The First Philadelphia Flyers Game I Ever Attended

I will never forget the first Philadelphia Flyers game i ever attended. I fell in love with the game of hockey that night have loved the game ever since

My first real  memory of watching Philadelphia Flyers games was watching games on TV with my Dad when they played the Boston Bruins during the 1978 Conference Finals. Just before that, I  had attended my very first sporting event in person, a Phillies game in late April of that same year for my eighth birthday.

I had taken a mild interest in sports before that because I was constantly around it. My Dad was always watching the Flyers on TV and was hilarious to be around when he was watching them. The yelling and screaming at the TV, screaming in to his hands to keep from yelling too loud.  Before I had truly became a sports fan, I think I just watched the games with him because of how entertaining he was to watch them with.

When we would go to my grandparents house for Sunday dinner, the Phillies or Eagles were always on TV. My Uncle Tom had season tickets for both the Phillies and Eagles so my Dad was always going down to games with him. When we went to my Uncle Tom and Aunt Marianne’s house, the Flyers, Phillies or Eagles were always on TV. But, until I actually attended a sporting event in person, I wasn’t the sports fanatic I am today.

Once I got a taste of what it was like to watch a sporting event in person, that was it. I was hooked. I couldn’t get enough of it. i went to my first Eagles game later on that year for the season opener against the Rams  and I instantly fell in love with football as a result of that. Now that sports were really in my system, i started  to really pay attention to  the Flyers on TV when watching with my Dad. As a result, all I wanted to do after that was to attend my first Flyers game in person.

Going to my first Flyers game was all i could think of after that. I constantly badgered by Dad about taking me down to a game. It was really tough though. Flyers tickets were extremely tough to come by.  Every game was a sellout and there wasn’t any such thing as stubhub where you could just go on and by tickets for a game and maybe pay a little bit of extra money for them. Hell, in 1978, Al Gore still hadn’t invented the internet yet.

My Dad was always asking around for tickets but, people were reluctant to give them up. Cable TV was also in it’s beginning stages. We didn’t have Prism yet, the cable network that televised Flyers home games at the time, so I couldn’t  even watch Flyers home games on TV. Even something as simple as seeing the Flyers white jerseys seemed like a really cool thing because it was rare I ever got to see them because teams wore their white at home back in those days. So my only chance to see a home Flyers game was to see it in person.

The only snippets of Philadelphia Flyers home games I ever saw would be on the news when they would show highlights of the games. Even though it was only a one or two minute highlight with the sportscaster talking over it, in my case Don Tollefson because my family always watched the channel six news, you could see that the Spectrum just had a different feel to it than all the other buildings in the league. When the Flyers would score a goal, everyone in the building would leap out of their seats in celebration. You didn’t see that in any of the other buildings in the league. I thought maybe it was something that only I  noticed so I asked my Uncle Tom if he noticed that same thing and his response was, “Of course I notice. We have the best fans in the league.”

I absolutely had to get to a game after hearing him say that. i had to experience what that was like. Finally in the winter of 1979, my Dad was able to get tickets for a game from a guy he worked with who had season tickets but couldn’t go to one of the games. Finally!!

On February 9, 1979, I would be attending my very  first Flyers game against the Atlanta Flames. Yes, that’s right, the Atlanta Flames. Not the Calgary Flames or the Atlanta Thrashers but, the Atlanta Flames. Yes, I am that old.  Unfortunately, my Dad wasn’t able to take me to the game because he worked night work at the time. So he had my Uncle Tom take me to the game. My Dad warned me before the game that night that my Uncle Tom was notorious for being late and sure enough he was. We arrived at the game about four or five minutes in to the first period.

As cool as it seemed to be at a Flyers game when watching it on TV, nothing could have prepared me for what it was like to actually go down there. I have been to playoff games at both the Spectrum and the Wachovia Center. I have been to a Stanley Cup Finals game. Even though this was only a regular season game, albeit a big one, the Flyers and Flames were close in the standings, the atmosphere in the Spectrum in the winter of 1979 was every bit as electric as any of the playoff games I have ever attended.

As soon as you walked in to the building, you were hit by a wall of sound. From the sound of the skates on the ice,to  the sound of players being smashed in to the boards, to the sound of the crowd reacting to every little play that happened on the ice, I was completely mesmerized by it all. I was even amazed by how different the ice looked when you saw it in person as opposed to seeing it on TV. It’s an overused phrase but, it really was as if I had died and gone to heaven.

And all of this was  after only having just  walked in to the building.It only got better after that.  Like I mentioned before, we had arrived to the game late. When we got there, the Flyers were on a power play.  Our seats were in the third level so my uncle said to me, “Lets just stay down here and watch this power play and then we will go up to our seats.”

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Don’t ask me why but, when i was a kid, i had this thing where when we went to a game,  we had to go to the seats we were supposed to be sitting in right away. When i had gone to my first Phillies game, we were watching batting practice from seats right on the field because there was hardly anyone in the stadium at the time. I still insisted we go to our seats in section 216 and watch batting practice and the game from there. So again, when we got to the Flyers game that night, I just wanted to get to our seats.

My Uncle kept telling me we should wait until the power play was over before going up to our seats so we didn’t miss anything but, I insisted we go to our seats right now. He finally relented and we headed up to our seats. Right as we were sitting down, I heard a sound that made me flinch it was so loud. The Flyers scored on the power play that my uncle had said we should stay downstairs to watch.

The roar was ear piercing. I was sort of in shock for a few seconds at just how loud it was.  My uncle and I both missed the goal because we both had our backs to the play when the Flyers had scored because we were sitting down in our seats. With a big smile on his face my Uncle turns to the guy next to him and says, “WE WIND UP MISSING A GOAL BECAUSE THIS GUY WANTS TO GETS TO HIS SEATS!!!!!” Neither one of us and all the people in our row could  stop laughing for a while after that.

Luckily for me the Flyers scored six more times after that and won the game 7-4. The game wasn’t even that close. The game was 7-1 in the third period and then the Flames scored a couple of garbage goals at the end to make the game closer than it actually was.   Every  time the Flyers scored, I was in disbelief at how loud the roar was from the crowd. I had been to Eagles and Phillies games at the Vet before  where the crowd had gotten really in to it but, it was nothing like this. Before that, Baseball and Football were my two favorite sports but, after this, nothing would ever surpass hockey. I was a fan forever after that night.

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