Scalped! What "free skating" at Fenway Park could cost you.

Well, it's nice to see that the local scalpers - not content to gouge on Celtics and Bruins tickets - have found a new way to make a few bucks and help ensure that their Christmases - if not yours - will be merry and bright. (Source: Boston.com/Boston Globe.)

Not that I have much of a problem with enterprising individuals who pay for tickets, assume the risk that no one will want to see a game or a Neil Diamond concert, and make a few bucks on a transaction. 

I'm quite a bit less enamored of the "official" scalping that goes on, in which, two seconds after tickets for a game - or even a Neil Diamond concert - are available, they're only available on the approved secondary market for a lot more money than face value.  But that's another story. Today's story is about scalping tickets to go skating at Fenway Park.

And this is not ordinary scalping. No, we're talking people scalping tickets that they were given for free.

For those who don't give a puck about professional sports, for the last couple of years, the National Hockey League has held a New Year's Day game in the great out of doors, putting up a temporary rink in some stadium or other - the first, I believe, was in Buffalo - and inviting fans to have a near-death-by-hypothermia experience watching hockey.

This year's game is being held in Fenway Park, home of the Red Sox, which, in Boston, is as close as we get to hallowed ground.

When the rink was put down last week, we got to see the touching - hey, I mean it: I still have a crush on Bobby Orr - spectacle of Boston Bruins legends skating around Fenway with the Green Monster in the background. (Toss in a bunch of pee-wee hockey leaguers for good measure.  And, throw in Red Sox Captain Jason Varitek lacing up his CCM's. He may have grown up in the south, but that boy was born in Michigan and, as he said, "I'm a fan, too.")

And then the City of Boston decided to get in on the act, and sponsor two days of free skating for the citizens of our fair (and unfair) city.

People lined up at outposts all over town, waiting for hours for the chance to score some free-bies for the January 3rd and January 10th skate-arounds.

Personally, I'd like nothing better than to zip around Fenway in a pair of figure skates. Unfortunately, although I skated pretty much every day of the winter as a kid - it's what we did after school: go skating at Hendy's (Henderson Pond) - I haven't had a pair of skates on in four decades.

At this point, the specter of a broken hip looms large, and the only way I'd care to go skating at Fenway would be if Bobby Orr held me by one arm, and Ray Bourque held me by the other. (Maybe Derek Sanderson could push.)

Since that scenario is not likely to play out, I didn't stand in line for tickets.

Of course, where you combine "waiting in line" with "Fenway Park" in the same sentence, there are bound to be scalpers.

And, gosh golly, there were.

So, from Craigslist to eBay, 'tis the season to be scalping, with tickets for four - which cost the "owner" zip - are being offered at an ask of $1,800. (Reportedly, Craisglist took its listings down at the request of the City of Boston.)

Apparently, tickets are not just being tendered by those who at least stood in line to get their freebies. One on-line listing - from one of our cherished local hacks - reads:

“I have 12 tickets total, will sell all for $4,000. 4 tickets for just $1,800. Once in a lifetime opportunity! No sob stories please prices are firm. Hard tickets in hand. I was given these tix by menino  [Tom Menino, Boston's mayor] directly and I will be there to ensure your entire party gets into the park. . . . VIP tickets include a meet and greet with Bruin Old Timers and free hot chocolate and donuts.’’

So, some Menino flunky or suck-up got 12 tickets that should have gone to a few Joe Sixpacks/Joan Threedeckers and their kids, and now he's got the nerve to try to sell them for big bucks. (I trust that Hizzoner read The Globe, and I hope that he and his non-scalping minions will be keeping their eyes out for this POSS (the additional "S' is for "scalper").  City Hall must have some sense of who this guy is. How many twelve packs did Tommy give out?

City Hall, meanwhile, is shocked, yes shocked, to find scalping going on here.

“These are free tickets that were arranged to be given to City of Boston residents to skate free at Fenway Park, they weren’t meant for people to make money off of,’’ Dot Joyce, a spokeswoman for Mayor Thomas M. Menino, said yesterday. “It was really the mayor making sure the residents of this city get something back, especially young people who, given this is Fenway, it might be their only chance to be there.’’

However, to their credit, the city - which was sponsoring these skating events with Sun Life - did have everyone who got tickets register and plans to "conduct spot checks to make sure people have the right tickets."

Boy, would I ever love to be the spot-checker who spots the City Hall insider who tried to move his 12 tickets - 12 tickets!  Those who stood in line in the cold to try for tickets could only get 4 -  for Four Large.

Meanwhile, tickets for the actual New Year's Bruins-Flyers game are scalp-tailing for $700 per.  But, hey, at least those tickets are from scalpers who got them the old fashioned way: they bought them.