Your favorite 'fan interaction' memories

[Greg Pappas]

Scene:  Memorial Stadium, 1972 or 1973. I was about 8-years old maybe, and my Dad took me to an O's game and I still remember how nice Rich Coggins was to me, waving and smiling from the field.  I was elated.  Fan interaction matters.   

What are your favorite 'fan interaction' memories?

Edited January 23 by Greg Pappas

[Aristotelian]

Opening Day of '82, I got to go on the field with my dad during batting practice to get a ball signed by all the players in the dugout.

My dad had felt slighted after a game the previous season (I think the final game) when we waited for the players in the parking lot and they rushed out with no fan engagement. He wrote a letter to ownership and Edward Bennet Williams wrote back inviting us on the field. Been an O's fan ever since.

[wildbillhiccup]

I remember unning into Armando Benitez at Baha Beach Club in the mid to late 90s. Those 25 cent bottles of beer had full kicked in and silly drunken me brazenly asked him why he didn't retaliate for the other team hitting one of our guys the night before. Thankfully I think Armando spoke very litte English so he just politely smiled and walked away. I definitely dodged a bullet with that one because while he wasn't that tall, but he was a BIG dude. 

On a much less interesting note I remember meeting Tippy Martinez when I was really young at a local mall (I still have the signed photo) and I also saw Brooks speak at my local church several times. It's amazing how plugged into the community the players used to be. 

[bericbnauff]

When I was eight or nine they opened a recycling center behind the CVS in our neighborhood (Overlea).  Randy Milligan was the special guest.  My dad and I walked up and met Randy, and we were just about the only people there.  He talked to us for what seemed like an hour (only thing I remember about the conversation is that he told us he likes to hit off of guys who throw hard vs finesse guys [side note: the numbers seem to prove that out too]).  Super nice guy, and would have been appreciated as a player much more in this era.

[Greg Pappas]

Yeah, Brooks is, was, and always will be my favorite player.  This isn't my story, but a friend of mine was at a local rec center as a teen and was excited to go to the game that evening with his Dad, but his Dad was unable to take him.  Incredibly, Brooks happened to be at that center and heard what was going on, and arranged to take him to the game.  I was always told he was great player and supposedly an even better person.

[Sports Guy]

Going to lunch multiple times with my dad and Brooks Robinson is way up there for sure.

Had some interactions with Ripken when I was growing up, including another one where his then wife asked saw me with a sign I had made and she asked me to come sit with her  for a few minutes and talk about Cal. 

[UMDTerrapins]

Pretty sure it was Jeffrey Hammonds and Chris Hoiles who I saw at Bohagers. Later, I realized Hammonds was using the urinal next to me. Decided it wasn’t the best time to strike up a conversation. Tippy was a guest coach at a youth baseball camp I was in and couldn’t have been any nicer. My son was getting instruction from a coach recently before I realized he was a former Orioles draftee (two TJ surgeries ended his career). 
 

A family friend met Cal in a bar very early in his career. She didn’t know who he was and wasn’t interested in him. Oops! 

Edited January 23 by UMDTerrapins

[Pickles]

I'm pretty sure I've told this story here before but it always amuses me to remember so I'll tell it again.

(Having verified the box score): My friend went to the Giants/Orioles game at Camden in June of 2004 and sat in the lower left field stands with the intention of heckling Barry Bonds.  The BALCO scandal had come out that winter and Bonds was getting some pretty rough treatment on the road, and me and my buddy were eager to add to it.  

Unfortunately, we hadn't planned correctly.  It was a double header that day, and Bonds had played the field in the early game, and was merely DHing in the second.  As we attended the second game, our plans were foiled.

I'm sure we all remember that before the new wall, the seats in lower lf were right on top of the field and made for an ideal opportunity to heckle left fielders.  We had planned to heckle Bonds, but instead we were treated to the home crowd fans heckling the Oriole, who happened to be Larry Bigbie.

Very early in the game, the 1st or 2nd inning, a young man, college age (as I was at the time) stood up and yelled, "Hey Bigbie!  Suzanne from Towson wants you to know she's pregnant!"

We were probably thirty feet from Bigbie, and he was bent over with his hands on knees facing the plate, but you could literally see Bigbie's sphincter tighten through his pants.  Just from that reaction alone it was quite clear to all of us in the stands: Bigbie had definitely been laying down on top of a woman named Suzanne from Towson.

I don't know what this kid's deal was exactly; if he was a boyfriend of this Suzanne or a jilted lover, but he kept up harassing Bigbie for the next three hours.  Bigbie never reacted directly, but again, it was plain as day he heard the kid, and he had been having some kind of affair with a girl named Suzanne from Towson.  You could practically see him calculating paternity payments in his mind as the game progressed.

The game went to extra innings.  The heckling continued the entire time.  Finally, in the top of the 12th inning, the kid started in again on Bigbie, when I stood up (I was probably 3 rows behind the kid) and I shouted, "Hey!  STFU!  It was funny the first three hours, but it's extra innings now!  We're trying to win!"

The entire section gave me a standing applause and the kid sheepishly shrugged and sat down, quiet at last.  Finally, in the bottom of the inning, Bigbie came to bat with the score tied, and runners on (bases loaded as I recall) and hit a walk off RBI single to win the game.

Everyone was jumping up and down wildly celebrating in the crowd.  Even the kid who had been harassing Bigbie all this time. He turned around and looked at me laughing.  And I yelled, "I told you so!  I told you!"

