The Delicate Art of Section Hopping
The Delicate Art of Section Hopping
Jonathan Danielson
In line at the gate, your son loses his patience while attendants scan ticket after ticket and hand out bobbleheads, the stack of boxes shrinking with every fan ahead of you. “We’ll be fine,” you say, even though the stack gets so small you’re not so sure. Of course, you don’t say this. And you don’t tell your son you bought tickets in the nosebleeds just to get inside Chase Field, after your teaching contract at the community college disappeared with the federal cuts. What matters is you promised him a game, and you don’t intend to strike out looking.
In the end, you get a bobblehead, but only one, because you let the kid behind you take yours, the girl’s father giving you a relieved, tight-lipped smile. Once inside, you don’t bother going upstairs. You head straight to Double Header’s in right field, because Double Header’s is where they sell the value hot dogs. You each get two, one for right then and another for later. You shove all four in your pockets, your son tasked with keeping track of his bobblehead, and after grabbing napkins, you slip through an unguarded entrance for the bleachers and find a spot.
“We’ll stay here a while and see how things shake out,” you say as you unwrap your dogs. The game starts and the Nationals take the lead. You remind your son it’s still early, there’s still plenty of baseball left. You don’t tell him the D-backs aren’t good this year, or how they’ll probably trade all his favorite players at the deadline because their record in no way reflects their payroll or preseason World Series expectations. And you don’t bring up how the city and team haven’t reconciled their legal dispute over who pays for the stadium, and relocation rumors are making the rounds.
You just eat your dogs and watch the game.
The corners of his son’s mouth are stained with ketchup as he makes friends with boys down the aisle. In the middle of the first they run down to the front row and beg Corbin Carroll for the ball he’s tossing with the bullpen catcher. No one realizes Washington has taken the field and Carroll is 400 feet away, taking practice swings in the on-deck circle. But the Nats outfielder abides. Of course, the ball sails over their heads and disappears into the crowd, a crack against the bleachers the only sign it landed. A second later, a man your age raises it above his head and searches for wayward high-fives.
After the D-backs bat—a quick three outs—you sidestep past everyone in your aisle, your hotdog-stuffed pockets wobbling in their faces. The Baseline Reserve section is practically empty, so you swing around the handrail for the stairs and plop into the first two seats. You glance back, checking whether anyone noticed, and catch the usher’s eye on the concourse. He turns around, as if to say, buddy, don’t get us both in trouble, and now it’s your turn for a tight-lipped smile.
Your son is quick to notice the foul pole is in your direct line of sight–not a complaint so much as an observation–and he’s right. You have to crane your neck to follow the pitcher’s windup to whatever happens at the plate, which you can’t see. But after one inning on the bleachers, your back is killing you, so you say, “At least we have real seats now, right?” He agrees, and you nod with his agreement, though you both know this isn’t better.
During the bottom of the second, your son asks for that slushy you promised on the drive over. You don’t want to get it—it’s nothing but sugar and Blue Food Dye No.1, and you tell him this every game–but he caught you off guard when you were stuck in rush hour, and you said, “Why not?” before realizing it. You say, “After the D-backs hit,” hoping they can string together a few runs and get back in this thing, and also because you’re counting on that taking long enough for him to forget about the slushy. But nope. Another 1-2-3 inning, and up to the concourse you go.
You snag an empty standing table on the first base line after you buy his slushy. You got one too–something your doctor would not approve of after your most recent fasting blood sugar–but your son asked what flavor you were going to get, so there you are. You both stand there getting brain freeze beside a place that sells Polish sausages, the same spot your dad took you whenever he brought you to a game, like Game 2 of the 2001 World Series, Randy Johnson pitching a complete game shutout, 4-0, over Andy Pettitte.
The onions sizzling on the griddle make your mouth water, even though you hate onions, and you’re about regretting your value dogs when the usher near the mini team shop turns to help an elderly couple find their section. That’s your chance. You grab both slushies and tuck the bobblehead under your arm. You tell your son, “Stay close,” and off you go.
The first few rows are packed. For a second you’re worried the usher will return and catch you on the stairs, but ten, twelve rows down–far enough to keep clear of the usher’s view–you spot some empty seats. Your son looks nervous—he is nervous—and asks if you’re allowed to do this. What if we get caught? he says. “Then we’ll go back to the bleachers,” you say, and that satisfies him.
These are good seats, Naylor manning first so close you can clearly see his terrible mustache. You like Naylor all right, but wish they would’ve kept Walker, even though he’s not doing so hot in Houston after signing there as a free agent. And that’s ironic, because you didn’t like Walker when they brought him in to replace Goldschmidt, who they never should’ve traded in the first place. But these are good seats—one-fifty a game, easy—and you’d be more than happy to stay put awhile if your son didn’t urgently need to use the bathroom during the top of the fifth, after that phosphorescent-blue slushy caught up with him. When you try to come back, the usher is at his post, diligently checking people’s phones before letting them pass. You miss paper tickets. The kind you’d race to the third base line with before a game, hoping to get it signed. The kind your child will never know.
