Dear dimwit on the phone

What's even sadder is being asked about when baseball games end.

"So it's a 7 p.m. game, which means it'll be over by 10, right?"

"Well, not necessarily, it can be over faster,"

"Oh, good."

"But more likely, it'll take longer."

"Well, how much longer?"

"However long it could take. It could be a high scoring game, or the teams just might play slow, or someone could get hurt ..."

"Oh."

And I don't have the heart to tell them that it could rain.

 

Sometimes you win....sometimes you lose.
Sometimes, it rains.

 

It will take as long as it takes. Not a minute more. Not a minute less.

 

Case in point, the race at Bristol. It started at 1 p.m., and finished about 15 minutes ago.

 

Got an email from a club volleyball coach basically stating "our girls are super fantastic and won four tournaments." Wrote back requesting more information, links to the tournament brackets, stat sheets, etc. Got almost the same response again, so ran a two-sentence brief. Sure enough the day the paper comes out, I get parents all over me because of a lack of coverage. Guessing the coach passed word around that the paper was going to do something big on the club.

I think people are struggling to know the difference between a Facebook post and a newspaper report anymore.

 

My standard response about deadlines: "The press will start rolling promptly upon receipt of the final page. Whenever that is."

 

Wrote a feature about local boxer making his pro debut last week, a kid rising up from a troubled past. Shooter takes a photo of him with U.S. and Mexican flags in background. Of course, someone gets offended because the stars on the U.S. flag are on the wrong corner and manages to carpet bomb the entire newsroom with complaints. Someone was unclear on what the story was about ...

 

One time a caller wanted me to tell him when a golf tournament was going to end so he could set his DVR for the overrun. Not sure why he couldn't have just set it for the maximum overrun. He got really pissed when I told him it ends when it ends because it's not like they have a game clock.

 

Wait. You mean you aren't a part of the "media elite" that is partnered with the Illuminati where we dictate how everything in the world, including golf "shows" (not events) that are scripted to force people to watch?
Man, sucks to be an outsider, eh?

 

Got a phone call this past Friday from a parent wondering if we were going to cover one of the local youth baseball league's opening ceremonies. Told him we were and he then asked if we could photoshop his son, who couldn't be at the ceremonies because he was playing in another game, into the photos we took.

They were supposed to "honor" the league's 12-year-olds that night (never could find out what for), but our photog only had time to get pics of the first pitches and get out. Still, I told the guy we wouldn't/couldn't photoshop his kid into a pic like that.

 

Dear dimwit dad at today's softball game,

The phrase you're looking for is "way to hit the gap." You should avoid at all costs shouting "that's a nice hole" to a high school girl. First, what does that even mean and second, what the hell is the matter with you? She's in high school you pervert!

 

This.

Covering high school softball became more interesting when, in my head, the "We love free bases chant" was replaced by "We love freebasing."