It is no secret I'm a big Cincinnati Reds fan. My Indiana friends and family knew it as just a core part of who I am. As my South Carolina friends learn of it -- and see my Reds Room for the first time -- they are struck by how anybody can be so obsessed. Here, being a fan of anything besides Clemson and the University of South Carolina, especially a pro team, most definitely sets one apart from the crowd.
My Uncle Danny just recently passed away. The youngest brother of my mother, I can't say we were close. Growing up, and into my adult years, we never lived near each other, and as such just saw each other at family get togethers, which, sadly, were not frequent. I have few memories of time shared with Uncle Danny over the years, but there is one that stands out: He took me to see my first Reds game.
April 29, 1980. I was 10 years old.
Another of my uncles, my Uncle Mike, lived in Cincinnati when we were growing up. Together, Uncle Mike and Uncle Danny shared a love of cars, especially working on and refurbing old classics. I truly do not remember the details, so my recollections of the events that led to us attending the game are admittedly murky, and could very easily be flat out wrong. In any case, through some form of gathering, my uncles ended up taking both me and my brother to a Reds game.
Again, my memory of the day's events, even of the game itself, are cloudy, but here's what I do remember...
1) On the way to the game, we stopped to eat at a Burger Chef restaurant in Batesville, IN. Today, that building is a Skyline Chili restaurant. The restaurant is right off the highway exit and Batesville is literally a halfway point between where I lived in Indiana, and downtown Cincinnati, and has always been a good place to stop for a bite and fill up. I have stopped there many times with my family over the years to eat at Skyline on our trips back and forth to Cincy.
The reason I remember stopping at Burger Chef that day is because in those days, Burger Chef's equivalent to McDonald's Happy Meal was called a Fun Meal, and they came in little cardboard trays that had little perforated, baseball-shaped cards on the back and bottom. You could request any team you wanted, and if they had it in stock, you got it. I, of course, requested a Reds Fun Meal, and got it! It was, of course, one of many Reds Fun Meals I would have eaten in those days, as we had a Burger Chef restaurant in my home town of Mooresville. What I didn't know then, and what I know now, was that those Fun Meal boxes with the cards on the back was one of my first forays into Reds memorabilia collecting. As is the case with anything in the moment, you don't know it's memorabilia, and you rarely hang on to the item. Sadly, I did not keep a single Fun Meal box from those days, although it is true that I have a few of the original cards from those boxes. But I loved them so much, that I did, through the miracle that is eBay, purchase an original Fun Meal box with the Cincinnati Reds for my collection, and it hangs prominently from the ceiling in my Reds Room today. (Picture included.)
2) My memories of the game itself are equally as fuzzy. I remembered the Reds played the Astros, and it was the first year after Joe Morgan had left the Reds and returned to Houston. I remember being very upset having to watch Morgan come to bat for the Astros against the Reds. I remember also not like the Reds manager, John McNamara, much at all, as he had replaced the legend, Sparky Anderson a couple years before. Pete Rose was gone by that time too, but he was off somewhere else with the Phillies that day. The only detail about the game I remember is that the Reds lost, 3-0, and that Morgan had scored one of the runs for the Astros that day. Made it even more heartbreaking.
I remember seeing Riverfront Stadium up close for the first time, and how green the turf was inside the stadium and how big it all looked. We sat somewhere down the third base line, but I don't remember exactly where. Morgan and Rose were gone, but I remember distinctly the excitement of watching Bench and Concepcion and Griffey and Foster. I remember being thrilled, even if I don't remember much else.
Flash forward nearly 40 years. As I have accumulated and decorated my Reds Room, thoughts of my first game would pop up in my head every now and then. While I have items in the Room that have survived from my childhood, there aren't many, and I honestly do not know if any of the items I do have were acquired at that game or not. The few details I could recall -- Morgan playing for the Astros and the 3-0 loss -- were the only clues I had to go on to try to get more info on the game itself, and the date it was played.
