THE Garden

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Granted, my debut at Madison Square Garden wasn’t at Tyson – Holyfield.  It wasn’t at a Ranger game.  But being at the men’s Big East College Basketball Tournament wasn’t such a bad way to take The Garden in for the first time.  Minus the nine dollar beers (and five dollar normal sized bottles of water, for real), it’s a special building.

It’s a much more personal arena than I thought.  I had imagined such a famous arena (the world’s most, as the PA announcer repeatedly reminded the crowd) was going to be some huge ampitheatre where the players would look like Hobbits from the upper rows, but it’s not like that. 

I wouldn’t have had to find out what those seats were like if it wasn’t for my true New York experience.  I showed up looking for scalped tickets, and wasn’t a step on the sidewalk near the building when a guy in a backpack asked me if I was “selling”, which is what those gentleman ask - no legal repercussions for buying, only selling.

I had been told to get a seat in at least the 200 level to really take in the college feel.  When Big Al (as his ‘business card’ said) offered me 300 level for 40 bucks, I told him I was paying 20 for a 200 level or better and walked away. 

After the chase-down-we-can-work-this-out-approach, he handed me a ticket in the lowest bowl, and agreed to give it to me for $25.  I offered him the $20, and he said no.     

So when I gave him the ticket back and he started to laugh about me driving a hard bargain, I figured I had won.  He said fine, deal, here’s the ticket, and scurried away like the cops were six steps behind and about to finally pounce.  I got inside and gave my ticket to the people at the front. 

Section 311.  F—k.

It’s alright, I was a single, so I found a good seat anyway, but man.  Welcome to New York, rookie.

The arena has amazing acoustics - even at half time when everybody is simply talking it’s loud.  I’m adding good seats to a major boxing match at MSG to my bucket list which currently only has “play Augusta” on it (PS less than a month until The Masters, eeeekkkk).

You have to love college sports.  The band.  The students.  The chants.  The games just feel oh-so-important.  In the WCHA, my team played in front of 15,000 in Wisconsin, 12,000 in North Dakota and 10,000 in Minneapolis.  The student section was always in the same t-shirts, standing the whole game while chanting chants that you’d have to have taken a class in fan-obsession to know.

   (Kohl Center, Wisconsin)

But college basketball fans are even more influential because they’re right on top of the court, so the players can pick out certain individual to be the object of their hate.  

At most college games you can yell anything from any seat in the building and nobody will tell you to sit down, including the profanity-riddled slew of derogatory comments coming from my nearby seat-mate, which brought nothing but chuckles from the crowd.

The two games I saw weren’t thrillers, with the better team inevitably taking over fairly handily in the end, but I was glad I went.

I even ended up bringing Chinese food  uptown to Stan Fischlers apartment for dinner (Stan is one of the better connected hockey men in the world, as well as the current record holder in Jew-jokes-told-per-day.  I even learned a new Yiddish word).

And tonight, I’ll be in the production meeting of the Rangers – Predators game  for the MSG network with Stan, trying to take in what I can about how that all goes down. 

So today, back on the train!

*Also noteworthy:  Stan has written five books on trains, including the one I take in, the LIRR (Long Island Rail Road).  Fascinating guy.