By Eric Gerson
It’s the summer of 1986 and just a few months earlier the Miami Dolphins had played their final game in the Orange Bowl. A disappointing loss to the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship game that robbed fans of an opportunity to see Dan Marino in a second Super Bowl, a game that he probably would have won against the Chicago Bears. The good news for me was that the new home for the Dolphins, Joe Robbie Stadium, just happened to be down the street from where I lived. A few miles of biking and walking would land me at the doorsteps of my favorite football team. For a 15 year old, this is about as lucky as you can get.
As sweat rolled down my face I looked at my brother and asked “ are we done?” He says “Yep” as we start packing up and rolling away. Even in August, $20 is the going rate to mow a lawn in these parts, so over the course of a few weeks as a Miami Dolphins home game would approach we would find a few lawns to mow in order to grab some cash to get tickets. As an interesting side note, the reason I remember that we got $20 per lawn is a scam we used to run on my father. See this is my brother from another mother. My dad would offer me $10 to mow the grass I would tell him no thanks, not enough money. Dad responded by trying to teach me a lesson, and offered my brother $20! My brother would gladly mow the grass and then give me half the money, and cool off with a dip in the pool. Sorry Dad, true story!
So by the time gameday would roll around we would each have about $30 to start off with. The key to our plan was making sure we got to the stadium a few days in advance in order to get one of the little printed seating charts that let everybody know what sections were what at the new stadium. Remember this is 1986, there is no internet to look up the seating chart, and scalping tickets is not exactly legal but not exactly illegal either. You could be pretty certain back then that you were not going to be arrested for selling a few extra tickets around the stadium. Times have certainly changed.
For a 1pm game we would probably leave our house at about 10am on our bikes and ride right up to the California Club Mall, which is the halfway point between our houses and JRS. We would then lock up the bikes and set out on foot. It would not be long before we would run across somebody selling tickets, and scalpers always claimed they were 50 yard line seats. Of course since we had a seating chart days in advance, we would have studied it well, and we knew what sections were what. No fooling us! The closer we got the stadium the more desperate people who needed tickets would get. We would flip tickets the entire walk to the stadium. We would leave with $30 each in our pocket and by the time we got to the game we would have 50 yard line seats and $20 – $30 left over for food and beverages! Throw in that this was before a soda was $5 and it was a sweet deal!
Of course today if someone tried this they would end up forking over next week’s paycheck for bail money. Certainly the compensation for mowing grass has changed, but when was the last time you saw kids pushing mowers down the street going door to door? Progress has brought many good things, but it has also taken away from the simplicity of things like a hard days work as trade for a football game. Interestingly enough, this never worked for Marlins games, as by then scalping was becoming more difficult due to law enforcement. Maybe in my next column I will tell the story of the Marlins opening day pin and how nobody wanted it on game day, but certainly wanted it after! Thanks for reading!
