Sick of the driving and parking in Boston, many Red Sox fans charter buses when going to see home games at friendly Fenway Park. Usually, this is a sensible and mutually considerate strategy for both game attendees and Fenway residents alike. But tonight, one bus ride nearly ended in tragedy.

Instead of exiting the parking lot through the well-engineered exit, the bus pictured above decided to take a “short cut” between two buildings. The only problem? The alleyway exits onto Jersey Street via a very short but very steep incline of the sort that founders buses like turtles flipped on their backs.

These two buildings are directly across the street from my apartment building, so as I exited my home to run some errands, I became a witness to this vehicular crisis. Luckly me.

Some 30 or 40 people were milling around the area, attempting to hide from the pressing rays of the early evening sun. When I returned from my errands, a police car was blocking my street and a big tow truck had appeared on the scene to execute a complicated series of K-turns to position itself to do some good.

In the end, a simple pull from tow truck was all that was needed to get the bus over the hump.

Soon, the alleyway was bus-free and ready again for drunk people to urinate in.

But for some, the pain caused by this crisis continues. As the passenagers slowly reboarded the bus, a little sadder if not wiser for their travails, I couldn’t help but reflect on the long-term effects of this tragedy. For instance, many will never get that 45 minutes of their lives back. I can only hope that most of them had Tivos to record the TV shows that they missed as a result of this delay. And what about those that passed the time engorging themselves with the garbage McDonald’s sells? You can paint a directly line of arterial damage from their final, fatal heart attack years in the future to the Big Mac they had to eat today to survive.

When buses go off track, we all lose.