Back in '96, in addition to the trip to Atlanta to see the Olympic Trials, we also went to Indianapolis earlier that year to see the NCAA Indoor Track Championships.
We got to be down on the track at the Hoosierdome the day before that meet too, but I don't remember the circumstances around that being that big of a deal. There were, after all, athletes doing their pre-meet workouts, and my brother and I were both wearing our track jackets, so we blended in.
What was a big deal was when my dad started making subtle motions at me to look behind me, so I turned around and saw George Steinbrenner standing about six feet away from me. I could have tried to convince him to trade Jeter to the Orioles, but alas, I just stood and stared. I have no idea why George Steinbrenner was there. Guess he was a track fan.
After checking out the track, we decided to look into getting some tickets to the U.S. Olympic Swimming Trials, which were going on at the same time a few miles away. We flagged down a cab and spent the next 15 or 20 minutes getting our ears talked off by the driver. He went on and on about some small college that got into the NCAA basketball tournament and something that the coach or somebody said, punctuated with "now get this" and "listen to this" as he built up to the climax of his story.
When we got to the aquatic center, there were scalpers all over the place outside. Apparently in Indiana, there were no laws about where you could scalp tickets or even whether or not scalping is allowed (in Maryland, it's allowed, but you have to be a good distance away from the venue.) Here, there were scalpers right there on the steps up to the entrance. Our cabbie had gotten out of the cab and had joined us, offering to help us get a good deal. He picked out a kid who looked about middle school age with a handful of tickets and asked him what the asking price was. The kid said $20, so the cabbie said "$20 for all four? We'll take them," and we gave the kid a $20 and got our tickets before the poor kid could let it sink in that he had been railroaded. I guess it would have been poor form to refuse the deep discount that our new friend had gotten for us, but I did feel bad for the kid.
My dad, and my brother, and I each got a ticket, but there were four tickets. The cabbie got the fourth one and probably scalped it. He probably got $20 for it.
So we went in and watched the Olympic Swimming Trials for an evening. All I remember about it is that Anita Nall, a girl that went to my high school while my brother was still going there (though she transferred to a private school before she went to the 1992 Olympics,) did not qualify for the 1996 Games. Still, she had the 1992 Games to pin to her resume, and she would be the most famous local Olympian until Michael Phelps (who went to my alma mater the whole four years) came along.
Other happenings of note from that trip include:
* Among the runners was David Bobb, from UMBC, a local rival of Towson State, where I went. UMBC stands for University of Maryland Baltimore County, but the announcers never got that right. One time, he was announced as being from University of Maryland Baltimore City, and another time it was University of Maryland Baltimore Campus. He unexpectedly ended up finishing third in the 55 Meter finals, giving UMBC their first national track medalist before Towson could. Neither UMBC nor Towson has had an NCAA track medalist since, to the best of my knowledge.
* We were walking back from the meet to our hotel one night, with a gym bag full of my dad's videotaping equipment in tow, when we got the distinct feeling that we were being followed by a shady fellow. So my dad started talking loudly about beating people up. Either that worked or the guy never had any intention of mugging us, because he never bothered us and kept on walking after we went into the hotel.
* On our way to the Dome on the last morning, we walked past a video arcade, and I could see people playing a game with virtual reality goggles and sensor gloves. I remember thinking that this was something that we would be seeing a lot more of, and traditional video screen games would become less common. It didn't pan out that way.
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