The only detail Mike Cole remembers from the Bullets-Bulls game he attended at the Chicago Arena on Oct. 26, 1984, was when Washington’s Jeff Ruland rudely denied a dunk to a young Chicago player.

       The Bulls shooting guard went down, landing flat on his back and briefly stayed there, winded.

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       “There was a gasp in the arena,” said Mike.

       Had Chicago’s brand-new player been injured in his NBA debut?

       No. Michael Jordan got up, kept playing and helped the Bulls beat the Bullets, 109-93.

       Jordan did pretty well for himself, becoming one of history’s greatest basketball players. And last month, Mike Cole did pretty well for himself, too. An unused ticket he had from that 1984 game sold for $468,000.

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       Mike, 55, is very glad he hadn’t lost or thrown the ticket away in the last 38 years. It went with him from Illinois, where he was a student at Northwestern University, back to Bethesda, where he grew up. When his parents moved out of that house and ordered him to take his stuff, the ticket went from home to home before winding up in Cheshire, Conn., where Mike lives with his wife, Kristen, and is the director of admissions for a medical school.

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       But if Mike attended that game in 1984, how did he have an unused ticket? Well, he’d had two, thanks to a Bethesda neighbor named Jerry Sachs, who was the president of the Capital Centre, the Bullets’ home arena.

       Mike’s dad, Elliot, called Jerry and said his son was a big Bullets fan. (Mike’s bar mitzvah involved a chartered bus to a Bullets game.) Could Jerry arrange for a couple of tickets to the team’s season opener in Chicago to be placed at will call for Mike?

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       “I called the Bulls and they left two tickets for this fellow,” said Jerry, 87. “The rest is history.”

       The tickets weren’t free. Elliot paid for them: $8.50 each.

       Mike said he tried to find someone to go with him to the game, but as a freshman in only his second month at Northwestern, he didn’t know that many people yet.

       “I wasn't making a huge effort, because I'm fully comfortable going by myself,” he said.

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       After the game, Mike threw away his torn ticket stub and put the unused ticket in the folder holding his sports memories: a ticket to a 1983 Baltimore Orioles World Series game, Final Four tickets, Frozen Four tickets. It was an odd ticket to save, since nothing had really happened at the game. The leading scorer was the Bulls’ Orlando Woolridge.

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       Said Mike: “It didn’t seem to be the most important game in terms of the outcome, but clearly there was something in my mind that said: You know what? This belongs in the folder with the rest of them.”

       The game turned out to be the debut of a superstar.

       “I never thought about [the ticket] having any value until December 2021, when a Michael Jordan stub from his debut was auctioned off,” Mike said. It fetched $252,000.

       Mike didn’t have a stub. ( “I wish I knew what I had done with it,” he said.) He had an entire unused ticket. On Feb. 26, it sold to an anonymous buyer for $390,000 — $468,000 when you include the premium for Heritage Auctions.

       Mike studied radio, television and film at Northwestern. “I thought I was going to be the next George Michael, running clips on the Sports Machine,” he said. “It turned out I was not nearly as comfortable in front of the camera or as attractive as he was.”

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       He grew to love his time at Northwestern.

       “I made a lot of great friends,” Mike said. “Perhaps I’m most fortunate I didn’t make them that early.”

       Reuniting

       A lot of high school reunions have been on hold for a couple of years now, but here’s one taking place this summer:

       Northwood High Class 1970 — Aug. 20. For information, visit northwoodhs1970.com, or email NorthwoodHS1970@gmail.com or call Roy Seabolt at 571-263-1430.

       If your D.C.-area high school is reuniting, send the details to me — john.kelly@washpost.com — with “Reunion” in the subject line.

       Not Pasadena

       Accompanying my Sunday column about Lizzie Baldy and the naming of Pasadena, Md., in Anne Arundel County, there was a photo of the intersection of Pasadena and Baldy avenues. The caption said that was in Pasadena, Md., but it’s actually in Severna Park. The town of Pasadena is a few miles north.

       Back soon

       I’m taking some time off to gather nuts for Squirrel Week. I should be back in this space on April 10.