THE FIRST SUPERSECTIONAL AT SIU
High school basketball in Illinois is a disease. It's where the term "March Madness" originated though it was stolen by the NCAA a few years ago. A hotbed for high school basketball, Illinois has had a State Tournament since 1908. Jim Enright wrote a book by that name published in 1977 and called "March Madness" years before that. It remains as contagious in Illinois as the common cold or flu.
When I saw the picture of the Ticket Men, I thought for awhile before deciding on today's focus. I mean, I've been blessed to have some great tickets in my day. Also some tremendous freebies or no tickets needed to announce high school baseball, basketball, and football for 35 seasons. Twice getting to announce at Busch Stadium when the high school team took the field after St. Louis Cardinal victories.
World Series games, a Super Bowl, an All-Star baseball game, an NCAA final basketball game, an Opening Day ticket (although it was SRO) to a new stadium, a 9/8/98 game where Mark McGwire broke Roger Maris' home run record (although technically we had no ticket at all for that game), and others I had to choose to write about. But I picked the first Super Sectional game played at the SIU Arena in 1965.
It featured the MTV Rams against the Marion Wildcats and ended a great season for the good guys. But getting the tickets were something else as Durocher used to say.
The Ticket Manager at MTV High was a perfectionist in everything he did. Mr. Wagner was a great guy who went out of his way to see that everything he did was just so.
I arrived at the school at 6:00 AM to secure a ticket. A friend of mine was to meet me there and we were going to get the maximum number of tickets, two, for a couple of our sleepy headed friends. Ticket sales were to begin at 7:00.
I couldn't believe the line that wrapped around the gym and Voc Ed building. Some people had been there since 2:00 AM. As the line shortened, smiling friends of ours walked by and added, "They've sold a ton of tickets; I hope you get one."
As I approached the ticket booth and saw Mr. Wagner, he smiled and said, "That's all. These are last two tickets." So my bud Scott and I had ours, actually, he got one of mine, so all the others in line including our friends who had depended on us were out of luck.
When we got to the Arena, nothing like it in SoIL (southern Illinois) we saw some of our friends seated far, far away from the court. We gave our tickets to the usher who directed us down the long steps to the first row of chair seats next to the court. Darts in the form of stares were shot to us for having the best seats.
It seems that Mr. Wagner had sold the worst seats first and the best ones last. Great for us. Great game, great venue, bad result. The Rams wouldn't make the trip north to the Elite Eight. But we sure enjoyed March Madness back then.
High school basketball in Illinois is a disease. It's where the term "March Madness" originated though it was stolen by the NCAA a few years ago. A hotbed for high school basketball, Illinois has had a State Tournament since 1908. Jim Enright wrote a book by that name published in 1977 and called "March Madness" years before that. It remains as contagious in Illinois as the common cold or flu.
When I saw the picture of the Ticket Men, I thought for awhile before deciding on today's focus. I mean, I've been blessed to have some great tickets in my day. Also some tremendous freebies or no tickets needed to announce high school baseball, basketball, and football for 35 seasons. Twice getting to announce at Busch Stadium when the high school team took the field after St. Louis Cardinal victories.
World Series games, a Super Bowl, an All-Star baseball game, an NCAA final basketball game, an Opening Day ticket (although it was SRO) to a new stadium, a 9/8/98 game where Mark McGwire broke Roger Maris' home run record (although technically we had no ticket at all for that game), and others I had to choose to write about. But I picked the first Super Sectional game played at the SIU Arena in 1965.
It featured the MTV Rams against the Marion Wildcats and ended a great season for the good guys. But getting the tickets were something else as Durocher used to say.
The Ticket Manager at MTV High was a perfectionist in everything he did. Mr. Wagner was a great guy who went out of his way to see that everything he did was just so.
I arrived at the school at 6:00 AM to secure a ticket. A friend of mine was to meet me there and we were going to get the maximum number of tickets, two, for a couple of our sleepy headed friends. Ticket sales were to begin at 7:00.
I couldn't believe the line that wrapped around the gym and Voc Ed building. Some people had been there since 2:00 AM. As the line shortened, smiling friends of ours walked by and added, "They've sold a ton of tickets; I hope you get one."
As I approached the ticket booth and saw Mr. Wagner, he smiled and said, "That's all. These are last two tickets." So my bud Scott and I had ours, actually, he got one of mine, so all the others in line including our friends who had depended on us were out of luck.
When we got to the Arena, nothing like it in SoIL (southern Illinois) we saw some of our friends seated far, far away from the court. We gave our tickets to the usher who directed us down the long steps to the first row of chair seats next to the court. Darts in the form of stares were shot to us for having the best seats.
It seems that Mr. Wagner had sold the worst seats first and the best ones last. Great for us. Great game, great venue, bad result. The Rams wouldn't make the trip north to the Elite Eight. But we sure enjoyed March Madness back then.
posted by TQ @ 6:01 AM
1 Comments:
At 10:09 AM,
Fort Wayne Tour Guide said…
I didn't realize you had announced high school sports games. I wonder if you were announcing some game when I was there and I didn't realize it! But no matter, I think it's really cool you got to announce for Rams baseball at Busch Stadium. Somehow, that sounds like a whole lot of fun.
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