Last night, as usual, I worked until 6 a.m. The Braves had to play a doubleheader to make up a previous rainout. That means, I'm supposed to be at the field at 11:30.
Have you ever tried to go to bed RIGHT when you get home from an 8 hour shift at work? When it was light out, and already getting hot? It's not very easy.
The last time I looked at my clock, it said 8:31.
I woke up at 12:15 to my phone ringing. It was not an ideal start to the day.
I was actually late to the first game because I had to go to Walmart on the mainland to pick up some pictures and frames for the team.
I arrived, and it was HOT. HOT HOT HOT.
I spent the first couple innings of the game trying to get my bearings, figuring out what interns had gone where, and I spent the last few with DougDoug on the broadcast. It was by far the worst broadcast of my life. My head wasn't in the game, and it felt like the heat was melting our brains. I didn't have a lineup, and couldn't keep score. Quite simply, I didn't have it.
The second game, I gave up the broadcast to the local tv legend and DougDoug. It was the last chance they would have to broadcast this year.
I spent the first 3 innings at our donations table, and most of the rest of the game at 50/50. It was sooooooooooooooooooo hot.
One of the interns turned 21 today. She and three others wanted to leave early so they could go up to Boston and get wasted sooner. I let them go around the fifth inning. After 8 innings, we looked up, and there was a massive cloud rolling in. It was CRAZY. It was moving sooooooooooo fast.
The umps called a delay, waited about 5 minutes and called the game. Shortly after they called it, while we were scurrying around trying to get all the tables and trash cans inside, the skies opened up. It started POURING.
I can assure you, grabbing trash cans in the pouring rain will NEVER be one of my favorite things to do.
There was also a pop-up tent we had set up to try to shield the girls at the 50/50 table from the sun, and that had to be taken down. No one really knew how to do it, so there I was, in the pouring rain with a couple other interns (Legend for sure, can't remember if the King and DougDoug were helping), fighting with this thing like Stiller and Owen at the computer in Zoolander.
Eventually man triumphed over machine.
So now, completely soaked, covered in grime from the trash cans, I went for shelter in the concession stand. When I entered, the Braves gm said "Hey Tom, we have some extra tickets for Fenway for tommorow night, do you want to go?" Hell yeah, I wanted to go.
I grabbed a ticket for myself, and one for the king, and then I asked if my best friend out here, Sam, could buy a ticket. The gm said ok, and Sam came back to the field and purchased the ticket.
As we were leaving the field, the gm said "Hey Tom, there's one ticket left, do you know anyone else that would want to go?"
That's when I remembered the interns on their way to Boston to get drunk. I grabbed the last ticket and said I would offer it to one of them.
My life would have been much better off if I had just said "No Mike, I do not know anyone else who would enjoy the pleasure of going to the game."
I called the birthday girl and told her some tickets had come available, and that I had grabbed one extra for the girls. I'm not sure if Alicia hung up on me, or if we just got disconnected, but when I called back I left her a voicemail saying I had one ticket, and that DougDoug, Legend, the King, myself and Sam were all going.
Minutes later Alicia called me back and started yelling about how could Sam go, he wasn't a part of the Braves anymore, and that the girls had been to every game and deserved to go. She also made a point of how Rich and Doug had missed games to go to concerts, and therefore the 3 female interns deserved the tickets more than the guys did.
Vital piece of information: While Alicia HAD been at all the games, Jess had skipped a week of the season to go to a concert in New York (a concert that Alica went to in Boston), and Katie had missed about a month of the season for summer class.
I was taken aback, and listened to her yelling for a couple minutes before I cut her off and told her that I had nothing to do with the distribution of tickets, and that if she had a problem, she should call the Braves gm. She said she would and hung up on me.
I called the gm quick to give him a heads up.
About a minute later, Tom Fink called me.
The Finkster is presiedent of the Braves. The girls all hate him, they use his very last name as a joke. Such as "what the Fink." Hard to explain, but the girls have no respect for him, at all.
