It was almost like the fates had conspired to send us to that particular game. We had just started the 10th Man Plan that year, a mini-season ticket plan, 10 game per year package. With that, we get rights to purchase tickets to 1 playoff game per year, should the Sox make the playoffs. We don’t get to pick which game, though.
As luck would have it, we drew ALDS game 4. That game never got played, though, since the Red Sox swept the Angels. So, we were re-assigned ALCS game 5. Game 3 got bumped from Oct 15th to Oct 16th due to rain, though, and everyone’s tickets for the 15th were reassigned to the 18th, while those for games 4 and 5, on the 16th and 17th, kept their scheduled dates and became tickets for games 3 and 4.
I was in pretty lousy spirits driving up, my dad half-jokingly said “come on, we could be celebrating a world series victory in a couple weeks, anything can happen.” I laughed at the time…
If pro-wrestling counts, I was at the 1998 King of the Ring which featured the Hell in the Cell match with the Undertaker and Mankind. Many consider it one of the best wrestling matches of all time and I must say it’s easily one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen, and really messed with my sense of whether or not wrestling was “fake” at the time. Link You can’t really fake getting thrown 16 feet into a table, 16 feet through a cage with a chair hitting you on the head, and being slammed into thumb tacks as well. Ridiculous stuff.
Vic Power was indeed great and I loved him as a player, but I picked George Strickland in 1954 when I was 5 and the Indians won 111 games only to get swept in the series. My sister’ favorite player was Al Rosen and possibly I picked Strickland because he played next to Rosen – but in any case Power wasn’t on the team then and I loyally stuck to Strickland through the years.
