I convinced my wife that we should go to the O’s - Nats game last night. Boy, do I wish I hadn’t!
I went and bought upper deck seats halfway between home and 3B, five rows back. All-in cost, $87 on VividSeats, would have been more if I’d bought direct from the Nats. And, I bought an advance parking spot at a lot several blocks from stadium, cost $25.50.
I live about 16 miles from Nats Park. Game time 6:45, my map app says it will take an hour and 6 minutes. We leave at 4:45, and I figure we’ll spend 30-45 minutes looking around the stadium and finding some veggie food for my wife. Instead, we spend an hour and 53 minutes in the car. It’s bumper to bumper for most of the trip, the map app keeps pushing our ETA further and further back, and when we finally get to the address where the parking lot is supposed to be, there’s no obvious parking lot entrance, and I have to circle the block in very slow traffic, take a lucky guess that the lot entrance is off an alley between two buildings. Eventually we find it and park, and the parking attendant tells us that the lot closes 30 minutes after the game. (The website had said 60 minutes.)
We walk to the main entrance, it’s now game time, and it’s a mob scene. There’s a woman with a bullhorn telling people it will be faster to walk to one of the other entrances, so we do, which takes several minutes. We get there and there’s a single-file line of a couple hundred people waiting to get in. We wait that out, which takes 10-12 minutes, and by the time we’re inside the stadium it’s 7:02 and the first inning is over. But my wife needs her veggie food, so we find the one stand that has some, and as we stand there, I see an Oriole trying to score, but there’s a pillar blocking my view of home plate and I have to guess from the roar of the crowd that the runner was thown out.
My wife’s food in hand, we look for a stairway or escalator to the upper level, and finally find the longest series of ramps you have ever seen in your life. It takes eight turns of the ramp, each one several hundred feet long, to reach the top. By the time we are finally at our seats, the Nats already have scored in the second inning and the Orioles are up in the third inning and already to the last batter in the order.
Meanwhile, I haven’t eaten but I want to actually watch the game for a while, so I wait until the bottom of the 6th and get in line at Ben’s Chili Bowl, figuring that will take no more than half an inning, but no, it takes a full inning and I miss the O’s scoring their third run in the process.
Well, I don’t need to tell you what unfolded in the 9th through 12th innings and how excruciating it was, but let’s just say I was already in an extreme state of agitation before any of that happened and my mood got darker and darker and barely brightened when we actually won. As we leave our seats, I pick up an empty water bottle and beer can of mine and dump them in a nearby recycling bin. My wife says she needs to use the ladies’ room and while I’m waiting, I reach into my pocket for my cell phone and…it’s not there. I want to run back to our seats to look, but my wife is still in the ladies’ room, so I have to wait for what seems like an eternity. She finally emerges, I dash back to our seats, but the phone is nowhere to be found. As I come onto the concourse, I spy the recycling bin and realize I may have dumped my phone in there while dumping my empties. I fish around for a minute, don’t find it, but short of dumping out the whole bin, I’m not going to be sure it’s not in there. But I look at my watch and realize I don’t have time to do that because the effing garage closes 30 minutes after game time and 15-20 minutes have gone by already. So, I check with customer service to see if a phone has been turned in (no, of course), and dejectedly leave. I have never, ever been in such a bad mood leaving an Orioles victory.
So, that’s my tale of woe. Even before the 9th to 12th innings and the cell phone fiasco, I’d told myself this was one of the worst experiences I’d ever had at a baseball game and that I’d never again be caught dead driving from my house to Nats Park. The rest was just icing on the frigging cake, and now my phone is probably at the bottom of some dumpster.
At least we won the game. If not, I’d probably be in the bottom of some dumpster too.