Tix

Today I realized that my haphazard collection of tickets, amassed over several decades, is a good memory trigger.  I have hundreds of old tickets from sporting events, concerts, museums, and other things and events that I have experienced during my adult life.  Here are two tickets from my Navy days in the 1970s.  In 1974, I went to two ballgames in San Diego between the Padres and the Braves.  Hank Aaron had just broken Babe Ruth's career home run record.  The Atlanta roster also had two players, Dusty Baker and Davey Johnson, who have since had distinguished careers as managers.  Aaron had the most beautiful swing...smooth and supple, all wrists.  He didn't even seem to be swinging hard, but I remember the ball rocketing off his bat over the left fielders head for a double.  Hank was 40 then, and played about two of every three games.  The first game I attended, he was not going to play, and was pitching batting practice!  Can you imagine a superstar doing that today?  The Braves were managed at that time by a hall of famer, Eddie Mathews, and had a HOF pitcher, Phil Niekro.  The Padres also had a future member of the hall, Dave Winfield, who hit line drives and ran like the wind to stretch doubles into triples.

The second ticket was obtained on an old green double decker tram in Hong Kong, in either 1974 or '76.  The trams were a fine way to rumble around town and see the city streets at a leisurely pace.

Two tix from memorable shows.  The upper one was at Folsom Field in Boulder.  George Thorogood, Heart, and the Rolling Stones played.  All put on fine shows.  I especially appreciated the fact that all three groups were really good at the blues.  I was not in complete control during the concert.  Ironically, pot is now legal in Colorado.  It wasn't in 1981, but we had some REALLY strong brownies and I was flyin' through the show.  After the concert I was driving my two friends and myself back to Denver on the turnpike.  I was passing every car on the road and I looked at my speedometer, fearing that we were going too fast.   We were doing 50.  EVERY driver on the turnpike was stoned.

The bottom ticket was an Elton John concert at Red Rocks.  I knew Sir Elton was a fine musician, but I had no idea that he was an absolute, stone cold virtuoso on the piano.  He strolled out on the stage, dressed in what appeared to be a penguin suit, and for three hours blew me away, playing all this complex stuff on the piano...of his own composition...singing merrily as if it were the easiest thing in the world.  The only other concert I have seen that compared with Elton's gig was also at Red Rocks...Rush, 28 years later.

I attended two historic Monday night football games in Denver.  On the left is the notorious Bronco Blizzard, in mid October!  Being a night game, all lit up, the heavy, swirling snow gave me a feeling of being in one of those snow globes.  It snowed about an inch a quarter.  The Broncos beat the Packers 17-14 thanks to two early defensive touchdowns, after which the Packers gained tons of yards, playing like the weather was perfectly fine, while Elway and the Broncoids floundered about in the drifts.  We cheered the guys shoveling snow off the 5 yard line markers.  The wind picked up in the fourth quarter, I ran out of brandy, and it got REALLY cold.  I went to another Bronco game that year...in December.  It was sunny and 60 degrees.

The right hand ticket admitted me to the infamous (in San Francisco) snowball game.  My friend Cindy lived within walking distance of Mile High Stadium at the time, so we just strolled over to the game from her place.  It had snowed heavily a few days before.  The field had been cleared, but there was still snow in some of the stands.  This was the only time I saw Joe Montana play live, and he had a bad game, but at the end, with Denver leading by one or two points, he drove the Niners down to about the Bronco 10 yard line.  SF set up for a game winning field goal...there were only a few seconds left on the clock.  But a split second before the ball was snapped to the holder, Matt Cavanaugh, someone in the stands threw a snowball right between Cavanaugh's hands as he was preparing to receive the snapped football.  Matt flinched; the football arrived a split second later; he couldn't handle the pigskin; and the kick never happened. Broncoids win!!

