Major League Baseball

Sweet ride worth wait: Brewers fan drives Mustang he won at age 10

Published Dec. 23, 2014 2:30 p.m. ET

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Andre Ghelfi-Thomas never thought he'd see the ticket he ripped off his team photo again as he entered Miller Park to watch the Milwaukee Brewers wrap up a dismal season on Sept. 20, 2003.

It's hard to blame him. Most walk away from Fan Appreciation Day empty-handed. On that night, Ghelfi-Thomas and his mother, Janine Ghelfi, were two of 27,823 people on hand to watch the Brewers play the Arizona Diamondbacks.

The game was not memorable in any way, as both teams were headed nowhere. But the series of events that led to a 10-year-old walking away with a brand new Ford Mustang will be remembered forever by those involved.

"I can't really explain it," Ghelfi-Thomas told FOX Sports Wisconsin. "It is still unbelievable to this day."

Through numerous different connections, Janine Ghelfi usually could get Brewers tickets quite frequently. But her decision to attend the fourth-to-last home game in 2003 stemmed from a conversation with a co-worker.

She drove down to Miller Park early that Saturday to purchase three tickets -- one for her, one for her son and one for his friend.

When they arrived at the game, stadium ushers handed each of them a team photo with a ticket attached at the bottom. The Brewers now handle Fan Appreciation Day differently, simply calling out sections and seat numbers to announce the winners. But back in 2003, fans had to rip off their team photo stub with a number on it and place it into a giant bin.

The person in charge of collecting the tickets that night was just about to take the bin away when Ghelfi-Thomas and Ghelfi walked through the gates.

"The process of how this ticket got into the bin is just unbelievable," Ghelfi said. "This bin was a big, cardboard bin. I'm sure they were all over Miller Park. There was one guy riding around in a golf cart collecting them into one garbage bag. He was just coming to the bin and I remember saying, 'Hey, don't forget us, we have tickets here.'

"He dumped them right into the bin, got on the golf cart and made his way through Miller Park. He actually got this ticket down to the barrel where they spin around. They were just little ticket stubs. He got it down in there."

Had they arrived any later, their tickets wouldn't have been entered into the numerous drawings.

"I think back all the time: What would have happened if that guy would have come 10 seconds earlier or 10 seconds later?" Ghelfi-Thomas said. "He came right at that time. Right as he was picking up his bin, we walked in."

The game itself was uneventful. Brewers left-hander Wayne Franklin was shelled for eight runs in 4 2/3 innings, as Diamondbacks left fielder Luis Gonzalez drove in three runs in a 10-4 victory for Arizona.

After Keith Osik, yes, Keith Osik, flew out to Gonzalez to end the game, Ghelfi-Thomas and his friend ran down to the first few rows to try and grab a baseball from one of the players.

Slowly but surely, tickets were drawn and prizes were given away. The two grand prizes were a hot tub and the Mustang. As Bernie Brewer used his inflated hands to draw the winning ticket for the car, it was realized that nobody had claimed the hot tub.

Andre Ghelfi-Thomas' ticket to the 2003 Brewers game where he won the Mustang.

Instead of using the ticket the mascot had just drawn for the car as the new winner of the hot tub, the Brewers decided to re-draw.

"I told them they had to memorize their numbers, and they did," Ghelfi said. "(Public address announcer) Robb Edwards was calling the number (for the car) off. He started reading, 'Zero, five', and I'm thinking, 'OK, I have these numbers.' Then he says, 'two' and then he says, 'four.' Andre looks up at me and says, 'That's my number. That's me.' And I said, 'Yeah, that's you.' He totally didn't know what was going on."

Ghelfi-Thomas tells a slightly different story than his mother.

"I remember he held onto this ticket for maybe 10 minutes because the raffle prize that was raffled off beforehand didn't get claimed right away," Ghelfi-Thomas said. "I was just worried about getting a baseball from (Brewers outfielder) Geoff Jenkins.

"I hear the number for the car and I think to myself, 'That's kind of close.' I hear a commotion from my section, and I see my mom jumping up and down with the winning ticket. I ran up to her, grabbed the ticket and from there I don't remember much. It was kind of a whirlwind there."

Ghelfi gathered her son and his friend and headed down to the field to claim the car. Her 10-year-old son was suddenly the owner of a brand-new Ford Mustang.

"There was nothing on the rules or anything that said you have to be 18 years of age or older," Ghelfi said. "I'm sure there is now, but there was nothing specific written. However, he did get booed because probably half of Miller Park was in their 20s and were dying to win this Mustang. When they found out a 10-year-old won it, he got booed."

Because Ghelfi-Thomas was so young, his parents were forced to decide whether to keep the car or sell it and use the money for his future college education. Eventually, they decided to hold onto the Mustang for when Ghelfi-Thomas was ready to drive.

"I couldn't sell it," Ghelfi said. "If it had been a minivan or a Hummer or something huge, I probably would have. But this was such a dude's car."

Ghelfi didn't just hand the car over to her son when he got his driver's license. She required him to have good grades and stay out of trouble. Because the car was barely driven for seven years, Ghelfi-Thomas' first car was a Mustang with limited miles on it.

"It was nice having a car that only had 15,000 miles on it, compared to my friends purchasing a used car for their first car," Ghelfi-Thomas said.

Now a student at Marquette University, Ghelfi-Thomas still drives the Mustang today. Every time he sees his license plate -- that he personalized with the winning ticket number -- he thinks back to his lucky day.

Follow Andrew Gruman on Twitter

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