It's just too bad Susan Finkelstein and John Peoples never met.

Finkelstein is the 43-year-old wife behind a Craigslist post labeled "DESPERATE BLONDE NEEDS WS TIX." Looking for two series tickets, this self-described "gorgeous tall buxom blonde" assured prospective suitors: "Price negotiable - I'm the creative type! Maybe we can help each other!"

Bensalem police deemed her a bit too creative. After a quick rendezvous with an undercover officer at a Bucks County bar, Finkelstein was arrested and charged with attempting to solicit sex.

Bill Brennan, Finkelstein's attorney, told me that the evidence hardly justified the sting. "If anything, there's a play on words, some double entendre, but there's no smoking gun in that posting.

"And it's astute to point out . . . apparently there's all kind of 'women for men,' 'men for women' [listings] . . . it's not on that. It's on the 'tickets' thing."

Soon after, Finkelstein again resorted to the Internet to say she was "wondering about the integrity of our police."

(The publicity didn't hurt. Wired 96.5's Chio in the Morning and auto dealer Gary Barbera said that they plan to give her a pair of Game 3 tickets.)

In a world where it seems like there's a child abduction in Florida every other week, I get the need to have law enforcement trolling the want ads. What I don't understand is why they'd be in the tickets section, or why they'd take the time to chase a suburban wife who wants to watch some baseball. Curiosity is my best guess. My hunch is that the cops stumbled on the ad, and, like many of us, were anxious for a look at the well-stacked blonde. I'm picturing a table full of plainclothes cops enjoying some wings along with the show at the Bensalem bar where Finkelstein was arrested.

This is the second unusual case of alleged prostitution in just a few months. Remember John Peoples, the Delaware County lawyer who said that a Pilates instructor he was paying for sex had ripped him off to the tune of almost $8,600?

The striking part of that case wasn't that Peoples was paying for sex. It was why he was paying for sex: "Women aren't too interested in blind men," he said. "If you go to a singles bar with a stick in your hand, you're not going to be attacked by women."

He was right. And he's not alone.

There are plenty of guys who, for whatever reason, just aren't going to find companionship. And that solitude - whether over the short term or a longer period - is only amplified by the steady stream of sexuality flowing over the TV airwaves and Internet connections.

Who are we to deprive them of the opportunity to pay a consenting adult

to provide that companionship? Especially those like Peoples, who can't help their disability, or the fortunate few with Phillies tickets?

Think of it this way. Imagine that a blind lawyer with two tickets to the World Series comes in contact with a tall, buxom, die-hard Phillies fan. Both are consenting adults who agree to exchange sex for the seats instead of the bracelet or the Cosmopolitan they'd pass down the bar.

Why waste precious law-enforcement time and resources snuffing out that transaction when there are unaccountable adults committing far more dangerous crimes all the time?

ANYWAY, Finkelstein's bid for World Series tickets never even made it that far.

"It's important to point out that nothing was traded," Brennan told me. "This case would be less offensive - and we couldn't have this much fun with it at this early stage - if perhaps she was arrested in a motel or there was some video or audio. I mean, they jumped the gun on this one, really. The closest you have to any contact is a guy and a girl sitting in a bar having a beer."

Sounds like there's probably going to be more action in the Phils' bullpen.

Listen to Michael Smerconish weekdays 5-9 a.m. on the Big Talker, 1210/AM. Read him Sundays in the

Inquirer. Contact him via the Web at www.smerconish.com.