I Thought You Had It!

Retrosheet is a pretty awesome site. The mission of this non-profit organization is to collect and digitize play-by-play accounts of all major league baseball games into a database. The format of the record structure in the database is published and they make the raw data from the database available for download in three different formats. This permits other developers to develop applications to leverage this goldmine of data.

They have implemented a basic, no-frills website to surf through all of this data. Talk about an easy way to kill 3 or 4 hours! Addictive stuff. For a future blog post, I have started compiling a list of all the major league games I have attended, with references to the Retrosheet box score and some personal recollections of those games.  

One of those games was the battle between the Braves and Pirates on July 22, 1970 at Three Rivers Stadium. This was the first MLB game I attended and the Pirates beat the Braves 5-3 in the 5th game ever played at the new ballpark.

This really should have been the 3rd MLB game I attended. I was supposed to attend the final two games held in Forbes Field on June 28, 1970, but in a cruel case of bait-and-switch, I found out the day before that I would not be permitted to accompany my brothers Rich and Steve to Forbes for this historic event.

The actual reason is still not clear (to me anyways). Rich and Steve have mostly feigned ignorance on this issue with some weak “I think Mom vetoed it” sauce. (How convenient – kind of tough for me to confirm that one.) I suspect that they both had second thoughts about dragging me around – hell I can’t blame them one bit for that.

I had a case of the red-ass for about a week after that.

The fans looted Forbes that day, tearing it apart for souvenirs. Steve and Rich grabbed a Forbes Field seat and then boarded a PAT bus for the 4 mile trip from Oakland back to the train station in Dahntahn Pittsburgh. Unfortunately, while getting off the PAT bus, they both forgot about the seat and left it on the bus. (How in the hell did they both forget about that seat?)

Not that I am bitter or anything, but I do have to chuckle and point out that Karmic Justice is a bitch.

I am not sure what style of seat they took, but from the looks of this site and others like it, that seat is probably worth around $1500 to $2000 today.

Trying to make me feel better about missing out on this historic event, Steve remarked to me in June that if I had come along, perhaps he and Rich might have left my 7-year old butt on the PAT bus (instead of the Forbes Field seat).

Maybe so. But in that case, Rich and Steve would have been better served never getting on the train back to Altoona. Good luck explaining that one to Mom.