World Series Ticket Wait Ends With a Whimper

First things first: World Series tickets can be returned for refunds at branch offices of Security Pacific National Bank.

About 14,000 of those tickets went on sale at 9 a.m. Wednesday at Anaheim Stadium for each of the three home games that would have been played here next week had the Angels not lost to the Boston Red Sox Wednesday night. Thousands of fans had stood in line Monday to get plastic wristbands that entitled them to return Wednesday to buy the tickets.

About 6:45 p.m. Wednesday, stadium box office personnel announced to those still waiting to buy tickets that the games were sold out. That was about three minutes after a Boston home run brought the score to 7-0 in the fifth inning.

Amid a chorus of obscenities, people tore off their wristbands, and the 500 to 1,000 still waiting headed immediately for their cars and streamed out of the stadium parking lot, which was littered with beer bottles, food wrappers and spilled food and drink.

It was a dismal scene.

‘Noooo Problem!’

Earlier in the day, it had been different.

“The Candy Man can; there’s noooo problem!” shouted the first person in line Wednesday, an exuberant Terry Backer, who was referring to Angels’ starting pitcher John Candelaria. Backer, a softball umpire from Whittier, was still hoarse from attending all the Angels games over the weekend in the American League championship series. On Wednesday, Backer bought the maximum allowed--12 tickets, four for each of the the games.

His seats were to be in Aisle 113, about two-thirds of the way down the left-field line.

“I was hoping to do better, but it’s being there that counts,” Backer said.

“If you want the tickets bad, you’ll stay here all day long,” admonished Bob Albert over the public address system as hopeful fans pressed against the wooden barriers that separated them from the ticket windows.

Third Time in Line

After instructing ticket buyers not to cross the barriers until their numbers were called, Albert raised a rousing cheer by declaring, “They will not lose!”

Ron Kerfoot, a welder from Orange, needed no cheerleading. Kerfoot beamed with enthusiasm, although his hopes had been crushed twice before by his beloved Angels.

“This is the third time I’ve been here waiting for tickets,” said Kerfoot, who bought World Series tickets in 1979 and in 1982 only to have the Angels fall short by losing the league playoffs both years. “I sold them back to them every time.”

A dedicated fan, Kerfoot, who was second in line Wednesday, had attended Sunday’s Angels-Red Sox game at Anaheim Stadium but left in the seventh inning to reserve his prime location in the parking lot line for the numbered bracelets to be distributed the next day.

“This time, they are going to do it,” Kerfoot said.