This was the only time I have seen a ballgame at Fenway Park.  Somehow my friend Tom got us tix right behind the Sox dugout.  We took the T to the game.  This was the season after Buckner let the ball roll through his legs and Boston lost the World Series.  And now, in '87, the Red Sox were buried in the standings.  Morale was low.  We were close to the field and it was apparent that the players were not having fun.  At one point Mike Greenwell, a rookie who went on to have a good career, made an out.  Somebody very close to us yelled, "Send him back to Pawtucket!" (the Sox' triple A farm team).  Greenwell shot us a glare that...well, if looks could kill, we'd have been vaporized.   Jim Rice was winding down a distinguished career that would land him in the hall of fame.  But on this day, he kept making outs with men on base, and the fans, with short memories, were riding him mercilessly.  Bottom of the 9th...Sox down a run.  Nobody on.  Rice comes up and fouls off a bunch of pitches.  Then he jacks one over the Green Monster to tie the game.  Now the fans are cheering wildly!  And Rice runs around the bases, head down, never acknowledges the fans.  And I could just imagine him saying, "Take that, you motherfuckers!"  Sox won in ten innings.  Bruce Hurst pitched a complete game.  Nowadays a starter is almost always yanked after nine innings, regardless of how he's pitching or how many pitches he's thrown.

In the fall of 1991, Cal and Washington started their seasons 4-0.  Both schools were stoked.  I and my old dormmates Chuck and Kathy were living in the Bay Area at the time, so we got tickets through the UW Alumni Association and went to the game.  UW won...they would go on to win the national championship, at least in one poll.  We drove to the game on a beautiful, warm day through the East Bay hills in my new convertible.  Life was good.  The next day, not 24 hours later, a castastrophic firestorm swept through the hills right where we had traveled.  About 25 people died; over a thousand homes were burned.  A friend of mine was at the 49ers game that day.  He knew something bad was happening when ashes...with printing on them...started falling at Candlestick.

I was living in the Bay Area in the spring of 1994 when I made a visit to Denver.  My friends Cindy, Askale, and I went to a Rockies game at old Mile High Stadium.  The wind was howling straight in from center field at about 30 MPH.  The Dodgers' Raul Mondesi hit what appeared to be a routine fly ball to center.  The wind had other ideas and took the baseball for a ride.  It landed about 50 feet behind first base, and Mondesi, always hustling, had a triple.

19 years later Cindy, Askale, and I went to Italy, and toured the Vatican Museums.  Fabulous!  The Sistine Chapel is mindboggling.

This ticket looks a bit rumpled.  It got soaked and took a while to dry.   My friend Jeff Kopps and I went to the AT&T golf tournament.  The tourney had already had rain problems; the fourth and final round was supposed to be on Sunday, but weather had delayed things by a day.  We watched Tiger tee off for his third round that morning and started following him.  El Nino was in full force, and the rain began falling and the wind commenced to blowing.  By about Tiger's fifth hole, a gale was howling in off the ocean and the rain was roaring in horizontal sheets; umbrellas were being blown out en masse.  Everyone, including Tiger, looked like drowned rats.  We went over to a par 3 at Pebble,along the ocean, and watched Nicklaus and a couple other golfers tee off.  All three shots disappeared in the storm; I have no idea where they landed.  Right after that the round was scrubbed; it was not made up until the following August.

This game was delayed several weeks by Sept 11.  When it was finally played in October, it was the last game of the season.  My friend Ron Wagner and I saw Barry Bonds hit the last of his record 73 home runs.  The homer came on a 57 mph knuckleball by the Dodgers' pitcher, Dennis Springer.  Supplying all his own power, Bonds knocked it out of the deepest part of the park, right centerfield.  In hindsight it's not surprising that he was most likely using steroids. 

I forgot to rotate this picture, but it represents two items ticked off my bucket list, both in New York State.  On the right, a ticket to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006.  I had wanted to go for over 40 years, and it was just as fascinating as I imagined.  I spent all day there.  Among the countless uniforms, balls, gloves, photos, etc.  they even had Babe Ruth's bowling ball.

On the left, a ticket to a Yankees game in the new stadium in 2012.  Dave, Wendy, and I went and loved it.  The ballpark is beautiful; there's a Yankee museum there that has more of the Babe's stuff.  And the Nathans hot dogs are to die for!  Ya know what I'm sayin'?

And, the ticket accumulation continues.  Last night Suzanne and I went to the Sunset Center in Carmel and saw Dweezil Zappa and his band playing his dad Frank's songs.  The show mixed musical excellence with comedy and it was great!  Dweezil can SHRED!