Overheard in the press box

One of the high school's I tend to cover a lot for my shop is known for having a great pre-game meal. A local bbq joint owner has a kid on the team and always cater's the press box with all types of goodies, so much so that many of my coworkers have showed up to eat before leaving to attend their own games to cover one night.

The following exchange took place last year when I, a coworker, my editor, and my photographer were eating in the press box.

School AD (trying to be funny): I didn't know you guys liked us the much.

Editor (in a very serious voice): We don't, we just like your food.

We were promptly given the most convincing "go to hell" look I have ever seen. Needless to say, that editor is no longer working here. Not because of that, but because of several other incidents like that.

 

Not from a press box, but ...

Covering a local Catholic school volleyball team in the opening round of state playoffs. The team, which wasn't excatly known for being a powerhouse, is one point away from pulling off the biggest victory in program history. Coach calls timeout to settle the girls' nerves.

Coach: "Everyone just stay calm. We're going to win. Don't wet yourselves."
Player: "Coach, you have no idea how wet my panties are."

 

Female hard-as-nails girls volleyball coach on her team's intensity:

"We have a saying. We go balls to the wall .... hmmm ... guess you can't really write that, can you?"

 

At a game once early in the night the radio crew's color guy must have watched Spies Like Us before coming to the game. He was on a kick of saying "What's a Dick-fer" "Way to go, Dick-fer" etc.

Home team has a running back named Dan Peters, who breaks a long touchdown run. Play-by-play guy: "It's Dickey Peters to the 10, Dickey Peters to the 5, Dickey Peters to the 1, TOUCHDOWN DICKEY PETERS."

When he went to break I tapped him on the shoulder and said he'd better look at his roster. I've never seen a guy with such an "Oh, crap" look on his face.

 

Back when the Aztecs were still a local soccer team, they played Boston, or New England or whatever the fuck they called themselves, at a local JC.
That team so so bad the Aztecs were winning, 7-0 midway through the second half. Then they scored again ... 8-0.
The PA announcer neglected to hit his cough button or the off switch. "These guys are fucking awful," echoed through the stadium.

 

"I'm ESPN!"

 

At a high school game last night: A defensive end with the last name of Bates stepped in front of a pass that bounces off his shoulder pads. If he intercepted it he could have walked into the end zone. His head coach turns around and says, "You know why they call him Master Bates? Because he was already ejaculating all over himself before he even caught the damn ball."

 

At Wrigley:

"Run the fucking column. ... Run the fucking column! ... Run the fucking column!!"

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25791009/

 

I was at the NFL owners meetings several years ago and while a bunch of writers probably about 12 of us, were eating lunch in the overpriced hotel, we saw four owners come in and sit down two tables away from us.

One of the writers told our waitress and he said it loudly to make it clear he was joking. "The four billionaires over there are picking up our tab."

Apparently the waitress wasn't in on the joke and she put our tab on their bill. We didn't realize this until after the owners had left.

We didn't know what to do. We called the waitress over and she said she put the tab on their bill and no one at the owners table made any mention of it.

The writer who made the comment was convinced he was going to get fired over it, especially since the owner he covered was among the group. The rest of us just kind of took the "Well, I didn't have anything to do with it, so I'm not getting in trouble for it."

About three hours later when we were all in the media room, the writer in question was paged by the front desk. He went stark white and scrambled off to see what was going on.

One of the writers who was with us had placed the call to have him paged. When he came back we were all laughing our asses off and he looked like he was about to cry.

 

Not only that, but such flyovers allow the pilots to get some mandatory practice. Might as well do it in a public display that makes a few thousand people happy than do it over the desert somewhere and freak people out.

 

Back in '93 the Philadelphia Eagles set a new policy in which nobody was allowed to make "wisecracks or jokes" in the Vet pressbox. Well, the Kotite-era Birds were stinking up the joint against the Bears.

It was pretty quiet until Fred Sprunk from the Harrisburg Patriot-News blurted out:

"Where the hell are the singing cats!"

Surprisingly, security never showed up.

(In case you were wondering, Paul Newman said that on Letterman's CBS debut a few weeks earlier.)