"No Ticket!"

[captainsblog]

We continue slouching towards normalcy. It's been two whole weeks since my rant about beisbol- or rather, about my seeming inability to attend any such event other than a faraway and overpriced major league game somewhere other than here.  Toronto's plans remain on hold as the ballpark reno here and the border closing statuses remain in limbo, and until those are resolved our hometown AAA team is still temporarily somebody else's.  But Rochester at least made some rumblings in the past week or so:

Today we received confirmation from our partners at Major League Baseball that our 2021 season will indeed begin on May 4, with our home opener slated for May 18. While this is encouraging and exciting news for the upcoming season, we are still awaiting further counsel from New York State regarding the capacity that we’ll be allowed this season, as well as other guidelines for fans in attendance. We are currently allowed 20% capacity while keeping fans 6 feet apart. While hopeful that the capacity may increase at some point over the next month or two, we are at a point now that we need to move ahead with ticketing plans for 2021 in order to be able to accommodate ticket holders by Opening Day.

Well, Opening NIGHT, but the idea's the important thing.

The only other step they've taken so far, though, is to announce that the sale of individual game tickets, for the first homestand only, will begin on May 10th. The time is TBA, but they did confirm that it will encompass both box office and online sales.  History suggests it'll be a 10 a.m. thing. Unfortunately, with capacity limited to 20 percent to begin, it's likely that season ticket holders and the dreaded ticketbots will grab most of the First Night ducats before we get a shot.  I'll still try, and hope to have others doing the same; the seating will be in "pods" of no more than eight. It's unclear if singletons will be allowed to grab an extra pod seat.

Still, that's the luck of the draw. At least, as I continued to read on, I thought I had one sure thing going for me:

What do fans need to enter Frontier Field?

With updated guidance from New York State, fans 2 years and older will have three options for entry into Frontier Field. Children under 2 do NOT need to comply with these regulations. Those options include:

· Proof of full vaccination completed 14 days or more prior to the game

· Proof of negative antigen COVID-19 test result within 6 hours of gates opening

· Proof of negative PCR COVID-19 test result within 72 hours of gates opening

They then went on to encourage download of the Excelsior Pass- New York's mobile vaccination passport available to those who've gotten the two shots of Brands P or M (or the one of the J while it was available) and at least two weeks have passed since that second jab.

THAT'S ME!

I hurried on down and went through the steps: disclosure authorization, identity information, the obligatory CAPCHA to prove I am not a robot, then the final verification questions.  They clearly found me in their data, because each of the multiple-choice options included my exact information.  So, my vaccine is my passport, verify me!

Or not:



Or, it could also be because

* We are idiots and don't know how to write code that integrates with the data we already have on you.

There are FAQs, but none of them include any guidance on the touchy subject of "what should I do if you just lied to me?"  So I am postponing my glorious quest until Monday when I shall seek out some sort of technical help.

And for those of you to whom Latin is a dead language? "Excelsior" is the Latin form of our official New York State motto, which translates to "ever upward."

Right- I got ya Excelsior right heah!