It's both a great and funny memory.

I'm not sure if the saga between Bigbie and Suzanne from Towson had such a happy denouement.  

 

[glenn__davis]

I've had several good ones, but one my favorites didn't really even involve me.

Once I was dating a girl with a rich old man who had great seats right behind the Orioles dugout.  We went with another couple, the male of which was Dominican.  During pre-game Miguel Tejada was running into the dugout and everyone was trying to get his attention and of course he was just ignoring them.  My buddy called out his name, and I guess Tejada immediately recognized the accent because his ears perked up and he immediately caught sight of us.  My friend tossed him a ball and he ran in and signed it and threw it back to us.  It just cracked up me the way he immediately recognized one of his own lol.

[hallThalmt18h]

Meeting the team bus in the parking lot at OPACY the night the O's got knocked out by the Yankees in 2012.  I just remember everyone being really appreciative of that team, and at the same time respectful of their space. There was really no security - everyone just kinda cleared a path for them to walk from the bus to the entrance to the garage. Nobody was begging for autographs. Just lots of high fives and smiles. I loved that team.

[SemperFi]

One embarrasing: was at a AA game years ago got two beers and was heading back to my seat when a foul ball hit one of the hand rails that go up the aisle and bounce to me-I spilled both beers and had the ball bounce of my hands.  The Mudcats mascot made fun of me and my GF never looked at me the same after that!!  

One odd/funny relating to the Orioles: For a few years I did game day work for the Orioles in spring training so I could watch the games.  I'm not shy and had met DD previously, for some odd reason he requested that I and another game day employee he knew watch his grandchildren in his suite.  I have no desire to babysit (they were older) but couldn't really say no but he gave both of us a crisp $100 bill.

One more: Had a buddy going to Fantasy Camp and asked if I wanted an autograph-I'm not big on that but wanted one from Earl.  He came back all excited-he got Earl and Larry Sheets who signed adjacent to Earl ruining my Earl ball.  To this day I hate Larry Sheets!!

[btdart20]

If you ever go to Aberdeen and have kids, sit on the 1B side.  I don't think there's a backdoor from the dugout to the clubhouse, so all of the players have to walk to/from the dugout along the 1B side of the field (or maybe it's a team rule for fan interaction?).  Before and after games, random players will walk over to the railing and talk with kids, sign cards, and balls.  

One of the kids we went with forgot a ball and the player (I forget who) said he couldn't do anything for him.  The kid was creative and challenged him to a game of rock-paper-scissors for a ball.  The kid won and the player paid up with a ball and autograph.

Special shoutout to Creed Willems, Collin Burns, and Max Costes for being cool to my kids.

 

I wish I was around for Brooks.  Just reading so many Brooks stories after he passed was such a tribute to the man he was.

[mall-O-cup]

Spring Training 1988 at McKechnie Field in Bradenton FL for a game between the Orioles and the Pirates. The game ends and I hung around a bit and found myself behind a large iron gate with a latch right behind home plate. I looked around and decided to lift the latch and walked right onto the field. Nobody was really paying attention as I walked down the left field line where Cal was standing and signing autographs. I just stood next to Cal and watched when all of a sudden the sharpie he was using ran out of ink. He looked at me, I was holding my own sharpie, and asked if he could borrow it. He continued to sign autographs and people began to hand balls/programs to me to have Cal sign.

Cal finished up, thanked me and handed my sharpie back. I never got his autograph. I think I was just stunned that I was able to walk onto the field so easily. After that, as players from both teams milled about, I walked over to the Orioles dugout and took the lineup card off the wall. I gave the lineup card to the friend I was with who decided  to wait in his car while I did my thing. He laughed and simply could not believe what I had done.

These are all great stories that everyone has posted!

[Just Regular]

I was part of the Tarp Crew in '90-'91 and we'd have bullpen rotation doing the outfield wall/door opening and closing for pitching changes.

Especially in the first half of the game, it was just hanging out in a MLB bullpen.      Curt Schilling had me tell a groupie where in Fells Point to meet him after the game.   Ivan Rodriguez in the show at 19 pranked a reliever and he and I had a nod of appreciation.     One cloudy day we had to guard the field just in case it rained.... I did some laps on the Memorial Stadium gravel, and Ben McDonald and Mike Flanagan were doing the same.     I got to stand about 10 feet away from the bullpen catcher and try and watch the ball as Nolan Ryan got ready for a start when he led the league in Strikeouts during his Age 43 season.

[SteveA]

I got to meet a lot of players at the old Tops in Sports Banquet during the 1990s, which was held in Baltimore (Towson, mostly) every year and was considered one of the top offseason baseball banquets, right behind the one in New York for all the award winners.   My friend's uncle ran the thing every year so we often got to hang out in the VIP room before the banquet where the players and other baseball people in attendance had drinks and hors d'oeuvres.   There were other "civilians" in there and the players were pretty good about signing our programs.

I personally don't have any great stories from that time, just a lot autographs I collected (I've never been a big autograph person, I probably have 100ish autographs on programs from that banquet, and that probably is much more than half of all the autographs I have ever gotten anywhere from any source).   But at one of those banquets, my friend's mother, who was the sister of the guy who ran the banquet, accidentally bumped into Elrod Hendricks... in the ladies' room.   Elrod had had a bit too much to drink and went in the wrong door by mistake.   The next year Elrod remembered her and joked about it.