State College and South Williamsport

State College and South Williamsport are two communities in central Pennsylvania.  On September 9, 1995, my son Bret (10 years old) and I took a car trip from our home in New York City to both places.  Why?

Unlike many major cities around the country (Los Angeles: USC; Chicago: Northwestern; Atlanta: Georgia Tech and Dallas: SMU), New York does not have a major college football team.  Columbia from the Ivy League is virtually ignored by the local New York media.  So I got the idea of a road trip to State College, home of Penn State University (with a major college football team), a distance of 254 miles.  

At first I attempted to buy tickets to a game, but in spite of the fact that Beaver Stadium (home of the Nittany Lions coached by Joe Paterno) held 96,000 fans (at that time), no tickets were available from the box office.  This did not deter us.  

Bret and I left home at 6 AM for the 12:00 PM kickoff against the visiting Texas Tech Red Raiders.  At about 11:00 AM, we approached the parking area surrounding Beaver Stadium.  Traffic was at a standstill.  Then Bret noticed the car immediately in front of us had a sign on its window advertising two tickets for sale.  I jumped out of our car and bought them.  

My son and I sat very high up in Beaver Stadium behind one of the end zones.  We had a great view of the game, especially the winning field goal at the end.  Penn State 24, Texas Tech 23.

After the game, we drove 67 miles to South Williamsport.  Two weeks before, Bret and I had watched on TV the Little League World Series championship game from there.  The championship game has been held in the South Williamsport area since Little League Baseball was founded in 1939.  

We stayed at a motel adjacent to the stadium where the games were played.  During the World Series in August, it charges super expensive rates.  In September, it was cheap.  We walked around the stadium, perhaps dreaming of Bret playing there one day.

This was not the only time we visited these two places.

Three years later (August 29, 1998), Bret and I and his friend Varun drove by car from our home in New York to South Williamsport (205 miles) for the Little League World Series.  The final pitted Toms River, New Jersey against Kashima, Japan.  More than 40,000 fans were there.  Admission was free and hot dogs cost only $1 each.  We found three empty seats down the left field line.

Toms River won the championship, 12-9.  The game set the current record for most home runs by both teams, 11 (including 6 by the Japanese team).  It was also memorable in that the Toms River shortstop was Todd Frazier who currently plays professional baseball for the New York Mets.  He has been a Major League player since 2011.

Four years later (2002) Bret and I returned to State College as part of our college tour to help Bret decide if Penn State would be a good fit for him.  I remember the Paterno Library and that Ten Cent was appearing on campus.  I was so ignorant I thought it was a ticket price.

1995 was not the first time Bret and I had been to State College.  Around 1990 my family and I were returning from Michigan to New York on the Sunday after Thanksgiving.  Unfortunately, we ran into a terrible snow storm in Pennsylvania.  Traffic on I-80 wasn't moving.  We realized we wouldn't make it home that day.  

We attempted to find a hotel room along the road but they were all filled with other stranded travelers.  We even contemplated sleeping in a shelter or in our car.  Then I remembered that State College, because of football, would have plenty of hotel rooms.  We drove an extra 40 miles to get there after midnight, but at least we all had a warm bed for an unscheduled stop.