Overheard in the press box

Bobby Valentine, managing the Rangers, and groundskeeper at Tiger Stadium are in a major argument at home plate over the loose dirt around home plate for a game in which Doyle Alexander is scheduled to pitch for Tigers. The argument gets heated and the guess is the groundskeeper might even take the rake and hit Valentine. Pressbox phone rings. PR guy Dan Ewald answers. GM Bill Lajoie on the line: ``Start the anthem, start the anthem.'' Ewald turns on tape of National Anthem. Valentine and groundskeeper come to attention and look at flag. Problem is averted.

 

Anytime a large woman sings the national anthem....

"Guess it's over now."

 

At a college soccer match in Upstate NY, the track coach is in the press box "praising" the skills of the sweeper for the home team.

"Such a shame. All that athletic ability wasted on a woman."

 

I used to love the games when Ewald would do PA (was a very rare occasion, but it happened)
He used to catch shit for sounding like Carlton the Doorman...

 

Fuck Sid. I don't care about Sid. The point is a group of cackling jackasses probably annoyed more people than Sid.

 

Understood, but exposing gross hypocrisy is one of the higher callings, here . . . even with such
fish-in-a-barrel setups such as Sid.

 

"I'm listening to the fucking song!!!"

 

A rather notable high school quarterback, Perry Klein, had a game where he completed 46 of 49 passes. A major part of the offense was the shovel pass. Our guy covering the game kept track of those for his story. In the agate, passes are passes, but he would mention in his story that of the 46 completions, 25 were shovel passes to the running back.
This was being rehashed in a college press box the next day.
-- "Did you see that Perry Klein completed 46 of 49 passes last night?"
-- "Yeah, but 25 of them were shovel passes."
-- "Most high school quarterbacks can't complete 46 of 49 handoffs."

 

I was covering a college football game about a decade ago and the home team got crushed. The big city columnist (one of the best in the business) filed quickly and began hazing the local columnist (who he used to work with) who has a bad rep as being a homer. The local columnist was just sitting there like he had no idea what to write.

Big city columnist: Are you trying to think of a way to put a positive spin on this? Grow some balls and write about what happened.

 

Was in the press box for a Tulane baseball regional once, when it started to rain ... hard. A good old pre-Katrina New Orleans rain, where there's a foot of water in the street within five minutes, until the pumping stations begin working.

There was so much water on the field that the big metal tube they use to roll the tarp up with started floating and then began slamming against the outfield wall due to the wind.

One writer finally said, "I don't speak Hebrew, but I think that's God saying 'there will be no baseball today.'"

 

I hate to pull a Hondo, as I've heard a million funny things in the press box, but I'll be damned if I can remember any one of them, so I'll relay one of my own.

At my first job, which was at a small daily across the river from Louisville, I often crossed paths with the Courier's southern Indiana beat writer, a good guy who was very chatty, who was also somewhat neurotic and self-conscious, and who is now sadly deceased.

He arrived at a basketball game we were both covering and he hadn't seen me in a while. He was much more friendly than usual, greeting me heartily.

"Hey Bubbler, how have you been!"

Then he turns his chair as if to show off his body.

"Do you notice anything?"

I didn't catch on at all as to what he was trying to show me. I thought he had a new shirt or something.

"No. I don't notice anything at all."

His face went from beaming to crushed ... I mean crushed like you're-a 7-year-old-and-I-just-killed-your-puppy crushed. He was really upset.

"Oh. I've been working out and I lost 10 pounds."

To be honest, I didn't see any evidence of weight loss at all, it wasn't as if he was obese, but he looked so upset that I let him off the hook.

"OH! Hell yeah! I just didn't know what you were driving at. Yeah! You look good!"

 

At a high school game, and one of the teams has a fullback whose name is Dixon. Radio announcer repeatedly says, "they hand it off to Big Dixon ..."