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'Grandpa Bullet' Starts the Basketball Season by Getting Shoved Aside

The Washington Bullets begin their 1996-97 basketball season in Orlando tonight, as full of hope as they have been in many seasons. David A. Register begins the season cast aside. He is a loyal fan who has brought smiles to thousands of others, but he apparently isn't welcome any longer.

The issue (big surprise) is dollars.

David, a 78-year-old widower and retired government social worker, has been a season ticket holder since 1978, or since shortly after the Bullets took up residence at USAir Arena (originally Capital Centre). For many years, David paid full freight for his two center-court, third-row tickets.

When prices started to climb, he agreed to move to cheaper seats on the concourse level, and he gratefully accepted the team's offer to subsidize those seats.

But now the Bullets say they must ask David Register to pay an additional $20 per seat per game, or $1,640 for the season. Because he lives on a fixed income, David says he has no choice but to relinquish the seats.

When David goes, other Bullets fans will be losing something as well. David is well-known to dozens of them as the man who waves a cane and berates referees in a good-natured southern accent. His trademark: "That was a ba-a-a-a-d, ba-a-a-a-d, sorry call!" A 1994 story in this newspaper described him as "railing against the referees like a preacher denouncing sin."

Many sports hecklers have either too much invective in their hearts or too much beer in their bellies, and they strike fellow fans as obnoxious. David Register's barbs almost always draw smiles, because of his age, his Mr. Magoo looks and the fact that he is so obviously enjoying himself.

Nor is it just fans who like him. When referees check in at the scorer's table just before each game, they will invariably ask the staff where "the old dude" is.

Children may have been his biggest boosters. He would let them swing his cane (he has a collection of 10), and they would blast the referees right along with him. Among some of the younger set, he came to be known as Grandpa Bullet.

Now he is a casualty of capitalism. "I will always love those Bullets and the city of Washington," said David, who lives in a small apartment on Capitol Hill. "I guess I'll have to satisfy myself some other way."

Why are the Bullets insisting on greater value for David's seats after letting him ride far below market for so long? "The popularity of the team has increased demand for season tickets in that location," said Matt Williams, the Bullets vice president for communications. David has been "sitting in a deeply discounted seat for several years now," Matt said. The team "could not justify such deeply discounted tickets" any longer.

Many other season ticket holders are upset at the prospect of David-lessness.

"David is a wonderful fixture at Bullets games," said Alan Marks, a longtime fan and season ticket holder. "There are few people who stick out at major sporting events. David is one of them."

Jack Skloff, a season ticket holder and travel consultant to the Bullets, said the team has been "more than fair" to David by subsidizing his seats. "They did a wonderful thing for him -- more than they did for other people," Jack said.

Unquestionably correct. But why stop being so generous? Especially when you consider that . . .

The other "famous" Bullets fan is the relentlessly irritating stunt-puller and lawyer Robin Ficker. Do the Bullets want him as their only widely known fan?

Owner Abe Pollin pays millions to nobodies who sit on the Bullets bench. He has paid untold additional millions to build the new MCI Center in downtown Washington. How can he come up with that kind of cash but not find $1,600 to make David Register happy?

This one is a dunk (to coin a phrase). David Register and his cane belong at Bullets games. Abe Pollin can make it happen. And he has time: 24 hours until the Bullets home opener against Cleveland.

If you don't see fit to do it, Abe, you're making a ba-a-a-a-d, ba-a-a-a-d, sorry call.