It was Opening Day of the 2002 season and the Angels were hosting the Cleveland Indians.
Aces Bartolo Colon and Jarrod Washburn were set to start and my dad thought it would be a good idea to take my brother Joe and I to the game and get tickets there.
Yes, that’s right. We tried getting Opening Day tickets the day of the game at the stadium ticket office. Needless to say, we did not get our hands on any tickets. A rookie mistake!
We began to walk back to our car (probably in the business center across the street, that’s how we did it back in those days) with our tails between our legs and a man approached us and said he’s looking for a dad and two sons.
Well yes, we were a dad and two sons.
The man went on to explain that he had two sons of his own that he normally takes to the games but that his boys couldn’t make it that evening. He had offered the three extra tickets he had as long as my dad, Joe and I were ok sitting next to him. We accepted.
We got into the stadium and the gentleman who gave us tickets started leading us towards our seats on the first base and holy crap, we realized they were going to be on the field level. At 11 years old, I was having an out of body experience. But it didn’t stop there.
We just kept stepping down each of those Angel Stadium steps and getting closer and closer to the field and eventually we landed in our seats right behind the visitors dugout that the Cleveland Indians occupied. What!!!!??? These were our seats?
We were so close that we could see and wave to some of the greats like Omar Vizquel and Jim Thome while they were stepping into the on deck circle.
What an amazing experience that I’ll never forget.
