{"id":118,"date":"2008-06-25T23:31:58","date_gmt":"2008-06-26T03:31:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.steverogers.info\/?p=118"},"modified":"2008-06-25T23:35:59","modified_gmt":"2008-06-26T03:35:59","slug":"lots-of-balls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.steverogers.info\/?p=118","title":{"rendered":"Lots of Balls"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the greatest things about Washington DC and sports are lobbyists.\u00a0 I think I have paid to see two Nationals games in the past five years.\u00a0 The Nationals are generally a lousy baseball team, but this town is literally the capital of professional networking and socializing.\u00a0 So every business, firm, and lobbyist organization buys tickets to games for opportunities to take out clients or network.\u00a0 However these organizations do not always need their tickets, so it is rather easy to find lobbyist tickets.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, Rich GChatted me asking if I wanted to go the Nationals game.\u00a0 I said sure and asked if I should try to get lobbyists tickets (we were planning to just do cheap seats).\u00a0 He told me to go ahead, so I emailed the Finance Director at the DLCC.\u00a0 Within a couple of hours he said he had four tickets for me.\u00a0 They were on my desk when I got to work the next morning.<\/p>\n

I knew the seats were going to be good from the seating chart, but it was a pleasant sight to have them be front row behind the dugout.\u00a0 It was Brett, Rich, and myself (Lady Danica bailed 10 minutes befor\"Steve\\'s<\/a>e we were to meet).\u00a0 We went down to our seats and had a good time sort of just being in such great seats.<\/p>\n

In the third inning with the bases loaded and one out, there was a short fly to right.\u00a0 The runner on third tried to tag and score, but the right fielder through him out at the plate to end the inning (See the play here, Click “Dukes cuts down Anderson trying to score”<\/a>.\u00a0 The catcher then ran to the dugout.\u00a0 I was standing and he tossed me the ball.<\/p>\n

In a later inning, Brett made eye contact with the bat boy as he was running back to the dugout.\u00a0 The bat boy proceeded to toss him a ball.\u00a0 Brett got it (after a small hand scuffle with the guy sitting to his right.\u00a0 The ball was clearly Brett’s).\u00a0 So here we were, in the front row with now two baseballs during a Nationals game.<\/p>\n

Brett and I started gently teasing Rich that now he had to get a ball.\u00a0 Then, when the bat boy was running back to the dugout looking to the crowd some.\u00a0 I half jokingly pointed to Rich with both hands, and the bat boy then threw Rich a ball.\u00a0 So now we had three balls, in the front row.\u00a0 (We also joked that is Danica would have come, she definitely would have gotten one..but no show, no ball).<\/p>\n

There was a father with his young son two rows behind us, who seeing our success wanted to get a ball.\u00a0 Then our goal became to get one for him.\u00a0 However about 4 other young’ins came down and sat around us for the last two innings.\u00a0 One of these got a ball in the eighth inning.\u00a0 After the game, the boy a couple rows behind us was leaving, but we waved and got his attention and Brett tossed him his ball (WTG Br\"Rich,<\/a>ett).\u00a0 Then we were still in the front row, and a bat boy tossed Brett another ball after some pointing.<\/p>\n

So tonight, on free lobbyist tickets, Brett, Rich and I got to see a good Nationals game and scored four baseballs, and Brett probably made a little kid’s night.\u00a0 All in all, this should teach us…Lobbyists are good people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the greatest things about Washington DC and sports are lobbyists.\u00a0 I think I have paid to see two Nationals games in the past five years.\u00a0 The Nationals are generally a lousy baseball team, but this town is literally the capital of professional networking and socializing.\u00a0 So every business, firm, and lobbyist organization buys […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.steverogers.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.steverogers.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.steverogers.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.steverogers.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.steverogers.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.steverogers.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.steverogers.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.steverogers.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.steverogers.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}