Happy Birthday Raymond!

Some people collect stamps. Others coins. Some collect PEZ dispensers, nutcrackers, or commemorative dishes with NASCAR drivers printed on them. Me? I collect ticket stubs. Carefully hidden in the back of my closet and piled up in a handcrafted wooden box are dozens upon dozens of ticket stubs, press passes and parking receipts to every live sporting event I ever attended.

My oldest stub? Game 3 of the 1981 World Series. Dodgers-Yankees. The debut year of Fernandomania. Valenzuela pitched that day, won it and lit a 4-game winning streak, earning L.A. its first championship in 16 years. (To be honest-It was my parents who attended the game. I was only one year old and was being babysat back in Eagle Rock).

There are only two ticket stubs that are missing.

1. 2005- Spurs-Knicks at Madison Square Garden in New York City. It’s the only time I’ve ever been to the Garden but I dropped the stub on the subway while riding back to Chinatown to catch a bus to Boston. It kills me that I have no physical evidence of my only visit to MSG.
2. 1991- Raiders-Chiefs at the L.A. Coliseum. My only professional football game (although I’ve since seen the Pats play in a pre-season matchup in Gillette). This stub has inexplicably disappeared and it kills me double because I read that emotional article/biography of Todd Marinovich that you sent me and I realized his NFL debut may have been the very Sunday I went to see the Silver and Black battle K.C. I have no idea where that stub has gone and I’m so mad I could skin my elbows with a pear knife! The stub was so dope! A silver rectangle with the unmistakable bold black Raider shield printed on it. Ugh!

But moving on…

While rummaging through the old wooden box, frantically digging for the Raider ticket, I stopped with every stub, reminiscing on each event. Each stadium. Each seat. Each game. And so many of those ticket stubs, so many of those memories were made in seats alongside my good friend Raymond.

Here’s a “short” list of my personal favorites. Games with Ray. Happy 29, brother! Enjoy!

1997

Sunday, April 6: Stockton Ports at Lancaster JetHawks (Single-A). Ray’s family had season tickets to the local minor league ballclub. Ray and I often went to The Hangar (as the ballpark was affectionately known) to take in a ballgame. Always sat within lunging distance of the home team’s dugout. I don’t remember one thing that happened at The Hanger that day, but I do remember the drive home.

We got into an accident.

I had been driving only 4 months. Had my own wheels, a 1979 El Camino which I bought in South Central LA from a dude who may or may not have stolen it. Ray suggested we take a shortcut home. I attempted to cross a two lane highway, looked both ways, failed to notice the blind spot, crept into the middle of the avenue, and….WHAM!...was T-boned by a van driven by the wife of a cop with 6 little girls on their way to church. Here’s the kicker—after making sure everyone was alright she admitted to barreling into me without breaking because she feared that the little girls (who were not wearing seat belts) would go flying. Gee. Thanks lady. To this day, neither of us tells the other how to get anywhere in a car.

1998

Tuesday, June 16: Single-A California League All-Star Game at The Hangar. Freeway Division vs. Valley Division. Can’t recall what happened but it earns mention for the fact that it is the only all-star game in any sport I’ve ever attended. And, unless I’m wrong, the only one for the birthday boy too.

1999

Sunday, July 29: Seattle Mariners at Kansas City Royals. Most people go to Cancun the summer after their senior year in High School. Or Hawaii. Or Europe. Or at least Ft. Lauderdale. Ray and I went to Missouri. And most people in Kansas City go to night games in the summer because of the oppressive heat and humidity. We went to a get-away-day-game on a Sunday afternoon. Temperature at first pitch? “Feels like 109.” But we couldn’t pass up on the opportunity to sit four rows from home plate, get food and drink brought to us by wait staff and actually hold a ticket with “$100”printed next to “Price.” A-Rod homered. Griffey doubled. And we lost 37 pounds in sweat between us.

