Will the screen door slam? The Springsteen health watch...

I've got tickets for the August 24th Bruce Springsteen at Gillette Stadium, but there's a big question mark hovering over this event. 

Last week, the two Philadelphia concerts - scheduled for Wednesday the 16th and Friday the 18th - were called off, just a few hours before BRUUUUUUUCE and the E-Street Band were scheduled to blast things off with "No Surrender." 

This was the message posted on the official Bruce Springsteen Twitter/X account at around 2 in the afternoon of the 16th:

Due to Bruce Springsteen having been taken ill, his concerts with The E Street Band at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia on August 16 and 18 have been postponed. We are working on rescheduling the dates so please hold on to your tickets as they will be valid for the rescheduled shows.

"Hold on to your tickets s they will be valid."  

First off, these tickets are virtual. They're on your Ticketmaster account and/or in your smartphone wallet. So there's nothing to hold onto. Second, one would hope they would be valid. That or full refund - and I mean FULL, with every surcharge and "convenience fee" paid back, not just the face value of the ticket. (Good luck to those who bought on the non-Ticketmaster secondary market.)

Fans with Philly tix were understandably upset. One fan immediately posted a comment, asking whether this message was for real, as he hadn't seen it elsewhere. Duh, bruh! I'm pretty sure that "elsewhere" would happen after the info was released on the Springsteen official site.

But I understand the fan being upset, both about the concert's being postponed and with general concern for what, exactly, the undisclosed illness might be. Something fleeting? Somethin serious? Bruce is no kid. In September, he'll be 74, a fellow 49er. Things - both trivial and dire - happen more frequently as you age. Sigh.

Springsteen is certainly entitled to his privacy, but since the first posting, nothing further has been said, leaving fans in a big old limbo full of fret, and those of us with tickets for one of this week's concerts in Foxborough, which were the next ones on the schedule, on pins and needles. Will there be any info forthcoming sooner than a couple of hours before showtime, when fans are already sitting in traffic as they make their way to Gillette?

Fans - and that would include yours truly - have been through this before.

Earlier in the year, the three concerts prior to the Boston Garden event in March were called off due to someone or other being sick. (I don't believe this information was ever revealed.) So my sister Trish and I, who had tickets for the show, had days worth of worrying about whether the show would go on.

It did, and was great. So when they announced that Bruce would be back in the area in the summer, we were all in. And fortunately, tickets for the Foxborough shows were easier to grab - and a TON cheaper than the panic-buy tickets we had for Boston.

I am a Springsteen fan, but something of a latter-day one.

I certainly knew of his existence, but other than a few obvious songs - "Born in the USA," "Born to Run," "Dancing in the Dark" - I wasn't especially familiar with his work.

Trish, on the other hand, had been a pretty hard core fan since she was in high school, when Springsteen first came on the scene in the mid-1970's. She and a couple of her friends came into Boston for a concert and stayed with me. I had no idea what the fuss was about.

Now I do.

I think it was the "Magic" tour in 2007 that Trish got me a ticket for, and all of a sudden, I was all in. Maybe I'm not a tried and true believer, but I'm a true believer of sorts.

I didn't know the words to anything. But now I do.

I'd never heard "Thunder Road." But now I can sing along with the best of them.

I can't debate deep cuts, or the respective talents of band members who have passed on vs. the current crew. (There hasn't been a ton of turnover. Most of the E-Street Band members have been around for 50 years or so.)

Since that first show, I've seen Springsteen a couple of more times at The Garden, once at Fenway - how great was that! - and at Foxborough (the world's worse venue to get in and out of). And he never disappoints.

So I will, of course, be disappointed if Thursday's concert is postponed. Who wants a reschedule in, say, October, when it's likely to be cold and rainy. (And, of course, I will feel awful if there's something really wrong with Springsteen.)

I hope that the screen door doesn't slam on Thursday, but if it's going to, I'd rather have it slam today than wait until, say, Thursday.

Saint Bruce of E-Street, pray for us!