Am I a nerd or am I cool based on the following project ...

Definitely a cool thing to see the Big Red Machine in your first game. I wish I knew what mine was -- some random Orioles game in 1986-87, most likely -- so I'm glad a lot of y'all are able to remember exactly when yours was.

Have no idea when the last time a game clocked in under 2 hours.

My quickest game was a typical Maddux gem that lasted 2:05: http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1999/B09060ATL1999.htm

 

Yes, please tell more on this. I had a couple friends at that game, and don't recall ever hearing about that!

 

I starting to chug along now. I've reached 1980. Long, long ways to go, but it's fascinating so far.

One oddity ... even though the Brewers hit more home runs than any team from 1978-82, I apparently saw very few of them, only three in six games I've completed so far.

Most of the guys who hit home runs were unsurprising (Yaz, Rico Carty, Ben Oglivie, Larry Hisle, etc.) until Orioles catching legend Dan Graham popped up in the last game I did.

I apparently saw Detroit speed demon Lance Parrish steal a base. I saw one of Oglivie's 10 career starts at first base and discovered that Hank Aaron's last game (my first game) was also the last game for All-Star Detroit catcher Bill Freehan. I love weird shit like that.

Lary Sorensen is already 2-0 career for me. He'll likely do some blow to celebrate. And so far, Charlie Moore is hitting .412 with me in the house. But as Lance Parrish's stolen base attests, he negates his offense by giving up something like three stolen bases a game (noted burner Steve Kemp also stole a base in the same game).

My boyhood hero Paul Molitor is struggling at a 1-for-11 clip.

This has been fun as hell so far.

 

This project made me think of the obsessed TV Guide collector episode of Seinfeld. Nonetheless, I do think its a cool project, but it takes some nerdish instincts to actually follow through and complete it. I wouldn't even begin to know how to peg down the precise dates of games attended during childhood.

 

The key is a) having a good starting point; and b) narrowing it down after that.

I've saved a ticket stub from every game I've been to since 1995, and about a dozen or so games that I went to from 1988-94. It's pretty easy to look up information on those games on Retrosheet.

But there were some where I didn't know the date, but I knew a few key details. For instance, I remembered that my grandfather pulled me out of school to go to a Wednesday matinee against the Cubs in 1992 or '93, and I also remembered that we saw Damon Berryhill hit a home run that day. That's all that I remembered about it, but it was enough to serve as a starting point.

So I looked up Berryhill's <a href="http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1992/Iberrd0020071992.htm">game log from 1992</a> on Retrosheet, and scrolled down to see if he had hit any home runs against the Cubs. He did, on April 29. So I clicked on <a href="http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1992/B04290ATL1992.htm">the box score from that game</a> and saw that April 29, 1992 was a Wednesday, and the Cubs played the Braves that afternoon. Voila! Even though I don't remember anything else about it, don't have a program or ticket stub, those two details were enough for me to narrow it down to that particular game.

I know I've got a few games from 1986-1990, when I was very little, where I don't remember a damn thing. Those games will have to be lost to history. But there were quite a few games where I remembered just one tiny detail that I could use to narrow it down, and then find something else to narrow it down some more. Once you do that, it's just a process of elimination ... and a matter of how good your memory is.

'Cause you might remember seeing Ozzie Smith hit two doubles against the Cubs in 1982, but the box scores say he didn't ...

 

That's exactly right. I had saved my stubs (and many media passes) since '86, but I knew I went to tons of games before that. I had a decent memory of the games from 1983-85, but before that the key was remembering little details.

For example, I knew I almost exclusively went to Saturday afternoon games in the 70s ... that alone helped me find about four games.

After the four easy ones, I delved in further. I could have swore I saw the Blue Jays at some point in the 70s, but couldn't remember any other details. I was stumped until I linked to a box score from 1979. Dave Lemanczyk started for the Jays. Voila! I remember seeing Lemanczyk's name on the old, old County Stadium stadium scoreboard and wondering how to pronounce it. When I saw the other details of the game, it matched up.

I know I didn't get every game I attended, but I got a lot of them. It helped that I almost entirely went to afternoon games when I was a kid (Pepsi Brewer Fan Club member in good standing, if I could find Brewers schedules from 80-84 that listed those Fan Club games, I guarnatee I'd add one or two more).