Monday, August 16: Florida Marlins at Los Angeles Dodgers. Last game before moving off to college. We sat beyond the outfield fence with the rest of the riff-raff, before the days when they stopped serving beer in the bleachers. Some wonderful heckles came from fans in those seats, but none topped this night when Florida’s poor left-fielder suffered 9 innings of verbal assault. His name? Todd Dunwoody. The best heckle of the night (that can be restated In mixed company)? “Hey! Where’s Buzz Lightyear, DunWOODY?!?!”

2000

Friday, April 14: Cincinnati Reds at Los Angeles Dodgers: First year in college. Campus is an 11-minute drive to Dodger Stadium. Opening Day at Chavez Ravine. First time ever at Opening Day. My dad was giddy. He grew up thinking only rich people go to Opening Day and there we were, with a row of friends and family in the outer reserve taking in all the pageantry of the first day of baseball. What was even more magical on this particular opening? Mine and Ray’s boyhood hero, the CY Young Award Winning, Playoff Hero, Reason for the only Dodger title in our “conscious” lifetime, Orel Hershiser was back in blue and starting on this particular Friday afternoon. The crowd was electric. It was a blast from our past. Old #55 back on the bump. His fastball had lost some zip and he didn’t have the stamina to go late into the game, but he gave us 6 innings of 6 hits and 1 run, kept the Reds at bay long enough for us to put up an 8-spot and earned the victory. Sadly, it would be his last. He was later demoted to the bullpen, suffered one too many shellackings and retired midway through the season. But Ray and I were there for one last day of glory.

Thursday, April 20: I take back what I said about the Raiders-Chiefs game being my only professional football game. Add to the list the Arena Football League matchup between the Los Angeles Avengers and the Carolina Cobras at downtown’s Staples Center. Ray always had a knack for scoring tickets to second rate football leagues (he once held season tickets to the XFL’s LA Extreme). The Avenger quarterback at the game we attended? None other than Todd Marinovich.

Sunday, August 6: Milwaukee Brewers at Los Angeles Dodgers. Dodger fans have awful reputations. Fickle, stuck in traffic, and distracted by the glitz and glam of Tinseltown, L.A. fans are notorious for showing up to the ballpark late and leaving early, no matter what the score. Ray and I have attended more Dodger games than Eric Gagne has syringes. And we’ve NEVER left early. Well…almost never. On this day in baseball, we watched the lowly Brewers jump out to a 7-0 lead after only 2 innings. Rather than stick around to witness the blood bath, we left before the second wave of fans even showed up. I don’t know about my partner in crime but I’ll always regret it.

2001

Saturday, May 12: Atlanta Braves at Los Angeles Dodgers. In a past life, Ray pushed buttons for Fox Sports AM 1150, the #1 sports radio station in the Southland at the turn of the millennium. All the graveyard shifts never amounted to a career in talk radio but it did get us into Church with official press passes one Saturday night. We were on the field during batting practice, were within lunging distance of Dodger legend Don Newcombe, ate free Dodger Dogs in a luxury suite, witnessed a 0-0 tie come to a thrilling hault in the bottom of the 9th when Gary Sheffield ended the game with a walk-off solo homerun, watched the live taping of the post-game radio show from the Stadium Club and got into a brawl with a drunken Stu Nahan. Okay, so I made that last part up, except that Stu Nahan was probably drunk.

Saturday, July 7: Seattle Mariners at Los Angeles Dodgers. Raymond is a rule follower. Always has been. So when you attempt to persuade him to move from the seats to which you are, you are wasting your breath. Seattle was in town for an interleague game and my brother Tim, Ray and myself piled into my Monte Carlo and drove down to Church to see Ichiro in action on a hot, muggy Saturday afternoon in L.A. We all fried in the sun for 2 innings before Tim and I decided to move three rows back into the shade and get some relief from the merciless heat. Not Raymond. He sat alone in his seat, wearing jeans, a polo and ballcap. Not budging. Not once. My brother spent the next 7 innings debating how long it would take for Ray to pass out.