More vital information., Fink once briefly gave Jessica my job this season before I talked him out of it. Oddly enough, when Fink felt that Jess, Alicia and Katie weren't accepting of Aislinn, he told me that the girls weren't being friendly and something had to be done.
So the Finkster calls me up, and asks why only the guys who usually work in the press box got tickets. I explained to him that it was because they were there when the tickets became available. He talked about how it was unfair that some of the girls who showed up before some of the guys and who often worked harder then some of the guys weren't going to be able to go to the game, but Sam was. For some reason, he didn't care that Legend and Aislinn had both bought an extra ticket. I was somehow responsible for how the gm had distributed the tickets.
I tried calling Sam to ask if I could get the ticket back. I tried calling Aislinn to see if the team could buy her spare ticket back, but she had already promised it to someone and didn't want to give it up. I said ok.
I talked to the gm, and he asked if we could get Sams ticket back, and if we could try to get another ticket as well. I told him I had left Sam a voicemail and that Aislinn didn't want to give her extra back. I told the gm I would try to russel up another ticket.
I called DougDoug and he said he had given his ticket back to the gm and had no problem not going. Bingo, we got our three tickets.
The Finkster called me back. We talked a little bit, and I told him that I had told Sam he couldn't go and that I had found a total of three tickets. Then the Finkster dropped the bomb that that was good, now we had to get the tickets to the girls, in Boston. I thought to myself, are you fucking kidding me.
At some point, I recieved this text from Alicia "Fuck that tom. You know we would have wanted those tickets and there would be a more fair way to divide them among the interns."
So I call Alicia, and tell her I had three tickets. The girls started screaming and hung up. A moment later, she called back and I said, "Classy move getting the Finkster involved. Bye." And I hung up on her.
So I called the gm to tell him I would come pick up DougDoug's ticket. He said he didn't have it, he didn't have any extras. At that point, I realized I probably wasn't going to the game.
We only had two spare tickets, I had just promised three.
Also at that point, I was FURIOUS. I had been yelled at and scolded, because apparently I was to blame for no-one grabbing the tickets for the girls. I was going to give mine up, and miss out on Fenway (it would be my FIRST TIME going).
The gm said that Legend might have bought an extra ticket. I called Matt, and he said that he had bought an extra ticket. I explained the situation to him, and that if he didn't want to give up his spare, that was fine, I would give up my ticket. I feel bad about putting him in a tough spot, but I couldn't make him give up his spare ticket. The only other ticket I had to give, was mine. Matt asked if he could think about it, and said he'd call me back tonight or tommorow. He did not feel bad for the girls for missing out on the tickets, since we were left to clean up the field in the rain. He felt bad for me, and thought the whole thought of me giving up my ticket was ridiculous.
I called the King and left a voicemail telling him I might have to miss the game, and if I did he'd have to hunt down Sam's ticket and bring all the tickets to the girls.
I called Jess and told her that if Matt was giving up his spare, she would have to get in touch with him to get it, and that if I was giving up mine, she would have to hook up with the king.
In the middle, I called Sam like 22 times leaving voicemails.
Then, the calling was pretty much done for a while. I spent approximately an hour and a half on the phone trying to straighten this shit out. I took a shower and changed for work. As I was walking up the street to work, Matt called me back.
Legend told me that the girls were going to call Aislinn and try to get her spare ticket, and if they couldn't, Matt would give up both his tickets. Either way, I'm going to Fenway.
There is no way to adequately show my appreciation to Local TV Legend Matt Silberman getting my back on this. He knew it would be my first trip to Fenway, and how much it would mean to me.
So, I called the King, told him I was definately in, and would call him tommorow.
Then I went to work. Christ, am I tired.
I can't tell you how comforting it is to think that if I were to leave a game early to drive up to Boston to get drunk, and the girls had to clean up the field in the pouring rain, that I would be the FIRST PERSON they thought about if they walked into the clubhouse and were offered free RedSox tickets.
I'm glad I spent the two hours I could have used to take a nap on the phone getting bitched at and scolded for something I had no control over, and then got the pleasure of begging my interns to give up tickets that they had every right to keep.
Man, I hope they didn't get bitchy with Aislinn.
