People who call over and over again to ask questions

Many years ago I had a guy, almost always drunk, call to tell me how his kid was doing at the D3 baseball program he was in.

I didn't do much talking but didn't mind listening to his bullshit while I'd been doing pages.

I guess I figured someday I might like somebody to listen to me prattling on about my own kids.

 

They're lonely. They know the answers to all these questions, or at least most of them.

It gets tiresome, but most of these people are kind. I remember one lady who did this with us years ago. She just started going on and on one day and said her husband passed away recently. I figure I'm probably doing more for the community by being nice to someone like that instead of rushing to type in the latest drunk guy to bowl a 750 series.

Stopped hearing from her years ago, so I presume she passed on.

 

The TV questions, though infrequent, are the worst now.

I don't know, there are like 57 different ways people watch TV. Figure it out.

 

There is a group of the population, and I am convinced it's the same people in the group that just rotate with papers they call, who literally exist only to catch mistakes.

For some reason, they relish in it.

During one of my first assignments in my early 20s, I was covering some stupid fucking city softball tourney final. I was keeping score, and it was like 49-48 or something like that. Some guys asks me what the score is, and before I can answer, he yells, "YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT!"

 

My mother, who recently died at 91, enjoyed watching Dodgers games. She was fine as long as they were on Spectrum, but anytime they were ESPN or Fox, it led to 20 minute phone calls as I tried to tell her where to find them. And she never wrapped her head around the fact she couldn’t watch the YouTube games without a computer.

 

Yeah, that's usually how it goes.

But I never get upset with these people. We're all gonna be old someday and have wisdom far beyond the important of knowing which channel a baseball game is on!

 

Do you ever get readers who think that a mistake or omission is something you did deliberately because of some sort of agenda-driven shenanigans?

 

My first job 30 years ago we had an older man call regularly to ask about baseball and boxing. He was probably in his 80s and remembered the greats from back in the day. Nice man. We learned he lived in the local VA home.

One night we arranged to pick him up before one of the Tyson fights, which we were getting on PPV at a friend's apartment. A dozen or so people there, at least. He was king of the night. Ate pizza and beer with us, told stories about Joe Louis, Schmeling, Ali, Sugar Ray, all the greats. Cheered like hell and was on Cloud 9.

Among the complainers and "What's the line on" or "When does the game start" callers, he always was worth carving out some time for a chat.

 

Oh yeah.

I just laugh those off. You can’t reason with people like that.

 

I had a woman, who was special needs, she would call nightly. It was weird because school she wanted to know was outside our coverage area. We didn't cover them. But she would call and say "Want to know the score of so-and-so high school? I said sure, because they might have played a team we cover as most of the conference was. "But she would then proceed to ask a couple other scores and how the Brewers did. Nice lady. Then the early deadlines hit....didn't pay for her to really call anymore.