Hello? Who's This?

The Orioles played the formerly lifeless and now quite competitive Washington Senators Nationals this week and barely fought them to a draw, one win each. However, seeing Nats manager Dave Martinez in their dugout reminded me of this story from 2021.

As reported in the Washington POST, a woman was talking to her husband on the phone while he was at the stadium waiting for a rain delay to end, or the game to start, or for the game to be suspended, or whatever. He was sitting all damp in the ballpark without a word as to what was happening, so she called his wife, who was NOT at the ballpark, for the latest on what was happening...at the ballpark.

She called the ticket office but the call died after one ring. She called back and an answering machine asked her whom she wanted to speak with. She said "The general management office," and after a couple of rings, a man's voice answered, saying, "Hello?" as if that were a question.

“Can I speak to a representative of the Washington Nationals?” she responded.

“You are speaking to a representative of the Washington Nationals,” came the reply. So the lady asked for some idea about the game's status, and the man told her it would "almost certainly be suspended." 

"What about our tickets? Do we get rain checks?" was her next question, and the man's next answer was that he had no idea. He asked her name, and she said she was Mrs Crowl.

“Ms. Crowl, this is Dave Martinez,” said the Nationals’ manager. And he took her contact info and promised her tickets to a future game and left her with a story that she can still tell, three years later.

So who knows? Call the White House, call Toyota Motor Sales, call MGM Movie studios and ask for the person in charge.

You never know.