Friday-Saturday, July 20-21: Arizona Diamondbacks at San Francisco Giants. The first of a handful of road trips north, the game Friday night was marked by the 40 degree drop in temperature from the region that surrounds The 5 to city by the bay. With the wind whipping off the water and the fog rolling in, Ray was forced to purchase a…*gulp… San Francisco Giants sweatshirt to keep warm. For you Red Sox fans, it would be like being strip searched at JFK Airport and not being allowed to have your clothes back, forcing you to buy an “I Heart NY” t-shirt. The next day, Curt Schilling took a no-hitter into the 7th but I jinxed it by calling attention to the no-no and he promptly gave up a single. Sorry Ray. My bad.

2002

Tuesday, April 2: San Francisco Giants at Los Angeles Dodgers. Second Opening Day in 3 seasons. The parking lot is so overwhelmed with vehicles, we’re directed to park on top of the hill behind the THINK BLUE sign. Barry Bonds crushes two homeruns, narrowly misses a third by a couple of inches foul and the Giants embarrass us 9-2.

Saturday, June 29: Los Angeles Dodgers at Anaheim Angels. Walking down the stairwell, going to meet Ray downstairs, I glance down at our tickets and realize they are for the game that took place the night before. I bought the wrong tickets. If it were just the two of us, we would have just scrapped the whole trip but we were meeting a former high school teacher of ours and his wife down in the O.C. and we had to come through. Things go bad to worse when we discover the game is sold out and we’re forced to empty out our savings, take cash advances on credit cards and pony up for scalped tickets across the street from the ballpark. Wheeling and dealing at a nearby gas station with a shady looking character, we handed over all the cash we’ve ever had (and didn’t really have) in exchange for 4 tickets that weren’t even next to each other. To top it off. The rival Angels blank our boys 7-zip. Ray would spend the next 37 sporting events asking me if I have the right tickets with the right date and each time I would feel the embarrassment like a punch to the larynx.

Friday-Sunday, July 26-28: Los Angeles Dodgers at San Francisco Giants: Best. Roadtrip. Ever. Ray, his brother Ryan, me, my brother Tim. 3 days, 3 games, 3 nights in a Union Square hotel. The trip is highlighted by a game one thumping by the visitors. At one point, the Dodgers are up 9-2 in the 3rd. Tim and I are on our feet and taunting those cappuccino drinkin’, iPhone usin’, knit cap clad excuses for baseball fans. Knowing that to draw attention to the field would be useless at this point, the Giant fans dig deep for a comeback and are only able to muster their unsavory feelings for Angelenos and their ability to drain all of Northern California (and the entire west for that matter) of its natural resources. “Just keep your fuckin’ hands off our water!” one Giant fan would turn around and spat. Best retort to taunting…EVER. (Sidenote: Adrian Beltre would go 7 for 9 in the first two games with 5 ribbies). (Second Sidenote: Back at the hotel, Tim munches on some Cheez-Its. He drops a couple. Ray sternly draws attention to the stray crackers, warns that they could get crushed into the carpet, and orders Tim to pick them up. Without skipping a beat, Tim overturns the open box and lets ALL. OF. THE CHEEZ-ITs spill to the ground. Ray’s eyebrows curl and he forces a sneer but you know he wants to laugh.)

Sunday, October 13: Minnesota Twins at Anaheim Angels. Raymond commits adultery with the ballclub to the south. He bangs thundersticks, dons a red Angels cap and cheers on King Fish as he takes a victory lap around the field, celebrating the clinching game of the ALCS and the Angels first trip to the World Series. I look on in shame.

2003

Sunday, April 5: Los Angeles Dodgers at San Diego Padres. I don’t remember one thing that happened all game at Qualcomm Stadium that day. And I’d bet a ticket to Petco Park that Ray doesn’t either. But I do remember gassing up in the Diego and hitting OVER $40 for the first time in my Monte Carlo’s history. Wish I had saved the receipt with that ticket stub.

