It’s not easy to be a Minnesota Sports Fan. Life on the tundra and a Lenten diet of lutefisk (jellied cod soaked in lye) have toughened us and have helped make late season collapses easier to suffer through. So we try not to get our hopes up and be.shudder…optimistic. But the 1987 Minnesota Twins felt different.
As August progressed, Tom Bernard began to play “light happy music” every morning at KQRS after he reported another Twins victory the night before. He ripped it from “Leave It To Beaver” and it was that kind of jingle that signified that all is right with the world.
As a Minnesota Sports Fan, I was livid with the Bernard. The audacity of hope. Surely this would signal the inevitable collapse.
The Twins entered the ALCS against Detroit as serious underdogs but on Monday October 12th, we were all in the GM’s office at WLOL watching as the 3-1 Twins worked to cinch the first World Series berth in twenty two seasons.
Midway through the 7th inning a scrawl crept across the screen. Whether they won or not, in the morning tickets would go on sale for the Metrodome-hosted Games One and TwO. This was pre-Ticketmaster and all local tickets for concerts and sporting events were done at Daytons department stores. People could purchase two pairs of tickets at $25 a ticket for each of the first two games.
The Twins won and mayhem ensued in Minnesota.
A quick meeting of whatever management was still hanging out at the Itasca Building decided that I should call as many interns as possible and since it was Veterans Day and the banks were closed, have them go to an ATM and take out $200.
By 6 pm I was on the sidewalk on the Nicollet Mall downtown, waiting for Daytons to open their doors at 8 am. Five promo people and the wife of a Researcher were all there for a CHILLY October night.
Throughout downtown you could hear horns and fireworks and sounds of celebration, A few blocks away, sixty thousand people awaited the team’s bus as it arrived from the airport.
It was literally insanity that no Minnesotan who was alive at the time would forget.
On the sidewalk we froze and found different ways to stay warm.
Finally at 8 am the doors were opened and the line was queued-in in groups to take the escalators upstairs to the ticket window. We’d been pretty close to the front of the line but by the time we got up there, we were able to buy some of the few remaining seats WAY WAY up in right field. But we got them.
Outside I used a payphone and called Hines and Berglund to let them know we had tickets. Actual darn WORLD SERIES TICKETS. John made a comment that my hard work and dedication would get me far. I replied that I hoped that this would clear my record with management: I’d done a couple of thousand dollars in damage to the station van a couple of months before. (There were professional soccer team danceline involved and I maintain that as my defense.)
We all went to the station and Paula the Best Business Manager in Radio cut everyone a check for $200 AND as a thank you for their efforts, they got to keep one of the 4 pairs of tickets that they bought. T left us 21 pair for the week and there were a couple of pair of season tickets that we added to the haul.
In four decades of radio, with the possible exception of Wild 107’s day trip to Disneyland, I’ve never heard such hysterical winners. H&B be did their magic with tickets in the AM and the rest were done via caller nine.
$1400 and we owned the hearts and ears of the community that week.
We’re heading into the post-season so this is a reminder of the power of championship tickets.
An addendum: so we were going to include our season tickets behind third base, so I figured that since some contest winner would just be thrilled to even be in the building, I swapped my nose bleeds and grabbed the great tickets…and took my mom and cemented my position as Best Son over my two, frankly more intelligent and successful siblings.
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