1980 Revisited
By: Tony Romeo
phillypage2 staff

Dateline-October, 1980. 1980, Flat out, is and and was, the best year of my life. I was ten years old. Atari 2600 revolutionized the way I played. (Before we owned our own set, I'd WAIT in line at Penny's or Gimbels, just to play the demo.) I was entering, although I didn't know it at the time, the Golden Era, of my personal baseball career. Girls still had cooties, and I didn't know one single dead person. (real heartache was years away). I got straight A's without studying, and all the Philly teams were on top. In my ten year old mind, I thought things would be like that forever, especially concerning sports…

The year culminated in the greatest baseball game I ever attended. I am there with my father, and I see the Fightin's win the only Series in their history. Sure the baseball gods may re-align, and once again smile on the Phils, but nothing could ever re-capture or rekindle, what that meant to me then, and how it has grown in meaning as time goes by.

My Dad took me to game six. I was there. Section 318, right there when Pete Rose caught the carom off Boonie's glove. I had actually been focusing near the dugout, with binoculars when it happened. ( I was so young that I thought binoculars were a good call in 318! Perhaps my first Sports Fugazi!) The crowd was so loud when that happened, but it got louder. And after that final out, it was deafening.

An interesting side note about my father. He was the Sports fan then, that I am now. Complete with his own crew of Usual Suspects that he hung with and watched and went to games with. As your crew gets older I think, wives and kids make the numbers dwindle, but in the 70's early 80's, he was in his heyday. I later worked at a Ticket Agency, and came to know the value of tickets. The Phillies ticket said, twenty dollars, but who knows what he paid, or went through to get it. But more then the money, the thing that sticks in my mind, twenty years later when I hang with MY crew…is his, back then. I think about the last "hot ticket" events I have gone to in philly with my guys, and the money, shenanigans and grief we go through to procure tickets. Then I think about telling Schues, or Silent Bob, or Moos, or Riz…"Hey listen fellas, I know these tickets are (*insert astronomical price here*) and we only have two…."But I think I am going to just go ahead and take a 10-year-old. A 10-year-old that might fall asleep, might make me spend half the game in the bathroom or concession stand, or worse, someday come to not be interested in sports. If it was my ten year old or not, I'd be more then prepared to get the Stink, Crook, and Evil, eyes, all combined. Not that my they wouldn't understand, but I'd expect some grief now, and I am sure he got some then. And the more time goes bye, the more I appreciate it. I'd like to say someday, if I ever have a ten year old, I'd return the favor….but I don't know. (Hey I took my dad, in 93 to the NLCS, WITH my friends, so I am calling it even!!!)

But anyway, I never traded in the Phillies for the Philharmonic, and maybe my Dad coming up so big, all those years ago, is the reason why…

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