My friend Erika and myself had made a long 26 hour drive to Madison, WI from Phoenix and were looking forward to the best time in our lives. Well, we hung out in Madison for a couple of days and then I went to Michigan to visit a buddy and she went to Alpine for the show. We parted ways for a week and then met up at Deer Creek.

The vibe was awesome and this was my first multiple day concert, so I was amped. So we naturally set up camp and started partying in preparation for the first night's show. It's about an hour from show time and my brother and I have to go pick up our tickets from this guy we hooked up with on ticketboard.

So Erika, my brother and I start walking toward will call to grab our tickets. Erika already had tickets so it was just us that needed ours. About a 1/4 mile from our campsite, while we were walking toward the venue, Erika reaches in her back pocket where her ticket was, but now was not. We traced our steps back only to come to the conclusion that someone had snagged her ticket while we were walking.

Extremely pissed off and disappointed, Erika goes back to the campsite thinking she will not be able to go to the show. I go up to will call to find the guy we had scored tickets from. The guys name was Dick Shafty (no relation to the song) and he told us he looks like Mark McGwire. So my brother and I walk up looking for a bigger guy with red hair, only to spot an actual person wearing a McGwire jersey and Cardinals hat, an identical match.

So we go up, give him the money, I tell him about Erika and he says he has an extra. Tickets were hard to come by, so my brother and I offer to buy the ticket for Erika. I started running my fastest toward our camp behind the venue, and to this day don't know how I did it. If you have ever been to Deer Creek, everything is far away from the venue. Anyways, so I run back to the campsite about a mile (or so it felt), grabbed Erika ecstatically and told her we bought her a ticket. She freaks out and we run back together.

We get back to where Mark McGwire (aka Dick Shafty) and my brother are, and we offer him money for the ticket, but he emphatically refuses because of the stealing incident. It was by far the coolest thing anyone could do, and I wanted to thank Dick Shafty for the act of kindness. Small things like that reinforce the phish phamily belief.

So that concludes how Mark McGwire saved the day in Noblesville, Indiana and made our summer tour a great one.

- Brian