How 2 guys with $39 each can have a once in a lifetime baseball experience

After the ridiculous cattle call in the metro station, we got into the stadium at 6 oclock. We watched BP and used the starbucks cup contraption to get 5 balls from the field– 4 were marked as “training balls” and 1 game ball. People were amazed by the thing and kept asking me if I patented it. We wanted to see the view from behind the plate so we walked over to the top section. We noticed that there were actually stairs down to the presidents club level (their first mistake) and we just walked down there.

We watched the media circus from right behind the plate, front row, and listened to the white house security guy brief the press – kinda cool to hear him talking about “potus” etc. Saw Peter Gammons, Lindsay Czarniak (so hot) and the geico caveman guy. We didn’t think we would last down there – we chatted up the usher and the food lady so that they would think we just belonged. We saw the lineup intros, national anthem, and the president throw out the first pitch. Turns out the seats we were in belonged to the lady who sang the anthem – as we saw her come down we decided to get up and just walked into the presidents club. Absolutely gorgeous in there – smell of new leather everywhere. We decided to buy a beer-which was so good that we later decided it was so good that.... well, I'll keep that to myself. Then we got some food – tenderloin, fish and some great sides. And a chocolate muffin type thing of death. We stuffed some cream puffs in our mouths, got another beer and walked out to watch the game. We were pretty impressed with ourselves at this point.

So we walk out and are standing in the aisles. Usher told us to go take our seats. My buddy was scared of some guys in suits so we went the other way and as I sat down in some seats an usher was on to us. So we just got up and walked out of the section. We were joking how we couldn’t watch the game like this - out with the riffraff. But, we went to our real seats out in right field. We sat there for half an inning, but decided it wouldn’t do since we couldn’t see the jumbotron and had a bit of a closed off view. So we got up and walked back towards home plate. We bought a yuengling and thought it tasted decidedly worse than the beer in the presidents club.

So we went over to the section right behind the nationals dugout and just walked down. We sat about 15 rows up, at first. We saw Maury Povich and Connie Chung walking out, and noticed them stop to say hi to none other than Phil Donahue. We said hi to Maury and went to sit behind Phil – shook his hand when he left. Then we decided we were too far up so we went down to the third row…. And noticed Ted Leonsis was sitting right in front of us. I said hi to him between innings and told him the Caps were very exciting. He wasn’t too interested – shocker. We saw the jumbotron camera guy and I started waving my hat and screaming lets go Nats. The whole section joined in and I was on the jumbotron. Hilarious. We had a couple more beers. So Zimmerman hit the walk off homerun and we went ballistic. We hung out there for a bit and then I grabbed my buddy and we walked right back into the Presidents Club section and over to the usher we were chatting with before. No one said a thing. We took a picture with her and walked into the Presidents club and sat down at the bar. We buy a beer and are bullshitting with people. We chat up this whacked out rich family (the mom tried to kiss me not once, not twice, but three times – and her husband was there). We get these people to buy us drinks for the rest of the night – it was goddam funny. At one point the dad says “what am I paying for?” after the kid orders a round. I got so bold as to to get order shots for everyone, and tell the bar tender to also pour two beers for us on the side – then I’d point at the woman and say “she’s paying!” and she would! So fucking funny. I kept showing them my ticket and that it was $39 and laughing because they paid so much. We were in a funny mood.

This is when the good shit starts to happen…. the bar clears out and I walk over to the window looking into the press room. I talk to a waiter and just point to the room. He tells me there is back door and that the door doesn’t always latch.

Sure enough, I go out there and the door isn’t latched so I walk on in. I call my buddy and tell him to come over. He eventually comes in and we take pictures sitting at the press table. No one even says boo. We walk out of the press room and now we are in the back hallways of the stadium! So we wonder into the Nats locker room. Gorgeous. Two guys were playing video games. We walk in and sit down at the kitchen (even grabbed a muffin from there) and look around. We thought someone noticed us so we left. We kept walking and saw the batting cages. We walked by and boom – ramp to the freaking dugout. Went on the field, took pictures and were incredulous. My buddy grabbed a rosin bag that was sitting on the field. We found our way over to the visiting locker room (not nearly as nice as the home locker room) and the weight room. Found the umpire’s room. Went past the visitors batting cage and into the visitors dugout. Dicked around on the field a bit and decided to call it a night. Then we simply walked out of the stadium. It was too late to take the metro (around 2:30) and so we had to scramble to find a cab who would drive us to Maryland for the $37 I had left in my wallet. We tipped him with one of the baseballs from the game (which my buddy signed to him from Ryan Zimmerman) and somehow made it home safely - giggling like school girls the whole way back.



Legendary.

PS - The next morning we appeared in three pictures of Zimmerman's game winning HR in the post and on Washingtpost.Com - screen caps are included in the photobucket