The Worst Experience I’ve Ever Had at a Game the O’s Won (By Far)

[Frobby]

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.

 

[interloper]

Lol ugh. We've all been there. Sucks man. Lately I don't know what to do about food at any sporting event because you end up missing literally 30 minutes of the game just trying to get something to eat. 

I say treat yourself to a solo Camden game. Get good seats, splurge on close parking, get there crazy early and load up on food and watch the game as laser focused as you care to. 

[spleen1015]

That sucks Frobby.

As an after thought, your wife could have called you just to see if your phone was in the recycle bin.

[Pickles]

That sucks, Frobby.

At least you threw your phone away.  That's annoying, but it beats some dirtball stealing it and making money on it.  Or worse with your data.

[Sanfran327]

I've been a partial season ticket holder (well, part of a group that splits up a two sets of full season tickets) for the Caps for the last, I think, 3 years. October will be my 4th season. Getting to Capital One on a weekday is an absolute nightmare every single time. Fridays are the absolute worst. And I think Cap One is WAY easier to get to than Nats Park. Who thought it would be a good idea to put a stadium at the end of a peninsula? And it's not like 295, 395, 267, and 66 are full of after-work commuters at that time of day, right? It's enough to make me wan to quit the group. In fact, once Ovie breaks the record or retires, I intend to.

The fact that it's easier to get from Herndon to Baltimore on a weekday than it is to get from Herndon to downtown DC is absurd. The things we do as fans...

Hope your phone situation is resolved swiftly, Frobby. How frustrating.

Edited May 9 by Sanfran327

[Frobby]

2 minutes ago, spleen1015 said:

That sucks Frobby.

As an after thought, your wife could have called you just to see if your phone was in the recycle bin.

Thanks for the sympathy.  I always keep my phone on low vibrate, so calling it wouldn’t have done any good.  I also hadn’t backed it up to the cloud, so I’ve lost a lot of data, including some voice mails I’d saved from my dad, who died two years ago.   It just blows.  

[Tony-OH]

Sorry to hear about your experience. Traffic, parking, and the lines for food at Nats park are all the reason why I stay away from that place at all costs. I've been to two games there and both experiences were not good. 

Sorry to hear about the lost data and voice mails. That certainly is very unfortunate. 

[Goober Noodles]

Oof.  At least there's an off day for you to recover and actually eat dinner on time.  Everything sucks worse when you're hangry.

[Aristotelian]

That sucks. If you have a "where's my phone" app I would be curious where.it ends up.

[Frobby]

2 minutes ago, Sanfran327 said:

I've been a partial season ticket holder (well, part of a group that splits up a two sets of full season tickets) for the Caps for the last, I think, 3 years. October will be my 4th season. Getting to Capital One on a weekday is an absolute nightmare every single time. Fridays are the absolute worst. And I think Cap One is WAY easier to get to than Nats Park. Who thought it would be a good idea to put a stadium at the end of a peninsula? And it's not like 295, 395, 267, and 66 are full of after-work commuters at that time of day, right? It's enough to make me wan to quit the group. In fact, once Ovie breaks the record or retires, I intend to.

The fact that it's easier to get from Herndon to Baltimore on a weekday than it is to get from Herndon to downtown DC is absurd. The things we do as fans...

Hope your phone situation is resolved swiftly, Frobby. How frustrating.

I routinely leave for O’s games 42 miles from my house with less time to spare than I did for this one.  Honestly I think the route the map app sent me on was doomed to get worse during the time I was traveling.  

And another thing is just the cost of the tickets and parking compared to equivalent seats and parking at Camden Yards.   Probably would have cost no more than $65-75 compared to the $112 I paid for that crappy experience.  
 

[spleen1015]

25 minutes ago, Frobby said:

Thanks for the sympathy.  I always keep my phone on low vibrate, so calling it wouldn’t have done any good.  I also hadn’t backed it up to the cloud, so I’ve lost a lot of data, including some voice mails I’d saved from my dad, who died two years ago.   It just blows.  

I'm sorry, man. That does blow.

[Gurgi]

46 minutes ago, Frobby said:

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.

 

I got one of those low blood sugar got to have her veggie food wives also.  They are so annoying.  If I didnt get some other use out of her It would be too much.  LOL

Why cant they just eat a hamburger once in a while?

And now you have given me another reason to not recycle.   I just do cardboard boxes.  The recycling in my area just goes into the dump anyway.  My lefty wife called and found this out.  She was hopping mad.  But they told her on the phone they still wanted people to recycle so the public stayed in the habit.  Not that it was doing one bit of good just so the public did what it was told.  What a load of crap.

Edited May 9 by Gurgi

[Mooreisbetter27]

Really sorry to hear about that Frobby.  Especially the lost calls and voicemails.  When my Grandmother passed (who was like a second mother to me)... for a few weeks I called her cell phone and would talk to her voice mail.. it was somewhat soothing to me for whatever reason.  I got to briefly hear her voice and say things to what felt like her at the time of grieving.  After a month or so, they turned off the phone.  I then later found out she never knew how to get into her voicemail anyways haha.

But yeah, I've been to Nats stadium 2 times and honestly, can't stand it.  There's isnt much to like about it and even metro is a disaster getting to and from at times.  I went to a Cubs game at Wrigley this past weekend and loved it and it wasn't even my team.  I can't imagine I'll be going to anymore games at Nats park.  

[RZNJ]

That story kept getting worse and worse but I was expecting the clincher of all time bad experiences, that you didn’t get to the parking lot on time and had to Uber or Taxi and pick your car up this morning.   You get chili at a ballgame?  You’re a brave man.

[Moose Milligan]

Sucks to hear about that experience at Nats Stadium, @Frobby

If you ever go back, I'd suggest driving somewhere closer to the stadium and park somewhere else and take an Uber/Lyft to the stadium itself.  I used to live in Arlington, like 3-4 miles from Nats Park but I'd never think of driving there and there's no way in hell I'd take the Metro.  I'd either leave my car in the garage at work and go straight from there via Uber or go back to my apartment, drop the car there and get a ride to the stadium. 

Ubers can be pricey but if you don't use them all the time and need the convenience in a situation like this, they're worth it.