Press Box ejections

Was in a college football press box once where a guy had too much to drink the previous evening (or maybe even that morning, who knows) and kept nodding off. I guess it was pretty distracting because he got kicked out.

 

I was covering a baseball game for my college paper, and the photographer from the local city's paper casually knelt down on the field, along the backstop, about 2 feet to the side of behind the catcher.

The beat writer from the city paper could do nothing in the press box but bury his head in his hands.

 

One shooter told me a story once about how he was assigned to shoot a youth baseball game. Set his stuff up along the dugout as he always did and was shooting when a "team photographer" joined him. The team photog went on to make a pest of herself, roaming up and down the baseline area and shouting encouragement to the kids, to the point the umpires asked her and the shooter to leave. Between innings, the shooter showed his credentials and a photo assignment sheet and was let back on the field. The other photog threw a fit.

 

I don't know how close I was to actually being ejected but we had a juco basketball ref go off on the entire scorer's table because a student working stats said "It's about time" after an official made the first call of the night against the visitors about 14 minutes in.

He then threatened to clear the entire table. The AD came over and told him that if he ejected everyone, there would be no scorekeeper, no scoreboard operator and no shot clock operator because there's no one else to do them. After play resumed, the AD came and lectured the kid on the difference between being a fan and being a worker.

I'm not sure if the AD was really telling the ref, "If you boot everyone, we're done for tonight and I'll make sure you're done as an official." But I kind of read that into his tone.

 

We had a photographer hired and then fired on his first day for making an ass of himself.
The photo editor took him along to a high school basketball game to show him the ropes and get acquainted. At some point, some students started causing a ruckus and got ejected from the gym. As security is escorting them out, Dingus gets up in their face and starts shooting pictures like he's the paparazzi. Shooting pictures from 5 feet away, backing up and shooting some more, taking a few steps back and shooting even more.
The photo editor was horrified, but planned to talk to him later. So once the game resumed and he asked if he could go outside to see what was going on, she said sure to get him out of her hair.

That's when it went from bad to worse.
Dingus goes outside to where these young, upstanding citizens had gathered after being thrown out of the game -- and he starts shooting AGAIN, with a flash, in a darkened parking lot.
Naturally, they didn't like that one bit and let him know. As they're about to kick his ass, he starts screaming, "PRESS! PRESS! I'M WITH THE PRESS!!!" as if it's going to cover him in a magical force field.
At the very least it attracted the attention of one of the security guards who ran off the thugs and saved the guy a beating he probably deserved. Didn't save him from being fired before lunch the next day, though. The photo editor was scared to death he'd pull that crap at a fire or a wreck and cause real problems.
The guy was in and out so fast I not only never knew his name, I never even knew he had been hired by us.

 

The Philly reporters at the game played this up bigly. I was intrigued. But then the Philly media as a whole kind of let this one go.

Well, the Ringer wrote about it: https://theringer.com/oral-history-philadelphia-eagles-press-box-jeff-mclane-120a90dbd9c1#.4i3gll15w

 

Pretty fun little read. This part was good ...

Parks: The fans love the drama. They love to pit us against each other on Twitter. People were tweeting which writers they wanted to be ejected next. “Eject Eliot. Eject Les. Eject Jimmy.” They really enjoyed it.​

 

One of the nuggets in there ...

 

My first job out of college was 50-50 sports writer/photographer at a small daily. A couple weeks into the job I was on a photo assignment, shooting an American League baseball tournament with the sports editor. I was taking some shots through the chain link fence in center field when the umpire stopped the game to say that I was distracting him and couldn't take photos from the outfield.

There hadn't been any signs restricting access, but I wasn't going to argue. "No problem" I said, raised a thumb, and started walking around the outfield fence. I figured the ump would continue the game while I complied with his order. Nope, not this guy. "Hurry up!" he yelled, refusing to start the game until I was out of the way. I figured it was a dick move, so I slowed down a bit. I guess he could tell I was showing him up, because he tossed me out. Rung me up like a manager and everything.

The sports editor lost his mind and started barking at the ump through the backstop. "You're targeting my guy, he wasn't giving you any trouble, nobody's here to watch you bully people, etc., etc." They went nose-to-nose through the fence for a moment until the sports editor got the boot as well. He ended up writing a column about the incident, referring to the umpire as "little Bonaparte."

 

Holy fuck, I'm blinded by tears from laughing so hard. It was worth wading through all the lame stories to find this gem. An all-time sj.com classic.

 

Not quite a press box ejection, but ...

Five or six years ago, I was covering a boys swim meet at our main high school. The two teams shared a locker room, and while the meet was going on, one of the swimmers from the home team decided to pull a stupid-ass prank and take a dump on the floor of the locker room, then leave it there for the other team to find when they got back into the locker room. The home coach went into the locker room, saw what had happened and, completely unprompted, told me about it. Through some secondhand connections, I was able to get in touch with one of the kids from the road team, who told me that the kid who'd done it had also made some really inappropriate comments during the post-meet handshake line.

I got on-the-record comments from the coach and AD, and we ran a story on the incident.

Couple weeks later, I head back to the same pool for the team's Senior Day meet. As I'm taking my coat off, the woman who was the pool supervisor starts screaming at me to get out, telling me that my horrible, vicious reporting of a thing that happened and that the coach of the team flat out admitted had happened had embarrassed the swim program and that I wasn't allowed in the pool area anymore. I stepped into the hallway to call my editor and the athletic director to try and sort things out, and as I tried to get back into the pool, not only had the door been locked, but I saw through the windowpane in the door that she'd placed a trash can underneath the door handle to block me from apparently trying to kick the door in, SWAT style.

Eventually, between myself, my editor and the high school principal, we sorted things out and I got back in without having to break out the battering ram.

 

Do not fuck with the Hypnotoad.