Ghosts of Patriots Past
02 December 2014 -- 336/365
North Providence, Rhode Island
I held season tickets for the New England Patriots from 1975 through 1981. In '75, individual game tickets cost $10, and the entire season package - 7 regular season games and 3 pre-season games - cost a whopping $100. They went up to $12 per game by '81. To put it into perspective, the price of an individual game ticket today costs almost 50% more than the price I paid for the entire season in '75! Now, about today's photo. Unlike baseball and hockey, when a football is kicked or thrown into the stands, you're required to give the ball back. Ushers swarm down the aisles to quickly retrieve it. In the pre-game warmups, most of them are clustered in the end-zones to retrieve the balls the field-goal kickers send over the large netting behind the goal posts. As you can see, though, at least one ball got away. I was at the New England Patriots vs Miami Dolphins game in 1979, and the Patriots were warming up in front of my section. Quarterback Steve Grogan was throwing sideline passes to his receivers, and at one point he overthrew wide-receiver Don Westbrook. The ball bounced once and skipped into the stands, right into my waiting arms. Without even thinking about it, I tucked the ball under my jacket, scampered three sections over towards mid-field, and then sprinted into the concourse under the stadium. I went up to one of the guards at the gate, gave him a sob-story about having left my raincoat in the car, and got his permission to exit the stadium to retrieve it. That now required a one-mile run down US-1 to my car. (We used to park on Route 140 to avoid all the congestion near the stadium.) I secured the ball in the trunk of the car, and ran back up to the stadium. (All my cross-country training was coming in handy.) The guard did ask about my raincoat, but bought the excuse that I must have left it in my kitchen instead of bringing it with me. What struck me as odd, though, is that no usher ever came down to my seat when I rejoined my group. In any case, the photo you see here is of an official NFL football from Schaefer Stadium in Foxboro. (Schaefer was renamed Sullivan Stadium, and then Foxboro Stadium before being replaced by Gillette Stadium, the current home of the Pats.)
Post processing started with a classic filter in Topaz B&W FX. I adjusted color sensitivity sliders, adaptive exposure, regions, contrast, boost black, boost white, and protect highlights. A levels adjustment was added in PSE.
Here's the high res version in Smugmug:
http://kannafoot.smugmug.com/Photo-Challenges/PAD2014/i-vN3THMB/0/XL/2014%2012%2002_0003%20copy-XL.jpg
