Finding a seat in Wrigley will cost you

CHICAGO — Fans hoping to see the Cubs play in the World Series for the first time since 1945 are finding a seat could cost them more than what their grandparents paid for their houses.

The euphoria from Saturday night’s victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers gave way Monday to the realization that history doesn’t come cheap.

Box seats on ticket-selling sites such as StubHub were $50,000 and up, with one seller asking $100,000 for a seat and another asking for just under $1 million. But there are lots of box seat tickets in the $5,000 to $10,000 range. Tickets to just get into the park and stand behind those with actual seats were going for more than $2,200 each.

Ticket prices are up in Cleveland, too, but prices suggest Indians fans are not willing to pay nearly as much. And there are indications that Cubs fans, getting a look at what they’d pay at Wrigley versus Progressive Field, are buying two tickets: one for a plane and one for a game.

Ticket brokers were being flooded with calls from fans looking for tickets and, as of Monday, they were willing to pay as much as $12,000, said Dan Makras of Classic Tickets in Chicago. But he said prices might climb because Cubs fans are proving to be reluctant to sell no matter how much money they’re offered.

“People have waited so long for this,” he said. How long? Well, the last time the Cubs were in the World Series, a ticket in the upper grandstand was $6.

That pent-up desire might explain why more than 2.6 million people — about the population of Chicago — signed up for a drawing for a chance to buy the few thousand tickets the Cubs are now selling themselves.

Fans with more creativity than luck or money are making some unusual pitches to pry tickets from the hands of their owners.

In Southern California, Annie Coffman posted on Craigslist an offer to exchange no fewer than two tickets for a week at her ski cabin near Big Bear Lake. “Rental for a week is about $9,000,” said Coffman, who grew up near Chicago. Not only that, but her sister owns a ski cabin near Lake Tahoe and would be willing to sweeten the offer. “If someone wants to make it a whole tour of California, we could do that,” Coffman said.