You head back for the bleachers, but a few sections past the sausage stand there’s no usher in sight. It’s not as close as where you were, but not nearly as far as where you started either. You want to say sometimes life works like that, that this is a metaphor for what your son will face one day, what with grades or jobs or girls or whatever. But you can’t figure out how to phrase it, and anyway, Perdomo hits this monster pop-up, the crack of his bat making the whole stadium stand and take a collective breath, everyone hoping it will have enough juice to get out, but it drops at the warning track into the glove of that same Washington outfielder who tossed the ball toward your kid and his buddies in the first.
While the Nationals run off the field, the announcer introduces the Legends Race, where oversized caricatures of Randy Johnson, Luis Gonzalez, Matt Williams, and Mark Grace sprint around the field like the sausages in Milwaukee, or presidents in D.C. The pierogis in Pittsburgh. Astronauts in Houston. When he was younger, your son loved dinosaurs, but now it’s space, and he wants to know which astronauts. The reception in Chase Field is so bad you’re still trying to look it up when the Legends parade through the cross aisle, high-fiving everyone they pass. You knew they were coming–they always make this procession through the stadium around this time—and you’d been waiting to nudge your son to run down for a high five. But when you stand to follow him, you realize your sunglasses are missing, the hundred-dollar pair you swore to your wife you wouldn’t lose when you justified buying them. As the Legends approach, you try to retrace your steps. Did you have them at the last seats? The standing table? The bathroom? Are they in the bleachers? You motion to head back to the concourse to search, but there the Legends are. And just like that, you’re swept into the parade, marching in step behind them.
You follow your child, who dances behind the Legends, who dance and give high fives to everyone they pass. Near home, you spot two empty seats in the first row above the cross aisle, the green chairs a stark contrast to the different shades of D-backs and Nationals reds, or the sea of purple from fans in either ’01 throwbacks or the team’s new Serpentes alternates.
The usher for that section waits for the incoming procession. As the first Legend passes, he steps into the cross aisle to clear any fans, and you grab your kid and hop up the now unguarded stairs, the people at the corner moving their legs to give you an easier path into the row.
“Welcome back,” the woman on the corner says with a conspiratorial tone. Once situated, you realize you’re between the opposing dugout and on-deck circle–much closer to home than you thought. So close you probably wouldn’t have tried this here. But there you are, with a perfect view across the backstop into the D-backs clubhouse, Torrey Lovullo clapping from the stairs in his T-shirt—when did managers stop wearing jerseys?—as Geno takes ball three, nobody pitching to Geno this year for fear of giving up an automatic run. “Pretty, pretty good,” you say as you dig your son’s cold hot dog from your pocket. You can still hear your doctor complaining about your slushy, so you leave yours where it is. Your son practically swallows his whole, then presses a hand to his stomach and groans. “I’ll never eat again.” The woman next to you winks at him and says the people in those seats told her they were heading home, so you should be good for the rest of the game.
In the top of the seventh, the Nationals add to their lead. It’s so big the outcome probably isn’t changing. But you don’t bring this up to your son, who sings as loudly as he can to “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” Instead, you tell him how, as a kid, you sat almost exactly where you’re sitting now, only up in the nosebleeds, when Grandpa took you to Game 2 in ’01. You don’t say Grandpa wanted to come today too, but couldn’t. You don’t say the latest rounds of chemo have made him sick, or that’s why he hasn’t been picking your son up from school lately. And you don’t dare bring up the whole context of that ’01 Series, the World Trade Center and attacks. The collective apprehension people had over even holding the games.
When your son asks, “Where else have you sat?” you point to a spot up front, the first row behind the visiting batter’s circle, and tell him that’s where your childhood friend’s family had season tickets since ’98, the team’s first year. You tell him how you sat in those seats when the team clinched a Wild Card spot in 2017, JD Martinez walking off Miami with a hard single to left. When Josh Collmenter gave up three hits and still somehow only faced the minimum in 2014. When Aaron Hill hit his first cycle in 2012, then became the first player in 80 years to hit two in one season eleven days later. You tell him you used to watch Randy Johnson and Luis Gonzalez play from right there, and you point to the rafters in right field, where numbers 51 and 20 hang.
When your son asks if you can call your friend and ask if he can sit there one day, you say maybe. You say no. You haven’t talked to him in a while, you say. You don’t tell him your friend shot himself in 2021, after shooting his wife. You don’t say you were in a SWAT van down his street until dawn, recording messages to coax him out, your son asleep at home, never aware you were even gone those six hours. You don’t say you didn’t know he had already taken his own life before you showed up and told the police you were his friend.
