Unmatched series of events

By Denis Horgan of The Hartford Courant

BOSTON — Professors at Northeastern University’s august college of business administration could thunder away on the vast economic displacements of discretionary resources and productivity concurrent with the progressive advancements of athletic/social endeavors.

But who, on Thursday morning, would be there to hear it?

Any students drifting around were, like the rest of the city, a bit out of focus.

The Hub was agog at finding its Red Sox in the World Series—delightfully at the expense of the despised New York Yankees. Caught up in the unprecedented glow, the Red Sox world could be forgiven for taking its eye off the responsibility ball.

“I got into work at 1 p.m.,” said Andy Goldberg, an employee at Goldberg Properties, the family’s Boston-area investment and development firm. “I was the only male to be here at all that early. I have spent the whole afternoon on e-Bay and Stubhub.com trying to find tickets for the Series. I don’t think I’ve accomplished a lot of work today.”

At an investment firm across town, Patrick Masters of Chestnut Hill talked about life since the Big Win.

“Every meeting today started out with a ‘Where’d you watch the game?’ or ‘Forgive me if I’m a little out of whack but ... well, you know, the Sox,’ “ he said.

Masters, whose mother in Maine lit candles for players Mark Bellhorn and Johnny Damon the night before Game 7 of the American League Championship Series, said the e-mail and phones at work were abuzz with exuberance and the needling of Yankees fans within the empire.

“There’s been also a fair amount of cubicle prairie-dogging predictions on whom George Steinbrenner was going to fire, and the cashing in on office `speculation’ on the Yankees series,’’ Masters said. His company frowns on betting, so he collected a pound of red and blue M&M’s as a return on an investment.

Back at Northeastern, Lauren Winther, a freshman who said she has been a Sox fan all her life, marveled at the turn of events: “This is all just so awesome.”

Northeastern is built upon the site of the first World Series, in 1903. The proto-Red Sox, then called the Boston Pilgrims, lost to the Pittsburgh Pirates 7-3 in the opening clash of a best-of-nine event. But just as the 2004 team rope-a-doped the Yankees, exhausting them in New York’s 19-8 Game 3 win, its 1903 counterparts made sure Pittsburgh’s success was short-lived, too, and Boston won the series 5-3.

Sixteen thousand turned out for the 1903 opener; they probably could sell 660,000 tickets for the latest round. At astronomical prices, too.

“I found that it’s actually cheaper for me to fly to Houston or St. Louis, buy tickets for games there, stay at hotels and eat there, than it is to buy a Fenway ticket on the street here,” Goldberg said. He’s actually going to do the flights—and hopes to score some local tickets, too. Good luck. The cheapest bleacher seats on stubhub.com’s auction were going for about $1,600 a pop, and that will rise as Game 1 gets closer.

“I vowed that if the Sox beat the Yankees I’d go to the Series no matter what,” he said. “Who knows when I’ll get another chance?”

Outside Fenway Park on Thursday, a line of ticket hopefuls formed early—the “Why Not Us?” line, they called themselves—even though the club said it wouldn’t have any tickets to sell at the window. A few over the phone and on the Web, but none for those who came out into the cold to hope for a miracle.

“Who knows? Maybe they’ll change their mind,” said Kristin Hawk of West Roxbury. “You’d think they’d consider us real fans instead of just the rich people and their computers,” said her bundled up pal, Susan Johnson of Jamaica Plain.

But the euphoria and near giddiness is hardly limited to those who get to go to the games.

At a Washington Street McDonald’s early Thursday, a woman turned to an elderly stranger at a nearby table. “Wasn’t it a wonderful game?” she said. The other—tiny, prim, neat and benefiting from what appeared to be some 80 years—replied, with stately steam, “Oh, yes. But Pedro nearly blew it.”