[Chief Rum]

So as noted from my other thread, I went to the Angels-Mariners game last night. Some interesting things happened.

First of all, the Angels serve a huge bowl of nachos in a batting helmet. It's a cheapie batting helmet, but it still fits over a grown adult man's head (I know, I confirmed this), so we're talking a lot of nachos. It seems that this is a popular item. After seeing them, we of course had to get one. Since there were four of us, all with Mike Trout bobbleheads which were ripe for the sniping, only two of us left our seats to get the nachos and other food items. I was one of those two. The other was my roommate Joe, who is a great guy, but primarily went with me so he could get more beer. That left me to deal primarily with the foodstuffs. So I get up to the counter (after a long wait in line), and I order three sodas, four hot dogs and the nachos. For the nachos, the girl helping me comes back with a small tray with a bag of Tostitos and two glops of cold cheese sauce in the two cups on the tray.

These aren't the nachos I was looking for. I ask her where we can get them and she says over there and waves her hand to our left (i.e. somewhere down the concourse, who knows how far). We buy the Tostitos nachos anyway because Joe says he wants those nachos with his beer. But we still want the helmet nachos.

So we go looking for the source of the helmet nachos and after asking around, we finally find the place over near the LF foul pole end of the concourse. This is quite far from our RF bleacher seats. And there were, I kid you not, 100 people or more in line to get these nachos. So I get in line for the nachos. I have missed over an inning of play. Joe is still with me, but he doesn't care, he has beer.

We get to about 15 spots away from getting our nachos when they run out of nacho cheese. I watch an interesting dilemma develop. Nachos must have nacho cheese. It's a rule, I am pretty sure. Normally, the end of the cheese would be the end of the nachos. We're told a new batch of cheese will be ready in 10-15 minutes. Most people would walk away at this point. But such was the draw of the helmet nachos and the time commitment we all had already made waiting to get the nachos that most of us stayed and waited. The hostility was palpable--you could kinda see the counter guys in the nacho shack looking out their window with a backward lean, like they thought we might jump in at any moment and beat the bejeezus out of them.

The cheese was eventually ready and I finally got the long awaited helmet nachos--and the cheese was cold. At this point, I just don't care about the quality of the nachos. As I said later to my friends at the seats, it wasn't about the helmet nachos anymore, it was about the mission to get the nachos. Mission accomplished. They were mediocre. I missed three innings.

Next interesting event... As I said, I am in the RF bleachers, which is a nice very open spot. If you have seen homeruns going out of Angel stadium, you know that the RF bleachers are on top of a fairly high wall, around 15 feet at the top of the fence and rising sharply from there. So it feels really wide open and you have a raised view of the game. Some drunk guy decided this was the scene he would use for a marriage proposal. It appears he had a sign asking his GF to marry him, but he needed a TV camera to focus on him during the game. Yes, this was his plan (apparently). So he gets up (he was seated up near the front) and starts screaming at all the RF bleachers to make a ruckus or do something to draw the TV cameras to us. I'm not sure exactly what he wanted us to do. But I guess we didn't do it, because he got more and more loud and desperate. Security came down and escorted him out. As he walked past my seat, I heard him say, "My GF WILL marry me!!!" Quite the catch. My best wishes to the prospective couple.

And then the main event of the night... Two homeruns were hit into the RF bleachers last night, both by Mariners. The first time was in the 6th inning or thereabouts, and when the fan caught the ball, the RF bleacher crowd implored and catcalled him into throwing the ball back out onto the field. After he did that, the stadium roared its approval and we all moved on. The second one came in the 8th inning. This one actually came pretty close to where we were seated, and was caught by a fairly tall guy in his late 20s-early 30s (the ball smacked too, I'll bet it hurt catching that). Again, the catcalls came, but the ball catcher resisted and pocketed the ball. He walked back to his seat where he gave the ball to his son. Okay, makes sense. He was still booed, but whatever, we were losing 8-3, what do you expect. So this guy walks down a couple minutes later, looked like late 40s-early 50s. He stands near the ball catcher and his kid, who is seated about ten rows down from me and my friends, on the other side of the aisle from us (we had aisle seats). He makes motions to others to make sure that was the guy, and then he says something to the ball catcher, who stands up. This drunk asshole is actually confronting the ball catcher about not throwing the ball back. Are you kidding me? The ball catcher is younger and taller and could obliterate this blithering drunk, but he holds back, since his son is right there. So my friend Joe, he of the beer, decides to help. He gets up, walks down the aisle and pushes the drunk antagoniser. By this point, my face is in my hands. I know I have to go back him up.

Fortunately, a couple others have also gotten up, and the drunk can't get back at Joe, who is talking crap while walking back up to our seats. Security guys were on their way down and I figured Joe would be kicked out (and us with him). That didn't happen, just the drunk was kicked out. But, in any case, yeah, that happened.

So it was an interesting night at the ballpark lol. Sorry for running long, so I hope the story is worth it.

Moral to the story: Don't get helmet nachos.