“all in” for the Citi Field game. He locked in early and the date and plan never wavered.
After being strung along, the New York Mets denied us the ability to swab as well as media credentials, and at the eleventh hour my miracle Big Apple pal Joe Favorito pulled some strings through Mets Executive Director of Communications Harold Kaufman, and suddenly our families were given a royal tour of the stadium and some great seats for Day 3 of the tour in Queens. As I’ve said many times, I also think Citi Field is fantastic – a must-see stadium on the tour.
Meanwhile spending an evening with Adam Schefter and his family was a complete joy.
Schefter is just a solid, super person. I spent five hours with his family, his daughter, his brother, his brother-in-law. It was like a family picnic. Just incredibly funny, loving, humble people. All of them. We laughed. We talked about sports and life.
Quite frankly, we acted like idiots at a baseball game in Queens.
We also swabbed Adam Schefter for the bone marrow registry.
The first week of the tour, we did a lot of driving and it really drove home what a great decision it was to fly the majority of the trip. It just allowed for more of everything that would make the trip more enjoyable – more sleep and more ability to see the towns we were visiting and still get to the ballpark early enough to have fun.
Scheduling Philadelphia and Washington on the sixth and seventh days of the tour allowed me to sleep in my own bed – and visit Kitty – for two final days before the final three-week run away from home.
The hottest days of the tour came on Father’s Day weekend, where an afternoon thunderstorm made the Cincinnati air hot and soupy for a Saturday night game with the Marlins, and Atlanta’s reputation as “Hotlanta” held up on a day in the mid 90s at Turner Field.
Seeing old friends was truly the great joy of the journey.
We are so very blessed to have so many amazing people in our world.
In Cincinnati, the Reds were incredibly kind to me. Jenn stayed back in Baltimore to work and just 48 hours before my swabbing night at The Great American Ballpark I didn’t have anyone to help me at our swabbing table.
Thank goodness for old friends!
Back in the 1980s I worked at The Evening Sun with a bunch of great people, several who taught me the joys of horse racing and a day at the track. Marty McGee, who has been at the Daily Racing Form for two decades and is one of the foremost racing experts in the industry, has been my friend for almost 30 years and answered my S.O.S. and brought a friend over from Lexington, Kentucky to help us save some lives for the bone marrow registry.
I sweat through three #GiveASpit shirts, swabbed all the folks who kept lining up and had a great American experience at the ballpark in Cincinnati with my pal.
This is Lindsay from the Cincinnati Reds. She met us at the front gate, helped us set up and then rolled her sleeves up to help us get Reds fans on the bone marrow registry. She was a newlywed planning all of the All Star Game festivities in Cincinnati and took her Saturday night away from her family to make sure we had enough help at our table. She was among the many really awesome folks I met on the road who work for baseball teams.
Meanwhile, Marty McGee and I drank beer. And we drank some more beer. We had hot dogs with chili and cheese. We laughed and talked baseball with folks around us and sat with the cutest kid you’ve ever seen who was at his first Reds game. Matter of fact, we were having so much fun that the first snafu of the tour almost set me back.
When we were done swabbing, I dropped off all of our swabs and my giant Ricig cotton swab and gear at the fan assistance booth on the main concourse. Of course, after a few adult beverages, a coney dog in the upper deck with McGee and with a yearning for some Graeters ice cream on the Fountain Square, I exited the stadium and forgot all of my stuff. We were gone 30 minutes, back up into the city enjoying some peach ice cream when I remembered that everything we had was back in the stadium.
So, I sprinted with rapidly melting ice cream eight blocks downhill to get to the stadium before they had closed the gates. Comedian Kevin Hart was playing at the Riverfront Coliseum next door so downtown was teeming, literally packed with people as I dripped and
