I want to thank the esteemed Jon Brodkin for reminding me that 10 years ago today a very special night in Boston baseball history was also a watershed moment for me from both a sports fan and a professional capacity. Along with being there live to watch the start of baseball’s greatest playoff comeback ever, I saw for the first time, someone sending a text message during a game.

Yeah, we’ve all come a long way.

To refresh — it was 10 years ago today on a chilly Boston night when the all-hope-lost Red Sox rallied to win Game 4 of their ALCS series against the hated Yankees.

10 years ago today, Millar, Roberts, Mueller, and Ortiz kicked off the greatest comeback in baseball history http://t.co/wiKu16IFBx

— The real Jon Brodkin (@jbrodkin) October 17, 2014

Since Voice over IP was one of my main beats then, I was flying in to Boston that night to attend the VON Conference — and when I got out of Logan I asked the cabbie if the Yankees had finally eliminated the Sox. He told me that even though it was late — around 8 p.m.? — the game hadn’t started yet, because it was scheduled to start after the NL game (St. Louis against Houston). So I dumped my bag in my Back Bay hotel room and hoofed it to Fenway, where I found someone selling one seat in the bleachers for face value. For $50, I was in for the baseball night of my life.

Who texts on a phone?

You probably all know how the game ended — as a Cubs fan I was not attached emotionally to the outcome, but sitting in the Fenway bleachers I was carried along with the agony and eventual ecstasy of the home crowd. What I remember most is: 1. You don’t get up when you’re sitting in the Fenway centerfield bleachers, because it bugs everyone else when you do. (I limited myself to one beer, one bad hot dog and one relief session, all on the same trip, so as not to fall out of favor with my very vocal seatmates.) 2. Boston bleacher fans probably know more baseball than any other place I’ve been (Wrigley, Candlestick, AT&T Park), including the minor-league history of not just their team’s players, but the opposition’s as well. 3. Everybody in the park knew Roberts was going to steal, and he did it anyway. 4. I’ve never before or since heard a fan eruption like the one that happened when Big Papi’s walk-off cleared the fences.

So yeah, greatest baseball game I’ve ever been to, no contest. But something else happened that night — that very cold night where I was glad to have remembered a wool cap and gloves — when I saw, during one inning break, a 20-something woman in the row in front of me doing something with her phone that seemed way more involved than dialing a number. Since she wasn’t talking but staring at her flip phone I had to ask what was up.

“I’m sending my friend a text message,” she said. I had only a vague idea what she was talking about. I mean, I think I knew it was possible to send a message to someone else using those three-tap spelling tricks, but I didn’t know anyone personally who did that. I also knew that anyone who pulled out a cell phone during a game was subject to ridicule, especially if you held the phone to your ear and waved when you knew you were on TV.

She explained that her friend had moved to New Orleans (for work or school, can’t remember) and was part of a loyal group of Bosox fans… and she was keeping him in the loop on how it felt to be in the bleachers, letting him know he was missed. I thought the idea was pretty cool, but it didn’t register with me that more people might want to do the same thing.

Fast forward to last night, when my Facebook feed lit up with friends’ video clips from the Giants’ walk-off NLCS win from AT&T Park. Yeah, we’ve come a REAL long way in 10 years.

I usually tell people my a-ha moment for starting Mobile Sports Report came at a CTIA conference in 2011, where AT&T CTO John Donovan told the crowd that for the first time ever at the Super Bowl earlier that year, there was more wireless traffic leaving the stadium than coming in — meaning that fans were sending texts and pictures out in great number, perhaps more so than ever thought before. That trend, of course, is what’s fueling the current wave of stadium network deployments, and that Super Bowl was certainly a watershed moment. But when I think a bit I remember that night in Boston 10 years ago and think… people have wanted to share these special moments for quite some time. Good to see more people getting the chance.