You don’t say any of this because the world is terrible. The world is mostly terrible, and you want to shield him from that. But he’s getting older now, and he’s reading things–books about wizards and Poseidon. About robots and gorillas. About war. Books about pain and heartbreak. You wish there was a book on how to keep the world at bay a little longer, but you know he’ll understand it soon enough. However, not tonight. Tonight, you point to the seats directly behind home plate. Tonight, you say, “wouldn’t it be something to sit there?”
By the end of the eighth, the stadium has cleared out. There’s simply no hope. You ask your son if he’s ready to go, and he says, “But the game’s not over yet,” and you say that’s the right answer. You sit back, and while the Jumbotron instructs you to get loud, you study the nearly empty seats behind home. The seats that go for five, six hundred dollars a game. There’s an elderly couple in matching Dbacks Hawaiian shirts, and three older men with clipboards, most likely scouts from other teams, and a foursome of hipsters with mustaches and denim vests and not a stitch of either team’s apparel between them. And patrolling that tiny section of prime real estate is an elderly woman in a red usher’s shirt, a sentry pacing her post, her silver hair catching the light and blinding you even from that distance.
By the second out, you’ve got the usher’s rotation timed. Unless she’s shooing away families trying to take a nice picture, she circles the section with near-clockwork precision before disappearing down the stairs to sweep through the luxury bar beneath the seats.
As the next Washington batter steps up, you stand. You pat your pockets, making sure you haven’t lost anything else. You don’t know how you’re going to justify new sunglasses to your wife. You lean down and grab your son’s bobblehead. Your son pleads that the game isn’t over yet and you point toward home. “We trying for those seats or not?”
As you make your way toward the section, the Washington batter strikes out, a rare occurrence at this point, sending their fans up the stairs to beat traffic. In the sudden swarm of people, the usher gets caught in the bottleneck. You place a hand on your son’s chest and gently slow him until it clears enough that the usher can continue down into the bar, then your hurried steps are in perfect sync.
As Marte makes his way to the box, you scoot into the aisle next to the elderly couple and behind the hipsters, the scouts one row ahead. The hipsters half-turn in your direction, then shake their heads. The elderly couple never turn from the game. No one here smiles. Marte whiffs on strike one, and your son claps. “You got it, Ketel!” he yells. The next pitch, Marte makes contact, the ball shooting straight behind you, bouncing somewhere on the concourse. But before the ump gives a new ball to the catcher, the usher returns from the bar, and as if she knew you were there all along, she appears atop the stairs staring directly at you.
You lean over to your son and whisper, “Uh oh,” but he jumps out of his seat as Marte creams one into the right-field bleachers, just not on the right side of the foul pole. The usher starts her slow ascent up the stairs. “Pretty sure that’s exactly where we were sitting earlier,” you say with a laugh, and point to where Marte’s foul ball landed. The elderly man beside you nods like he understands.
“Tickets?” the usher says. Her red glasses match her uniform. Her silver hair is even brighter this close.
You’re caught, and you know it, and she knows it. Everyone knows it except your son, who’s still cheering for Marte until he strikes out. You stand and motion your son for the stairs. He begs when he realizes you have to leave, and you tell him you’re not leaving, just going back to your last seats. The usher scolds you. “No, you’re going back to your seats,” she says, and she holds your stare until she breaks. She can’t keep the steely expression forever. She smirks and limply presses her fingertips to the outstretched hands of the hipsters, who are more than enjoying your getting called out.
As Gurriel Jr. comes to the plate, you try to think of something to say. But there’s nothing to say. Some people just get the best of you. That’s how life works, and that’s another lesson your son will have to learn. Life’s promise, unfortunately. So you bury your hands in your pockets and head for the exit when you feel it, cold and metallic against your thigh. The last hot dog.
The usher stands with her fist on her hip. The hipsters turn fully to watch you leave. The elderly couple in Hawaiian shirts still never turn from the game. Your son hugs his bobblehead. You’re relieved he still has it, hasn’t lost it yet. You can’t help but smile as you pull the hot dog from your pocket. In a single motion, you rip it in half. You yell “Go D-backs” and fling it in the air, the meat and stale bun breaking free from their foil, the pieces raining down on you, and your laughing child, and everyone else. Like when they throw bubblegum on the guy who hits a walk off. Like Gonzo in Game 7, something you’ll tell your son about again during the car ride home.
Winner of the 2026 Sidd Finch Fiction Prize
Jonathan Danielson is a Writer-at-Large for The Feathertale Review, and his stories have appeared in Gulf Coast, HAD, Stanchion, Juked, Superstition Review, and elsewhere. His debut collection, THE LOWEST BASIN: ARIZONA STORIES, was published by Cowboy Jamboree Press in April 2025. He holds a PhD in English Literature from Arizona State University and an MFA from the University of San Francisco. His scholarly work focuses on Creative Writing, the Western, and Arizona literary regionalism.
Caitlin McPhee is a Blue Jays fan and illustrator from Calgary, Alberta. Thank you Jordan Kormos for your continuous support. See more markers at @onewarmline on Instagram.
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