Bold Print
Apparently, not everyone in the Patriots’ organization was reluctant to talk (or even think) about the team’s winning streak prior to last Sunday’s record-setting win over the Miami Dolphins.
I was unaware of this until Keith Gentili (who plays a central role in chapter nine of This Pats Year) emailed to hip me to it, but tickets to the New England-Miami game included some bold predictions. Specifically, the tickets include a slightly disguised “19 in a row.” They also depict Patriots players Tyrone Poole and Eugene Wilson, numbers 38 and 26 respectively, in action. The digits in Poole and Wilson’s numbers add up to 19. There’s an official in the picture, too. He’s wearing number 19.
Pretty nifty little trick there. Kinda runs counter to what the team is all about — that is, the whole one-game-at-a-time philosophy — but, you know, what’s right for the guys on the field isn’t necessarily what’s right for the folks in the PR and ticket offices. They can (and probably should) spend time thinking about streaks, since that’s pretty much the game their heads need to be in.
I guess the ticket makes a nice instant collectible for those who were at the game, too. And so it’s not surprising I’d find out about it from Keith, whose business is collectibles.
Keith is part of a very cool company called That’s My Ticket, which creates personalized displays for collectible/memorabilia sports tickets. Neat operation. Nice way to preserve one of those tickets, too, if you happen to have one.
I wish I had one of them, not so much for the collectible aspect (I can’t keep anything in good condition, so why bother?), but because I’d love to have been there on Sunday. Oh, well. With any luck, I’ll get to see the Pats post win number 20 this weekend. If I manage to find a scalper offering a half-decent ticket at a not-entirely outrageous price outside the stadium (I’ll be down in Foxborough handing out stickers anyhow, so I’ll definitely check out what the scalpers are asking with an eye toward getting in — buying singles you can sometimes do OK — oftentimes the guy had four, sold three to one group at an obscene price and just wants to dump the last one and go home before he gets arrested), I’ll be sure to take a close look at it.
