull the "do you have the tickets" as you were walking up to the gates and your heart stopped every single time? Pops was holding the tickets the whole time but for a split second you thought maybe you left them in the car or at home.