I’m having Pete Axthelm experiences regarding sporting tickets. Allow me to explain.
Axthelm is the late, great sportswriter turned TV sports commentator and betting expert, who coined one of the most memorable descriptions of unattractive sporting events. He dubbed such contests as “smashed windshield games.”
Explained Axthelm, you could place two tickets to such games on the dashboard of your car, walk away, and when you came back, someone would have smashed the windshield and left two more tickets!
Already I’ve told you of the Johnstown Mill Rats phenomenon, in which free tickets fall from the skies like ducat manna. I’ve been to exactly two Mill Rats games during their tenure in town, which I fear is on life support.
Both times there were fireworks as an attraction. I noted following the first that my family seemed to be in the distinct minority that actually had paid for their tickets. More recently, I got in on a freebie from a friend.
He painted a memorable scene, standing in front of Point Stadium ticket windows trying to share his stash of free tickets.
If you are an area baseball fan, you know this is AAABA week, a festival of amateur baseball played for eight decades, mostly here.
As a youth this was a bittersweet moment, tending to come later in August back then. The baseball tournament was a reminder the summer was ending and a new school year was approaching.
Regardless, the games were savored and we dreamed someday that Johnstown would compete for titles, which has come to pass, admittedly as the overall quality of the tournament has diminished.
Opening night, with the Johnstown hosting at Point Stadium, always was a huge deal, with massive turnout. There were times they’d stop the game, in the middle of the seventh inning as I recall, to chance off a giveaway car. Your ticket also was a chance to the win the car.
Tickets always tended to be reasonably priced, and still are, at $5 each. The car giveaway long ago went the way of the dodo bird. My tickets this year refer to three $500 cash prizes. No car, but still worth winning.
The push this year is to have fans use their cell phones to bring with them to confirm purchase of a ticket for admission. I’ve seen worker and would-be fan trying to perform this cell mind meld at the most recent Mill Rats game (inexplicably he had actually purchased a ticket?) and it was not pleasant.
Looking to avoid this, I decided to buy physical tickets Sunday. I called Randy’s Bi-Lo because they have sold tickets in the past, and was told that if I came down there were two AAABA Ambassadors sitting outside at a table, selling tickets at half-price.
I drove down and bought five at $2.50 a pop, which is quite the deal.
I was able to bask in the glow of my bargain for less than 24 hours, which is the time it took for the wife to show up with four more free tickets, presumably given to someone, who passed them on to my wife.
I guess I’ll be the one standing around offering free tickets tonight.
But, it occurs to me the Axthelm reference is unkind, particularly in regard to the AAABA Tournament.
Instead of these being smashed windshield tickets, I shall christen these freebies as tribbles, the furry creatures from the Star Trek episode in which their prolific reproductive ways caused them to multiply quicker than rabbits and eat the grain shipment the Enterprise was carrying.
I suspect that if I leave two (tickets, not tribbles) on the dashboard of my car, I will come back and find no smashed windshield, but still two additional tickets.
I wonder if this trick works for bars of silver?
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