ongoing

 How much can you spend on the Red Sox, the team we love, the team with the second highest payroll in the game, the World Series champs of 2007, the one-time pursuers of the Santana that is not Carlos, the marketers of Fenway Park (quaint, old-fashioned, historic, yet festooned with so many ad banners and coke bottles you could, visually, choke). How about $5 grand for a trip to Japan?  Theo and his guys are inviting you - if you're a deep-pocketed kind of fan and isn't that the only kind nowadays? - to join the team and its execs to experience as the Red Sox face the Oakland Athletics in Major League Baseball's Opening Series. In March!
Packages will include private charter airfare, departing on Saturday, March 22nd from Boston and arriving in Tokyo on Sunday afternoon, March 23rd. You'll stay at the Team hotel, the luxury New Otani Hotel for four nights, and maybe you'll bump into Derek Lowe in the bar! (No, that would have been 2004; maybe you'll run into David Ortiz in the lobby and he'll hug you 'cause he loves you all.)

617-226-4000, www.redsox.com/redsoxdestinations or e-mail

You'll stay four nights, receive great tickets to three games,including an exhibition game against the Yomiuri Giants of the Nippon Professional Baseball League and the A's games - which, we're told, actually count in the standings, just like interleague play does! Amazing! They're also putting together various organized site-seeing events around Japan. Don't forget your camera! You will arrive back in Boston the evening of Thursday, March 27th. Oh, and, you can upgrade from the nominal $4999 cost. (Yes, a dollar under the $5 grand we mentioned earlier) how cavalier of us to think it would cost that much). But as to what your upgrade costs and brings you, well, we don't know the details of that. You'll have to call the number below or visit that websites.