Sunday, July 20: St. Louis Cardinals at Los Angeles Dodgers. 44-year-old Rickey Henderson makes what proves to be his last stop on his illustrious Hall of Fame career. All Ray and I want is to see Rickey lead off the game with a homer (a record of which he holds). Bottom of the 1st. Woody Williams on the mound. Henderson settles in the batter’s box. He swings at the first pitch. Gone! Homerun! It’s the only time we’ve ever felt justified if we decided to leave early. We stuck around to watch Rickey go 2 for 5. It would be the last homerun of his career. (Sidenote: Jeromy Burnitz TWICE, Beltre, Ross, Pujols, Rolen, Eduardo Perez, and even Cards pitcher Woody Williams would all go deep too. The following year. Steroid testing would be mandatory).

2004

Sunday, July 18: Los Angeles Dodgers at Arizona Diamondbacks. 5 dudes. 5 seats in the car. 12 hours of driving. 3 hours of baseball. 2 States. 1 Day. My brother Tim harassing Ray with lewd texts. Jayson Werth rocketing triples off the center field wall, hitting the ball harder than I’ve ever seen anyone live. My dad bearing down for the trip back knowing he has to work a 12-hour shift the next day. Ray racing down The 10 like he was Tony Stewart at Daytona. We sure go to outrageou lengths to see baseball games.

2007

Sunday, June 17: Orange County Angels of Disneyland at Los Angeles Dodgers. Part One of Ray’s Bachelor Party (Part Two involves parachutes and airplanes). Chamberlins and McCormicks band together for seats in the “All You Can Eat” Pavilion, a stroke of genius by the Dodger brass. To liven it up a little, we all come equipped with a couple of dozen $1 bills, passing the hat and adding a dollar with each batter, hoping to be the one holding the hat when a batter went yard. The only jack? 8th Inning, 1 out, Angels outfielder Gary Matthews, Jr. hits a rope to right field, what feels like inches from our seats. James Loney (a first basemen who is inexplicably playing right field) leaps headfirst into the wall and is knocked out cold. The ball goes loose, the center fielder doesn’t get it in time and Matthews circles the bases for an inside the park homerun. Who’s holding the hat? I am. $63 richer. The jury is still out on whether this was a good sign for Ray’s marriage.

2009

Wednesday, May 20: New York Mets at Los Angeles Dodgers. Second bachelor party in three seasons. This time it’s Tim. The Dollar-Homer Game is played again. Only this time, no one goes yard. The pot is turned over to the bride to be and Ray dons a fez and introduces the groom to what will forever be known as “the green death.”

Sunday, June 14: Syracuse Chiefs at Pawtucket Red Sox (affectionately known in New England as the “Paw Sox.”) Cooperstown Classic II at Doubleday Field in Cooperstown, NY. We take a break from the National Baseball Hall of Fame to take in a few innings at the adjacent ballpark. No disrespect to Dodger Dogs but Doubleday Dogs prove to be Best. Hot Dogs. Ever. Ray and I gorge on 3 apiece. Ray’s brother Ryan shows restraint. Only consumes 2.

Tuesday-Wednesday, June 16-17: Florida Marlins at Boston Red Sox followed by Washington Nationals at New York Yankees. Fenway Park and the New Yankee Stadium. Highlights include David Ortiz going deep (and Ray feeling a little dirty about cheering after Ortiz’s name surfaces a month later as a player who tested positive for PED’s in 2003), Tim Wakefield’s knuckler, C.C. Sabbathia taking batting practice, and Ray approaching an usher in the Bronx who is holding a sign reading “How can I help you?” then pointing at me and asking, “How can I dispose of a Red Sox fan?”

Here’s to many more birthdays, many more baseball seasons, many more live sporting events together and many more ticket stubs!

Happy Birthday Raymond!