A Night Out At Camden Yards

So, Tuesday night I went at the the O's game with the guys. In addition to the game itself, I always enjoy watching the people in and around the stadium. Every person has their unique idiosyncrasies. Some are crazy while others are quite boring. Of course, we'll skip over the latter, because, well, they're boring...

Out of sheer habit, our first stop was Pickles Pub. We usually stop here (or the Bullpen next door) to grab a couple of cheap Natty-Boh's. Yeah I know it's a pretty shitty beer, but there's unwritten rule that says that you have to down at least one Natty-Boh before, during or after an O's game. So, that we did. As it gets closer to game time, Pickles Pub gets absolutely jam packed. Deciding that we didn't want to be turned into veal, we mosied on over to the nearby Diamond Tavern.

The Diamond Tavern is part of the Hilton hotel located directly across the main gate to Camden Yards. It's a nice place to grab a beer and relax before the game. We grabbed an outdoor table where we could burn a cigar without offending too many people. As a bonus, I had a great view of all the people making their way into stadium. Of course, my buddies immediately recognized my focused gaze and pointed out, "Look at Ken. He's taking all of this in for his next blog." What can I say, except guilty as charged...

The first thing I noticed was the ticket hawkers. One minute, a guy would be yelling, "Tickets? Anybody got any extra tickets?" And then, before you knew it, the same guy was holding up several tickets and yelling, "Tickets here! Anybody need a ticket?" It was like watching a David Blaine trick. But actually, he was buying cheap tickets off of one guy and then immediately turning around and reselling them for a profit to another guy. I guess you could classify that as a bit of street magic.

I noticed that one of the other ticket guys looked like he had spent the day smoking crack. His eyes were all glazed over and he appeared to stumble as he walked through the crowd. Probably not the best image for a budding sales entrepreneur. Another guy was wearing a "Justice For Trayvon" t-shirt as he tried to hawk his tickets to the passing fans. Probably not a good idea to wear such a polarizing shirt while you're trying to move your product. But what do I know?

Once we made our way into the stadium, the first stop was the beer stand for a round of ridiculously priced brews. Camden Yards, in addition to being home to Baltimore Orioles, is also home to the world's most expensive Natty Boh. Nowhere else can you find such an inferior beer for such an extravagant price.

As we headed towards our seats, an usher insisted on showing us how to get there. My friends and I are all reasonably intelligent adults. I think we could have figured out where our seats were on our own. But, of course, this was just the usher's way of fishing for a tip. Yeah, yeah, I know the drill.

As we sat down, the game was already under way. A few minutes later, a grumpy, old rich guy makes his way through the row in front of us. Apparently, a group of youngsters were mistakenly sitting his seats. So, the old man, instead of telling them nicely, acts like an arrogant prick and condescendingly dismisses the group. The guy deserved to get hit with a foul ball but he had to settle for some peanut shells from my friends. Karma eventually caught up with this guy. I'll come back to him shortly....

There was also a loud-mouthed, drunken Angel's fan sitting a few rows behind us. When Angel slugger, Mike Trout came to the plate, the guy started chanting, "MVP-MVP-MVP!" Ok, I get it. He's a fan and he's entitled to cheer for his favorite player. Well, Trout wound up striking out. As O's fans, we're certainly entitled to break the guy's balls, right? After all, Camden Yards is our house. So, right after the 3rd strike on Trout, we all started chanting, "MVP-MVP-MVP!" The crowd around us got a kick out of it. But the angry Angels fan got pretty pissed.

A short time later, O's 3rd baseman, Manny Machado got picked up if 2nd base to end the inning. This brought our favorite Angels' fan running down to steps and screaming, "Take that, All-Star! You ain't all that!" It sounded like Rocky Balboa talking to Mr. T. The guy was lucky that we were sitting in the good seats. If he would have done this in the upper deck, he might have had a beer bottle bounced off of his head.

To be fair, not all of the Angels were bad. There was a group of muscle heads sitting a few rows in front of us who just sat back and watched the game. I'm glad too. The last thing we needed was to get into a pissing contest with them. In what have probably ended with them kicking our asses and offering us as a sacrifice to the Angel's dugout.

There was also an attractive woman in the front row who kept walking up and down the steps in her very tight Angel's shirt. I must say, it was a very nice looking shirt. After her third pass, we almost started cheering for Los Angeles. "Charlie's Angel" was a reasonable offset for the antagonizing Angels fan that I mentioned earlier.

Anyway, the game went on. Both teams battled back and forth, but the O's ultimately won the game on a 12th inning walk-off homerun by none other than Manny Machado. As soon as Manny hit his bomb, every O's fan immediately turned around to give our favorite Angels fan some well deserved crap. But the guy was already running towards the exit. As he hurried out, he gave the crowd the finger. Real classy. Hey, if you're going to talk bullshit, you should be able to take it too.

Now, back to the grumpy rich guy. After he left, in about the 8th inning, a young woman came over and sat in his seat. When the game was over, she stood up and stretched. Then, the guy in front of her pointed out that there was a wad of money under her seat. She counted it out, it was probably about $100 or so. It had obviously fallen out of the grumpy rich guy's packet. She split it with the guy who pointed it out. Normally, I would have frowned on something like this. But, since the old man was such a prick, he deserved to lose $100. Yes, karma can be a bitch.

It was a fun night catching a ball game with my buds. The weather was great and the O's won in dramatic fashion. We were all dragging the next day. But it was well worth it!

kw