Ticket Stub

June 11, 2004

There’s a saying that most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in 10 years. Bill Gates gets credit for the quote, though no one can definitively say who first uttered those words. It’s a shame Yogi never took a swing at it.

I consider that saying often. It’s requires action. The spirit of the remark is proactive.

I stumbled across a ticket stub last month that reminded me of that saying, albeit with a bit of a wrinkle.

Friday, June 11, 2004 represents a definitive point on my personal and professional timeline. In some ways, it’s when I overestimated what I could do in a year — and set out to accomplish it. Discovering the ticket stub transported me back 20 years. I reconnected with that young wine journalist (that’s me, friends) who had finally found a way to break into baseball.

The first step of a westward journey took me north from midtown Manhattan. I traveled the 4-train to Yankee Stadium (the old one) and found the Will Call window designated for the visiting team. Kevin Towers arranged for a ticket to be waiting for me. The process seemed almost magical at the time. In less than an hour, I exchanged a chair in a cubicle for a box seat at the House That Ruth Built.

Since meeting KT about three months prior in Spring Training, I had prepared for this opportunity. Yes, most of that preparation meant watching Padres games, but — in 2004 with my setup — many nights that meant staying up for a first-pitch after 10 p.m. (That’s one way to highlight the way life has changed in the past 20 years!)

This ticket, once redeemable for 10% off your total purchase at Modell’s, offered more than a slight discount at a now-defunct sporting goods store. It granted me admission to a 10-hour ride along with KT and his wife Kelley.

The game on June 11, 2004, between the Padres and the Yankees, featured starting pitchers Mike Mussina and Adam Eaton. Two players who appeared in the game — Padres first baseman Phil Nevin and Yankees reliever Cal Quantrill — have children who are currently on active rosters. The Yanks lineup — Jeter, Williams, Rodriguez, Giambi, Sheffield, Posada, Matsui — was a welcoming committee that made sure visiting teams knew they’d arrived in the Bronx.

I’d never before watched a game alongside someone who took every single pitch so seriously. At one point, I remember asking KT how he could make it through an entire season investing so much energy into every pitch. His exact answer escapes me (it was 20 years ago), but the gist was: It’s my job.

Of course, 2004 was the Padres first year in their new home of Petco Park. I had no appreciation at the time of the pressure he faced to field a winning team. It was about much more than personal job security, I later learned; it was validating a major investment by the city of San Diego and enticing the three million fans who attended to return for the next year. And as I’d learn just three seasons later, every win counts.

Mussina was in control early. I remember worrying that the future Hall of Fame might put a damper on our late reservation at Babbo. Through three innings, he was cruising. Then the pitcher left the game unexpectedly. There was no Twitter to learn what had happened to him. My Nokia barely had text messaging. Instead we continued to watch the game.

We talked about the game. Think about what you see these days when a broadcast cuts to a GM: head down, thumbs on the keypad, scrolling, typing, calming his nerves, perhaps, somehow through a device. Did anyone even speak of “being present” 20 years ago?

Mark Loretta hit a pair of doubles and scored three runs, leadoff hitter Sean Burroughs had two singles and drove in two, and Nevin hit a three-run homer in the ninth to cap the scoring at 10-2, enough to make the final frame of the game almost comfortable. With the last out of the game recorded, the responsibility for the rest of the evening shifted to me.

I had one chance to impress the visiting team, and we were going to Babbo. It was the meal that began the first day of the rest of my life.

The play-by-play on 20-year-old pasta has already been covered by Billy Joel. We don’t need to restart that fire.

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When Babbo closed, we went to my favorite cocktail lounge in Gramercy Park. When that shut down, we ended up at a hotel bar in Midtown. It was well past two in the morning. I ordered a Stinger.

See, I had just been introduced to the drink a week or two earlier. My job at the time took me around the city, often to experience a new restaurant or sample a current vintage of wine. (It was great, but it still wasn’t baseball.)

One night, I had dinner with Dale DeGroff, the man who revived the classic cocktail scene in New York and paved the way for modern mixology. After the meal, DeGroff led a few of us to a trendy hotel bar downtown. He ordered a round of Stingers, a cocktail that’s equal parts brandy and crème de menthe. DeGroff specified that he wanted Cognac (all Cognac is brandy but not all brandy is Cognac), and asked that the drink be served over crushed ice. He ordered with a confidence that I had only seen on screen from Sean Connery.

It was delicious.

Back at the hotel bar, I finally had an opportunity to show off my new drink of choice. “A Stinger,” KT cried out upon hearing my order. “That’s an old man drink!”

It was too late to justify. There was no putting the Cognac back in the bottle. I half-heartedly defended my choice and, shortly thereafter, fumbled the glass, spilling the contents across the bar.

The evening turned out to be KT’s version of a job interview. Safe to say I’ve never had another experience like it. There aren’t any formalities, it moves around the city, and you’ll rarely find HR lurking by the bartender at last call on a Friday night.

Eventually, I shared with him that I was hoping to work for the Padres. Maybe spilling a Stinger is good luck. KT and I shook hands. He told me that he’d find a job for me with the Padres. It was the first night of the rest of my life.

I see the ticket stub and I feel immensely grateful for a year in which I overestimated what I could do.

Do you have a favorite ticket stub and a story that goes with it? I’d love to hear all about it.