The Sunday Memory Drawer - Met Tickets

Check out those goofy 1968 prices for Shea Stadium.   And, even better, a ticket that has two game numbers on it.   What's that, you ask?  A good, old fashioned holiday doubleheader.   What's a doubleheader, you ask?

If you are indeed asking, you are on the wrong freakin' blog.

As we conclude our holiday weekend, I am relishing a perfect one for this baseball fan.  The Mets and Dodgers, my two cherished teams, are playing each other at Chavez Ravine and it's another weekend of me clapping for my team with one hand.  I go to the park here as I will for Met-Dodger contests at Citi Field later this month.  Wearing a Met t-shirt and a Dodger jersey.  Or vice versa.  Trust me, the wardrobe choice gets weird looks.

Of course, baseball tickets like my season seats at Dodger Stadium don't look anything like the ones shown above.  Indeed, nowadays, you access your tickets via e-mail and print them just like e-mail.  As long as there is a bar code, you can get into a park.  Even if you printed the damn thing on toilet tissue.

But, back in the day, tickets looked like...well...tickets.  Small and compact.   With your seat number and the price...gasp...of $3.50.   Back when I was a fledgling Saturday plan holder at Shea Stadium, my Loge Section 7 Row E Seats 1 and 2 tickets looked just like this but they were tan.   That clever Met management color-coded the tickets in the same way stadium levels were tinted.  

So, when I was a Saturday plan designee, these suckers were easy to come by. But there were a few earlier years in my new life as a Met fan where tickets had to be purchased just like anybody else.  And you loved to have them in the house because you knew you were going to a baseball game.

I've written before about the very first Met game I went on July 24 and that anniversary is coming up soon.  The seats we had that night were the season tickets of a Rambler (Official Car of the Mets) employee, who happened to be the wife of the guy my father carpooled to work with.  I never kept the stubs to that game.  

But there would be others.

In those much safer times, I started to go to games on my own.   My best friend from childhood Leo and I work out a cool system when we were just twelve years old.  He was a Yankee fan.  I was a Met fan.   We alternated going to each other's stadium.   

The Yankee Stadium ride via subway was easy.  About an hour, depending upon how long you had to wait when you changed trains at 149th Street-Grand Concourse.   The sojourn to Shea was much longer.  Deep into the bowels of Manhattan.  Change at Times Square for the blue 7 Train.  90 minutes door-to-door.

Yes, these were safer times.   No need to report our parents to Social Services.

So we would save up allowances to buy our tickets.  And, if we wanted to do this in advance, this would involve another subway deployment.  Once or twice, I rode out to Shea Stadium...still 90 minutes from Mount Vernon, New York...to their advance ticket window.  But there were closer options.

Back when, the Mets had a deal with Howard Clothes, which specialized in mens' business suits...yes, business suits.  There was an outlet on Fordham Road.  So, when there was ticket buying to be done, that's where I would head.  Take the bus at 241st Street in the Bronx and get off on Fordham Road.  Walk up the hill and then sift your way through a haberdashery that you would never ever shop in.  

I didn't care.  I needed Met tickets.

Of course, if you were short on allowance...or having dollars curtailed due to some punishment you had earned...there was another way to get those damn tickets.

You had to drink a lot of milk.

Ah, those familiar containers.   The Mets had a promotion.  They would print coupons on the sides of the milk cartons.  The coupons listed a variety of game dates on which you could take twenty...count 'em, 20...coupons and redeem them for a general admission ticket. 

We did that once or twice.   And we had better bone structure as an added bonus.

H-O Oatmeal offered a similar deal.  For Yankee games, you cut out the panel on the cardboard container and you sent it for two free tickets.   For some reason, my father opted to go to this game.   

And almost turned around to go home when we found out where the actual seats were.   Cloud 11 hovering over first base.  

"What are they kidding?"

Um, Dad, what did you expect for two oatmeal box coupons?

"Don't eat that stuff again."

Er, okay.

When you have partial plan seats or season tickets, the whole ticket purchasing quandry goes away.  And there are days when I miss it.  But, heck, I miss the actual tickets that used to slip conveniently in your wallet.

When my Saturday plan tickets officially died on the next-to-last day of Shea Stadium in 2008, I took special care to keep the tickets.  And, yes, they still looked like tickets.   I had them blown up and now they hang in my bedroom.   

Too big to slip into my pocket.   But forever nestled in my heart.

Dinner last night:  Grilled bratwurst at the Hollywood Bowl.