A Kid's First Tickets

Mark “Gaslight” Granieri

My first game was at “The House That Ruth Built” or “Rebuilt” as it was the first year the Yankees were back at the Stadium, having spent the last two years at Shea Stadium. It was Sunday, July 11, 1976, the last game before the All-Star Break and Jacket Day. The giveaway jacket was mostly thin plastic and didn’t last too long, but I was happy to get one and wear it out. I remember Ed Figueroa was the starting pitcher and the Yankees won, but I had to look up other facts like the score being 5-0 and Oscar Gamble hitting a two-run homer. But my best memories are going with my family (parents, sister), ordering/waiting for the tickets to arrive, the drive into New York City and being taken aback by the size of the Stadium with its endless green grass and blue seats. 

For the story to Oscar Gamble's airbrushed baseball card and required haircut - click on   Oscar Gamble's Haircut

Back then, I would get a Yankee Yearbook at the local drugstore and read it again and again. It was a big moment getting the green light to pick out a game to go see the Yankees in person. At the time, I was playing Little League on the White Sox sponsored by Ted’s Appliances, so picking the White Sox as an opponent seemed like the logical choice. 

1976 Piscataway Little League player photo (Gaslight still bats with his eyes closed for the Flemington Neshanock)

It is amusing now to see how tickets were obtained and their cost. Only $22.00 for a family of four for the best seats, but don’t forget the 25 cents to cover postage and handling (see scribbled notes in photo). 

A check was put into the mail, since a Ticketron or remote ticket office like Grand Central Station wasn't nearby. The wait was rewarded when the Postman delivered an envelope containing 4 bright yellow tickets. The big day came with a car ride over the George Washington Bridge, looking for parking among a crowd of 53,629 and getting one of those big pretzels out of a shopping cart outside the stadium from an “unofficial” vendor. There were other games with my family with bright red or purple tickets ordered through the mail, but the excitement of waiting for those first tickets and then sitting in the Stadium for the first time was pure joy.

Epilogue: 1976 was not only special for that first game, but also because of the postseason. At that time, the intro of ABC’s Wide World of Sports touted “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat”. The “thrill” was the home run by Chris Chambliss to win the pennant and the “agony” was realizing the Yankees were no match for the Big Red Machine in the World Series. To compound the “agony”, my family planned an outing to Great Adventure during the 1st game of the World Series. So instead of watching the game on TV, I had an RCA transistor radio glued to the side of my head for the day. I had to be the only kid in the amusement park without a smile.