Back in the early 80`s I was a regular at Baltimore`s Memorial Stadium, we`d take the bus down after delivering newspaper`s , we`d try and sneak in if we could I had an usher who would let us slide through the gate....Other times we`d get their so early we could walk right in...I actually walked right in at the 83 World Series, getting there so early it was easy back then...Old Memorial had alot of nooks and crannies , it was usually easy to sneak in and save the 3 dollars....I must have went to 50-60 home games in `83 it was truly a magical season, back then the Orioles took a back seat to no team, and it was the place to be if you lived in Maryland. It seemed like something magic happened every other night that year........One night the Orioles were playing the Yankees.The Orioles owned the Yankees back then, and as usual
when the O`s and Yanks got together the park was near capacity, close to 50,000 were on hand. It was about the 4th inning when it started to rain, I remember the Yankees were up like 5-3, we sat in a delay for I guess about an hour and a half .... Back then if it rained it wasn`t as easy to get the field back in shape, so even though it wasn`t raining hard it was a steady soaking rain, my friend and I started wondering about a rain out, we made sure we still had our tickets, I checked my pocket and I had lost my ticket, I never cared much for the ticket I had because we always tried moving to better seats, no easy task at this particular game. I remember we were way upstairs behing homeplate about 10 rows from the top. Now what am I gonna do? It looked like the game wasn`t going to restart, I lost my ticket and I wouldn`t have the rain check.....Its a big deal to a kid, plus it was O`s Yanks! Finally it occured to me, I`ll just try and find one on the ground! Surely somebody else must have just dropped their ticket! Most people were waiting underneath the upperdeck, waiting to see if the game was going to be restarted.So I told my friend "the GOOZER",(god rest his soul) I`m gonna look for a ticket on the ground. So he said he would wait at where we were sitting, it took me like a minute, if that... to find a rain check. On my way back it occured to me, (even back then I was always trying to figure out "different" ways to make a buck), and a buck was alot back then,lol. It was looking more and more like the game was going to be called, I got back and told my friend Goozer "why don`t we walk around and try to find a couple extra rain checks? "If the game gets canceled, we can make a few bucks!" so he went one way I went the other, we scoured the whole upper deck.Much to both of our surprise we both were finding rain checks everywhere! We couldn`t believe it, we started frantically searching the whole stadium, if this game was called we were rich! Well, rich for two poor paperboy`s from Baltimore county,lol....After about an hour of scarfing up every rain check we could, we both sat down and counted them, we agreed we`d share 50/50.We ended up with 140 rain checks! Back then the average ticket was like 6-7 dollars, we had a total of 810.00 dollars in rainchecks! Now all we needed was for this game to be cancled! After about another half hour Rex Barney came on the public address system.... "attention please, tonight`s Oriole`s Yankee`s game has been,CANCELED! Me and the Goozer were high fivin, people couldn`t understand why we were so happy? A few weeks later we cashed in our rainchecks,we exchanged them for the best box seats we could get.We`d get down the park early so we could sell all our tickets, we did this for a couple games til we traded in all our rainchecks We were loaded with money!.....For a couple poor boys it made for a profitable summer, those were the days!!!! ............to the Goozer, your still thought of all these years later! /infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif the Goozer was my best friend, he was killed in a car accident about 3 years later.....his name was Glenn Guseman, I still miss him....
[This message was edited by journeyman821 on 08-23-02 at 12:13 PM.]
when the O`s and Yanks got together the park was near capacity, close to 50,000 were on hand. It was about the 4th inning when it started to rain, I remember the Yankees were up like 5-3, we sat in a delay for I guess about an hour and a half .... Back then if it rained it wasn`t as easy to get the field back in shape, so even though it wasn`t raining hard it was a steady soaking rain, my friend and I started wondering about a rain out, we made sure we still had our tickets, I checked my pocket and I had lost my ticket, I never cared much for the ticket I had because we always tried moving to better seats, no easy task at this particular game. I remember we were way upstairs behing homeplate about 10 rows from the top. Now what am I gonna do? It looked like the game wasn`t going to restart, I lost my ticket and I wouldn`t have the rain check.....Its a big deal to a kid, plus it was O`s Yanks! Finally it occured to me, I`ll just try and find one on the ground! Surely somebody else must have just dropped their ticket! Most people were waiting underneath the upperdeck, waiting to see if the game was going to be restarted.So I told my friend "the GOOZER",(god rest his soul) I`m gonna look for a ticket on the ground. So he said he would wait at where we were sitting, it took me like a minute, if that... to find a rain check. On my way back it occured to me, (even back then I was always trying to figure out "different" ways to make a buck), and a buck was alot back then,lol. It was looking more and more like the game was going to be called, I got back and told my friend Goozer "why don`t we walk around and try to find a couple extra rain checks? "If the game gets canceled, we can make a few bucks!" so he went one way I went the other, we scoured the whole upper deck.Much to both of our surprise we both were finding rain checks everywhere! We couldn`t believe it, we started frantically searching the whole stadium, if this game was called we were rich! Well, rich for two poor paperboy`s from Baltimore county,lol....After about an hour of scarfing up every rain check we could, we both sat down and counted them, we agreed we`d share 50/50.We ended up with 140 rain checks! Back then the average ticket was like 6-7 dollars, we had a total of 810.00 dollars in rainchecks! Now all we needed was for this game to be cancled! After about another half hour Rex Barney came on the public address system.... "attention please, tonight`s Oriole`s Yankee`s game has been,CANCELED! Me and the Goozer were high fivin, people couldn`t understand why we were so happy? A few weeks later we cashed in our rainchecks,we exchanged them for the best box seats we could get.We`d get down the park early so we could sell all our tickets, we did this for a couple games til we traded in all our rainchecks We were loaded with money!.....For a couple poor boys it made for a profitable summer, those were the days!!!! ............to the Goozer, your still thought of all these years later! /infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif the Goozer was my best friend, he was killed in a car accident about 3 years later.....his name was Glenn Guseman, I still miss him....
[This message was edited by journeyman821 on 08-23-02 at 12:13 PM.]
