Welcome, baseball fan. Go directly to jail. (Washington Post)

This poor guy from out of town had tickets to a game that got rained out. He couldn’t go to the scheduled replacement game, so he tried to sell the tickets — at face value or less — outside the ballpark.

For his efforts, he was given a free ride to the pokey. OK . . . it wasn’t free; it wound up costing him $50.

I understand laws against scalping, but . . .

Several years ago, I found myself about to head into Shea Stadium with an extra ticket. I don’t remember who punked out on the game, but I had pretty good seats and I figured someone would just as soon buy the ticket from me than get one at the ticket window. I would have loved to get the price I paid.

Then a cop came up behind me and told me I had to move something like 150 yards away from the stadium. Pretty much had to go to the other side of the Willets Points subway station, which I was not about to do. Ridiculous.

I guess I should be glad I didn’t get hauled off to jail.