Ferkovich: My first game, Tiger Stadium 1977
From SABR member Scott Ferkovich at The National Pastime Museum on September 29, 2014:
Like many people, I attended my first Major League Baseball game when I was a kid. It was on August 14, 1977. I would be starting the fourth grade in less than a month.
I first became a baseball fan that summer. Our family had recently moved from Detroit to one of its suburbs, and a couple of my new neighborhood friends were into baseball cards. They got me hooked on the hobby as well, and this coincided with my starting to follow the Tigers.
I remember the tickets themselves. My dad showed up from work one day and surprised me with them. No purchasing tickets online back then, of course. No printing them out at home. I never asked him, but I’ll assume my dad headed down to the ballpark on his lunch break or something and purchased them at the box office (he worked only a short drive from the corner of Michigan and Trumbull avenues). The two rectangular tickets were thin cardboard, an odd peach color, with bold black printing: “DETROIT TIGERS,” and below that, in smaller letters, “TIGER STADIUM.” There was a line of perforation on one end, to make it easier to tear off the rain check. They were lower-deck reserved seats, four dollars each. The usual disclaimers were printed over the head of a snarling tiger. It was a classy-looking ticket, a collectible in itself.
Read the full article here: http://www.thenationalpastimemuseum.com/article/my-first-game-tiger-stadium-1977
Originally published: September 30, 2014. Last Updated: September 30, 2014.