If the world goes ticketless, I’ll adjust as always. That doesn’t mean I’ll like it

I like an old-fashioned, paper ticket.

A traditional ticket I can hand to the ticket person to keep or scan and be allowed to enter the stadium for a game or concert.

A paper ticket or stub that I can save as a souvenir. Place in a scrapbook or drawer. Or use as a bookmark.

Somewhere in a box, drawer or scrapbook, I have tickets to a couple of World Series games, an All-Star game, Big Red football games, Springsteen concerts and a John Prine concert on St. Pat’s Day in Chicago.

There’s a ticket saved by my Aunt Marie from June 1966 game at Busch Stadium. Bob Gibson pitched against the Atlanta Braves and Hank Aaron. I was 7 years old. I don’t remember much about the game itself but the ticket stub reminds me I was there with my grandpa.

From April 1978, there’s a stub from Bob Forsch’s first no-hitter.

Don’t forget the souvenir, homemade ticket saved from a friend’s bachelor party in the early 1980s. Knights of Columbus Hall in East St. Louis. $5 in advance; $6 at the door. “Plenty of food, beer and gambling.” We didn’t travel for bachelor parties then. Couldn’t afford it. We didn’t dare ask our parents for help. You going where for what? We knew better.

I’m traditional and prefer a paper ticket that I can hand to a friend, or leave at the willcall window, or mail the old-fashioned way with a stamp, or leave it in a mailbox.

Ticketless entry is becoming a norm.

I’ll adjust, as always.

But I don’t have to like using my cell phone to get through the gate.

Go ahead, roll your eyes.

Here’s another old guy who fears technology and can’t move forward. The guy who can’t work the TV remote. The guy on mute during the virtual meetings.

Settle down, hot shot. What you forget is that my generation wasn’t born into technology. We have learned it, all of it. We grew up on a bike or in the backyard. It was too hot in our small house to sit on the couch and play games. We entered college with typewriters. We were told not to stand in front of a microwave oven because the radiation would cause health problems. We giggled when we heard cusswords and saw nakedness on cable TV.

Yet, we have moved forward and become efficient if not comfortable with technological changes.

I mean, our first remote phone fit in a big black bag in the trunk of a car.

We’ll make it work

If the world goes ticketless, we will make it work because we want to go to games and concerts.

Converting to a digital ticket system in which your phone stores the tickets means an end to fans like me keeping stubs as memories of games attended. That’s fine. There are few old saps like me out there who like to hold onto old tickets as keepsakes.

It might mean less fraud, or lost tickets. I guess 15% of our population that does not own smartphones will be out of luck.

I’m glad I held onto some old tickets as souvenirs.

Someday, it will be quite a story to tell.

Get this — you actually had to hand a paper ticket to gain entry into the ballgame or concert.

Kind of like the story about that big bag phone in the car trunk or being warned not stand in front of the microwave oven.