Arenas/Stadiums/Venues of Your Past

First place I ever saw a major league baseball game, Exhibition Stadium in Toronto.

I also saw Garth Brooks there in 1991.

Built for football, as evidenced by the, um, football field that extends beyond the right field wall.

Could you imagine being at the far end of the stands, down where the football end zone is, and even beyond, and trying to watch a baseball game?



And yet the Blue Jays stayed there for 12 full seasons and part of a 13th.

 

Don't know how to post pics (how the heck do you do that, anyway? couldn't find anything in the help tab). But if I could, it would be Forbes Field. Spent many wonderful days/nights there as a kid. Wonderful memories.

 

Saw my first MLB game there, May, 1977 vs. California. Saw many games there over the years - usually sitting in the left field stands - against the Tigers, Royals, Yankees and Red Sox. It was a dump - but it was our dump.

Watched plenty of Toronto Argonaut games there too beginning long before the Jays came around. Up until 1984 or so, Argo tickets were very tough to come by and the games were crazy, particularly any time Hamilton (hi, JR!) came to town. You had to have a bottle on you no matter how old you were.

Saw dozens of concerts there, both in the grandstand and full stadium setups.

 

1. Has to be a web-based photo. 2. Right-click on the photo and go to properties, and find the URL for that photo. 3. Reply to a thread and use the IMG tags 4. Paste the photo URL in between the [ img] and [ /img] tags.(No spaces between the brackets). 5. Hit preview to make sure it shows up and then hit post.

 

Speaking of flooded ballpark pics, here are some from Crosley Field in the 1930s:





P.S. This is the first time in four years that I've been able to figure out how to post a photo. What hath God wrought? Thanks Hank.

 

Husky Stadium is in a great location, but it also has about 30,000 bad, bad seats where you're better off watching the game on the scoreboard jumbotron than the game on the field.

 

I grew up in a place with no NBA team, and when I was in third grade, a family from Boston with three kids moved in down the street from me. One of the kids was a year ahead of me in school and we grew up together, playing sports, etc. And his dad, who was a Celtics season ticket holder when they lived in Boston, turned every kid in our neighborhood into a Celtics fan -- right at the perfect time, 1980s, when they were good. This guy was there for the triple-overtime game in the 1976 Finals, and every so often he'd launch into the story about how "we had two bee-yahs in every quar-tah, and one bee-yah in every ovah-time." We'd watch the Finals on TV in their basement, with this guy's dad screaming at the TV every time something bad happened to the Celtics, which easily was as entertaining as the games, themselves.

When I was in college, I had a friend from Boston who got us tickets to a game at old Boston Garden -- December 1991 against Utah. It was amazing to see the place in person after having seen it on TV dozens of times. Of course, it was a dump. But there was something magical about being there in person. I felt like I had some connection to it and was familiar with it even though I'd never been there before. It definitely looked better on TV, though.

 

I felt the same way about Veterans Stadium.
Saw my first game there when I was 6. Gary Matthews hit a home run against the Giants, and my dad got pissed because a hot dog vendor was blocking his view of it. Same game, I think, Bob Dernier slid headfirst into second and left a skid mark in the dirt that was there the rest of the game.

In the late 80s and early 90s my dad used to take me to a Phillies game for my birthday. It's at the end of September, and the way the schedules were done they always seemed to play the Expos. Nothing like some late-September baseball between two teams a combined 100 games out of first, lemme tell ya. Over a span of three or four years I think I got autographs from half the players who played in Montreal and Philadelphia during that span.

Went to a game with my dad, uncle and cousin one time. My cousin tripped on some stairs and tumbled down them. Cut himself up a bit. We also waited out a two-hour rain delay and moved from our customary perch in the 600 level to the "good seats" behind one of the dugouts. The players seemed like they were 8 feet tall.

Last time I was there was the Vet's last year, 2003. Tug McGraw, who was battling brain cancer at the time, was the one to pull the number off the outfield wall and he got a 2- or 3-minute standing ovation that probably could've gone 10 times that long. It was also a fireworks night. After the game they let people in the lower bowl come onto the field to sit and watch the fireworks. I remember laying there just being in awe of the display.

Now, it's all just memories. People remember the rats, or the god-awful cookie cutter design, or the rock-hard astroturf. I remember a magical place we got to go to once a year, where it didn't matter how bad the baseball was or how lukewarm the hot dogs were. It was a special place..

 

I have to say, I shed a tear or two when the Capital Centre in Landover was imploded - I spent good parts of my teenage years there and I've still got most of my ticket stubs from the hockey games I watched in that old barn.

 

I used to like to watch the highlights from games there. Whenever a home run was hit, I liked to see what yard line the ball landed on to judge the distance.

 

For baseball, I used to go to Memorial Stadium in Baltimore to watch the Orioles. I went to one Redskins game at RFK Stadium. Later, I'd go to a LOT of D.C. United matches at RFK.

I went to one hockey game at the Capital Centre (I refuse to call it by its then-corporate name). Went to a couple of Maryland men's basketball games at Cole Field House and football games at Byrd Stadium.

Probably the best memories I had were going to Orioles games at Memorial. My aunt (Lord rest her soul) and I went to one game the last season in that stadium.

 

Three old stadiums I've been to:

Tiger Stadium
The Spectrum
RFK

Three stadiums I wish I could have checked out:

Chicago Stadium
Olympic Stadium
Veterans Stadium. Seriously. America's biggest toilet, at the time.

And for some perverse reason, I still want to see a Rangers game at MSG before they renovate it.