Talking Sports - Old ticket stubs: Links to my past

There are certain dates when everybody could tell you where they were. If you were alive on Sept. 11, 2001, you could remember what you were doing and where you heard the dreadful news of that day. Same with the hour Kennedy was shot or the morning Pearl Harbor was attacked.

There are probably other days you might remember what you were doing if they had some particular meaning to you personally. Your wedding day or the birth of your children. My parents told me I was born during a blizzard 15 minutes after my mother’s arrival at the hospital. I don’t remember that day, but they did.

Then there are other days you just might remember if you were given some kind of a prompt. For me, I have hundreds of such prompts in a shoe box buried deep in the back of a closet. But as I wade through that box of dates, places and times – indicating with absolute certainty where I was at a given time – I still have no recollection of many of those dates.

I’ve been saving ticket stubs since I was a kid. With the exception of movie stubs, I’ve probably saved the ticket stub of every event I’ve been to since I was 13 years old. Though I’m still mad that the ticket taker at a Chuck Berry concert confiscated the whole ticket. But I still have the oldest ticket. My dad took me to a Mets vs. Phillies game at Shea Stadium.

The Mets won 4-3 in 12 innings, but we heard the final run play out on the radio. It was a mid-week game and my father had to get up early the next day. For 40 years, he commuted from our home on Long Island into the city. He convinced me to leave after the 10th inning.

Most of the tickets in that box are small. Some are huge. I don’t know why they would waste so much money printing large tickets when a small one would suffice. Woodstock ‘94 had a big ticket that is still intact because they didn’t rip any portion of it upon entering the grounds.

On the front of the ticket they played on the original concert from 1969. “2 More Days of Peace and Music,” it read. They added an extra day just like the original for a three-day event. But also like the first Woodstock, it poured rain and before long we were all covered in mud.

“Hey, if you think real hard maybe we can stop this rain! No rain, no rain, no rain...” It didn’t work.

PGA tournament tickets are all large. The Bay Hill Invitational from March 18, 2000, is big and yellow. It’s Arnold Palmer’s tournament. Maybe he likes yellow. The LPGA likes to go big too. I went to the ADT Championships Nov. 19, 2008. That ticket was not only large, but had a hologram on the front with three LPGA stars of the day on the face. My particular ticket has Annika Sorenstam’s autograph scrawled over her face. As I recall that was the last professional tournament she played in the United States.

But for one occasion, I never witnessed any significant sports history in the making. I’ve never seen a no-hitter or a four home-run game or a World Series game. But I was at Shea Stadium in 1978 when Pete Rose broke Tommy Helms modern National League hitting streak at 37 games. As I recall, it was a single in his second at-bat. He went on to tie “Wee” Willie Keeler’s all-time national league mark at 44 games.

Shea Stadium and Madison Square Garden are my most visited venues. I was a big Mets and Rangers fan growing up. I’ve probably been to only about a dozen NFL games and just a few NBA games. I was always much more into hockey than basketball as a kid. As for the NFL, I agree with many that the game is best viewed on television. The Sidney Red Raiders, on the other hand, are best viewed from the 50-yard line at Weymouth Field.

Though whenever there was an NBA player that caught my attention, I would start watching a lot of NBA. “Doctor J” Julius Erving when he played for the Nets and Bernard King and Patrick Ewing of the Knicks drew me in. So, too, did Larry Bird.

I wanted to see Bird play just once. In college, I went to a Celtics-Bulls game at Boston Garden. But Bird was on the bench in street clothes. Some big dude name Dave Corzine dominated the game and the Bulls won. The next time I saw the Celtics play was at the American Airlines Arena in Miami – long after Bird had retired.

The box of stubs reminds me of all the stadiums and arena’s I’ve been to that no longer exist. Shea is now turned to dust and I haven’t been to its replacement, Citi Field. Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh is gone. So too is Memorial Stadium in Baltimore, the Astrodome, Comisky Park, the Boston Garden, the Hollywood (Fla.) Sportatorium, Bush Stadium, the Metrodome, Fulton County Stadium, Olympic Stadium, Veterans Stadium, Yankee Stadium, the Orange Bowl ...

You may remember some of those places. But for Bush Stadium and perhaps Wrigley Field, most venues I’ve been to had unique non-corporate names one could easily remember. I have no idea who plays where anymore.

I can’t recall how many times the home of the Miami Dolphins’ stadium has changed its name. A lot of people down there still call it “The Stadium Formerly Known as Joe Robbie” – a play on the building’s original name.

OK. So time marches on. What else is new.

There are a lot of concert stubs in that box too. The Who, the Rolling Stones, Billy Idol, the Clash, Pink Floyd, the Kinks, Boston, the Grateful Dead, David Bowie and a bunch of others I probably couldn’t even remember the next day.

But, I still have the stubs to remind me.