PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — You only live once.
“What I always tell people is, as a 10-year-old, if you told me I could go to every single Phillies game at some point for a whole season, I’d waited my whole life to do that,” said Rob Rickenbach, 62, of Bluffton, South Carolina.
This dream opportunity has finally arrived and is in session for Rickenbach. For this season, and only this season (you’ll read why shortly), he has a full-season ticket plan for his favorite baseball team. That’s 81 regular season home games at Citizens Bank Park with the hope there’s another deep Red October run.
There’s a catch, though.
The key word is ticket.
Singular.
One ticket in section 320 at the ballpark – a view that Rickenbach is a big fan of.
To make that happen, Rickenbach has temporarily relocated to West Philadelphia for the summer, living with strangers.
The biggest part to the catch of this bucket list item is Rickenbach has the approval of his wife of 38 years, Robyn, who has stayed back home in Bluffton while he spends the majority of the summer about 700 miles and roughly an 11-hour drive away.
“I need to start by saying my wife is a saint.”
Rob and Robyn, parents of three and grandparents of four, have been together for about four decades, are happily retired and enjoying life. Robyn says she “married into” Rob’s sports fandom, admitting she’s “a good-natured spectator.” She loves tennis and enjoys basketball. They went to a professional basketball game on their honeymoon. They were fortunate enough to attend the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta and they’ve been to international soccer games. If they’re in a city that has a baseball game, they’ll probably attend, but going to dozens of baseball games in one season doesn’t sound like something Robyn is enthusiastic about.
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Since retiring, the Rickenbachs have done a lot of traveling and spent significant time in other parts of the country. On one of their trips, Rob’s bucket list item came up. Robyn is very supportive and wanted him to do it.
“I said, ‘If this is something you want to do, you should do it,’” Robyn explained. “And he kept saying, ‘Well, I want to wait until I’m older’ … and I said, ‘Well, I think that’s backwards. If you really want to go, you need to do it while you’re young enough to be able to enjoy it and not have it be a problem.’”
And in addition to that, it was ideal for Rob to pick a season in which the Phillies had a chance to go all the way.
“Last summer, about August, before the Phillies made their great run, she said, ‘When are you going to [fulfill your bucket list item?]’ And I said, ‘I don’t know. I’m not sure.’ ‘Well, are they are going to be next year,’ she asked me. And I said, ‘On paper absolutely.’ And she said, ‘Well go do it next summer.’ So boom, there it was.”
Rob, a Reading native and 2008 Phillies Phantasy Camp alumnus who lived in the D.C. area as a government contractor for a long time, already had a partial season ticket plan that he utilized every now and then as someone from a different part of the country. That included last season, which ended the team’s decade-long postseason drought. Rob sold his postseason seats to bring in enough money so he could upgrade to a full-season plan for this year. He doesn’t always go to the games by himself. There have been multiple times he meets up with friends to go to a game, and thus he’ll trade his one seat in and find other seats to sit with his pals.
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Robyn said Rob is a fairly quiet fan, but one who will never hesitate to strike up a conversation with a stranger. She called him considerate – one who will pick up his trash. And she also said he’s genuine and fun to go to games with.
One of the cool parts about Rob’s bucket list item is that this summer isn’t just about baseball. While Rob grew up in nearby Reading following the Phillies through his AM radio and the broadcasts of Harry Kalas, Richie Ashburn and By Saam, he is now getting to experience much of what Philadelphia has to offer for the first time. He says as a kid, they never came to Philadelphia. Thus, on his Facebook page, he has dubbed this experience “Summer in Philly,” aka “SIP.” He chronicles every game, especially the ones he attends, and showcases different parts of the city he gets to visit when not at Citizens Bank Park.
Thus, so far, this bucket list item has been a blast.
“He’s happier than a bug in a rug,” said Robyn, who stayed back in Bluffton to care of her elderly mom.
Rob mentioned how Robyn “didn’t want to spend a whole summer playing second fiddle to baseball.
“Wise woman,” he quipped.
Robyn is happy for Rob, but added there are times when she wishes he called it a season and flew home.
“I’m not going to tell you it’s easy,” said Robyn. “It’s not easy to have him that far away, especially because I have an elderly mom that I care for mostly, but so does he. And it’s not easy to run a house by yourself. I’ve developed a lot of empathy for people who are living alone after having been together with someone. Not so simple. It’s the stupid things you get that get you, like having to take out the trash or wanting to move furniture and not having anybody to do it with. That kind of stuff.”
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How does she get through it?
Well, Robyn admits there’s some yelling, commiserating and moaning, but knew this bucket list item was coming this summer. She’s keeping busy, though, with household projects and traveling.
Rob said he and Robyn keep in touch about once a day over the phone. Rob also said when the Phillies are on the road, he’ll occasionally return to Bluffton to see Robyn. He went home briefly in May and is about to make another trip back with the All-Star break approaching. They’re even going to meet up in Pittsburgh in July to go to a Phillies v. Pirates game at PNC Park.
While this is a lifelong goal for Rob, and although he had been a partial season ticket holder in the past, this certainly won’t be an every summer thing for him going forward.
“I’m a one and done I think … If I did it again, I’d probably end up divorced.”
But he hopes the Phillies go on a deep Red October run in 2023 like they did last season so he can experience that. Robyn hopes that happens too.
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“That would be the best of every world,” said Robyn. “Rob invested this time in the summer and I really do support him. I wish him all the best. I don't really wish he would come home and call it quits, but I have days when I wish that were true. So, no, I mean I would hate for him to be up there all summer and then them not have a great season. To me that feels kind of unfair, right? If you're going to do this, you may as well play it out for a wonderful season. And I'll probably come up and join him if it comes to that.”
And since Robyn supported Rob with checking this off his bucket list, is there something she’d like to do on her bucket list?
“That’s a great question,” said Robyn. “And I’ve actually been thinking about that a little bit. We’re very fortunate with the things we’re doing. We travel a ton, and we have a lot of flexibility in our time. There are some things that I would like to do. I don’t have the kind of passion around them the way this was such a passion thing for Rob.
“I’d love to go live in another country for three or four months and really immerse myself in that country. We had talked about doing that, together, but I could do it separately, too. I speak Spanish fluently. I'd love to have a long-term volunteer gig in one of those Spanish-speaking countries. That's probably the closest thing I come to something big, big like that.”
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