The company I was visiting had three groups of very good seats, but being a playoff game, all were already allocated to people more important than me, so I was left to fend for myself. (This is the same company who gave me tickets to the BMW Championship golf tournament last month, so I wasn't feeling deprived.) Having never attended a playoff baseball game, I still didn't want to miss the opportunity for the NLCS.

My hotel was a few blocks from Busch Stadium, so I put on my Cardinals hat and left about a half-hour before game time to join the masses walking toward the stadium. Before long I ran into the first few ticket brokers but wasn't having any luck finding one who would split a pair of tickets to sell me one. During the fourth or fifth conversation along those lines, a woman overheard me and said she had an extra ticket. (It was the Byoffer effect. ) A ticket scalper was pushily trying to buy the ticket from her for $60, and seeing my opportunity, I said I'd give her $60 for it. This made the scalper even pushier and ruder, but the women (there were three in the group) all wanted to sell the ticket to me since I was going to use it personally. So I bought the ticket, face value $75, seat in the right field corner, and watched the game with the three women. Despite me being a stranger, we had a good time watching the game, and I walked a few blocks with them after the game before splitting up to head back to my hotel. It was a fun night.