I’m not a kid anymore–music and events
So, I’m going to begin a new series–concerts and other events from long ago.
This reminiscence is tame. Others may be a little more intriguing–or risqué.
Metropolitan Stadium is long gone. It’s where the Minnesota Twins and the Vikings played decades past. Open air was fine for baseball. More than a little cold for December football. Like snowmobile suit cold.
On to the Beatles.
Centerfield bleachers for me. Second base for the Fab Four. Every time Ringo shook his head, the girls screamed. No surprise. They did that at a showing of A Hard Day’s Night at a Times Square, NYC theater. I lived in Kendall Park, New Jersey at the time. Not sure how many trips I made to Manhattan. I lived with my brother after my mother passed away in 1963. He commuted to a corporate job in Manhattan. I know I went there for New Year’s Eve in 1964. Saw more cops than I’d ever seen in my life (well, hey—I was 17 years old). Windows boarded up; cops in groups of three to five every 15-20 feet in Times Square.
That’s probably not the movie trip. More likely, that happened in the spring of ’65. That’s when I bought six bottles of wine and a fifth of rotgut gin from a liquor store on 42d street. The legal age for booze was 18 in NYC then; I was old enough. All the kids from Connecticut and New Jersey went there and stocked up. Those states didn’t much care for the situation. Eventually, the law changed, I think.
Back to the Beatles. They sounded good to me—but then that’s the first live concert I’d ever been to. That came after high school graduation and my move back to Minnesota. I don’t remember anything they sang now, but a Wikipedia list included 12 songs. Among them were:
- I Feel Fine
- Ticket to Ride
- Can’t Buy Me Love
- A Hard Day’s Night
- Help
The storyline from a Minnesota website said the set lasted only 35 minutes. Tickets were $3.50, $4.50, and $5.50. I’m sure mine were the cheapest in Centerfield Bleachers—HEY, how about that inflation! A web calculator said the $3.50 would be $33 today—NO WAY for any professional group! The Times Square movie was double the concert price! Does anybody suppose Ticketmaster has anything to do with prices way beyond inflation? What about college tuition?
Yet I also saw the Twins play the Dodgers in the World Series that year at the same price range! Tickets were cheap in ’65. Sandy Koufax is the only Dodger name I recall. For the Twins, his opposite was Camilo Pascual. Harmon Killebrew (AKA, “The Beerslayer”), Tony Oliva, Earl Battey, and more were playing for the Twins in the one game I went to.
As a sports geek, much of this post resonated with me. I lived in the Dakotas during the 60s, and since there were no professional teams close by, I became a Twins fan during that era. We used to get about 30 television games, and I frequently listened to the games on the radio. (My backup career plan was to become a sports broadcaster.) I can rattle a lot of players off from that era. Killebrew, Olivia, Rollins, Tovar (my favorite who once played one inning at all nine positions in the same game), Kaat, Boswell. The manager for part of that time was the legendary Billy Martin. He was an ornery cuss who didn’t take crap from anyone. If memory serves me, he fought with one of his pitchers (Dave Boswell) in the locker room. After he went to the Yankees, I remember he and Reggie Jackson were trying to get at each other in the dugout.
One of my brothers lives in Minnesota and once took me to the Mall of America in Minneapolis. You may already know this, but that’s where the Old Met Stadium used to be. I remember seeing a base inside the mall. Here’s a photo I found online: https://www.flickr.com/photos/rock_chalk_jhawk_ku/49833950241
Great reply, Pete. Maybe I do recall the mall being built where the stadium used to be, but then it came along a few decades from when I last lived there. Did visit it though on a trip several years ago. Tony Oliva sure had a way different swing from most batters. I do remember Billy Martin being one of those kind of guys.