A search through the game databases on Baseball-Reference.com finally led me to the game on April 29, 1980. It's the only game that fits my memories, although I don't remember it being a night game, and I can't figure out why my Mom would have let us go on a school day. Perhaps it was during our Spring Break, which is the only thing that makes sense.
Nevertheless, there it is. Reds loss to the Astros, 3-0, on a Tuesday night in April, in the Spring of my 10th year. The box score confirms Morgan going 1-4 on the day, scoring a run for the Astros. The Reds Charlie Liebrandt started and threw 8 solid innings of 3-run ball, but was out-dueled by Astros righty, Ken Forsch, who only allowed 3 hits to the Reds in a shutout performance. I had correctly guessed who I'd believed had started that day for the Reds, except for Harry Spilman, who started in place of regular 1st Baseman, Dan Driessen. Interestingly, the Astros starting lineup that day featured 3 players who would go on to play for the Reds later in their careers. And, Art Howe, who would go on to manage the A's during their Moneyball heyday.
Throughout my Reds Room, I have several ticket stubs from games we've attended over the years. No where near ALL the games we've attended, and no rhyme or reason to why I have the ones I do. Just stubs we never discarded for one reason or another, and made for good space fillers on the wall.
However, for some in the memorabilia world, ticket-stub collecting is a big deal. And if one has an accompanying stub from a game at which a particular piece of memorabilia was obtained -- a game-used ball or bat, or a bobblehead, or some other giveaway -- than the value of the memorabilia is increased. Often, when I've purchased an item I've wanted, it came with a stub from the game, even though I didn't request it. It's not something I seek in my collecting, but it is certainly an important slice of the memorabilia collecting world, and there are several collectors out there who deal extensively in ticket stubs.
I began to ponder, as I watched other collectors seek and obtain certain ticket stubs for their collections -- perhaps a stub from the game on the day their kid was born, or a stub from their wedding day, etc. -- could there be a ticket stub floating around out there from April 29, 1980? I put the word out what I was looking for on the primary memorabilia page I deal with on Facebook. It was a long shot, I knew, but didn't hurt to ask. Within minutes, a fellow member told me to reach out to another certain collector to see if he could help.
So I did.
The gentlemen responded to my request with a simple, "I have one," followed by a picture of the stub. I couldn't believe it. There it was: a simple, small, green ticket stub with Reds logo and line-drawing of Riverfront Stadium from April 29, 1980. What are the odds? Pretty good, as it turns out.
A very reasonable and attractive price was offered for purchase of the item, and I sent the money immediately. A week later, I was holding the stub in my hands. Pretty amazing, now that I think about it.
Of course, my immediate thoughts were how to display it in the Reds Room. Without boring you with how things have to be moved around to make it fit, I decided on the display you see in the picture here. A custom-made red matte, 16x20, with room for cards for the 9 starters for the Reds that day, along with a 10th space for an Astros Joe Morgan card. Just didn't feel right to leave him out. I have plenty of Reds cards, so I made sure each card for each player was a different year and style. I created the center picture collage with a photo I took of Riverfront some years ago (top), along with some other stock photos of the stadium. Some custom vinyl to title the piece, and the stub tacked neatly below the collage inside a plastic holder, and it's done. It occurred to me to print the box score from the game and include it, but I decided against it.
My memories of that day end at the Fun Meal and the score, a 3-0 loss. But I will be forever thankful for my Uncles Danny and Mike for taking me to my first game. I'm only sorry I never took the chance to tell Uncle Danny thanks before he passed. To my Uncle Mike... thank you.
I have a thousand memories and hundreds of pictures from literally over a hundred games in the years since then, most of them with my wife and kids. I cherish them all, and indeed some hang from the walls in the Reds Room to this day. But I'm glad to renew the memories from that first game, and get the chance to memorialize it in my favorite space.
Come down and take a look some time.
