Someday, Your Name Is Going To Be In Lights
What a beautiful day we had on Saturday. Temperatures in the mid 70’s and very low humidity, maybe 40%. It should very quickly start getting much, much warmer and a whole lot more humid, so it was wonderful to have such a nice day for a ballgame.
When we left to go to the ballpark on Saturday it was immediately apparent that there was a lot of traffic on the road. Either there was some backup on the Virginia side of the bridge (American Legion bridge) or someone was doing construction on an unusual day to be doing construction. I bailed off of the beltway and decided that we’d take the Clara Barton parkway into town. Even the Clara Barton was very crowded, but that might have been partially due to people bailing off the beltway like us.
The traffic stayed heavy all the way downtown and when I spotted what I thought was the flag of Hondouras attached to a car window, part of my brain recalled that there was a big soccer game at RFK stadium. We got to Nationals’ Park with plenty of time to spare, but much less time that I had expected. In Sunday’s newspaper I read that there were 41,000 people at the Hondouras-El Salvador "friendly" soccer game (are these games normally "unfriendly?"). Add the 40,000 at the Nats’ game to the 41,000 at the soccer game and that goes a long way to explaining where all the traffic was coming from/going to. And you can’t forget all the tourists that have no clue where they are going and trying to do it in a town that isn’t really traffic friendly–the road signs seem to all be accurate, but they still don’t make sense.
At the last baseball game we’d attended, I had grabbed a whole bunch of all-star ballots to finish at home and then return. I knew from last year that at some point in the all-star balloting the Nationals’ would offer prizes for fans that turn in 10-50-100-or more completed ballots. Since I’d already completed several hundred ballots, I figured that I’d keep doing several hundered for each game and maybe score some freebies.
Sure enough, there was a table with some Nats’ employees accepting completed ballots and giving away prizes. I turned in my 267 completed ballots, accepted the two bobbleheads (Teddy!) and I also took about 400 additional, blank ballots. The bobblehead is the prize for completing 100 ballots and for 500 ballots you get a whole Nats fan backpack that has a bunch of stuff inside. There were also prizes listed for 1000 and 5000 ballots. 1000 ballots wins an "autographed item," but I can’t remember what 5000 ballots wins. I figured that I could complete the 400+ ballots I picked up on Saturday, pick up and complete another big batch on Tuesday and have 1000 complted before the balloting period ends in late June.
We got some food, took our seats and watched a great game with Stephen Strasburg pitching a fantastic game. Before the start of the bottom of the fifth inning they roll the messages that people pay to have put up onto the big scoreboard and I reminded Mrs. Ender that, as season ticket holders, we were entitled to a free message at some point during the season. She suggested a message for our anniversary later this month and I thought it might me nice to have a message put up if we have a big family outing like we did last year. Then I forgot about messages on the scoreboard.
The picture that leads off this entry is the Nats’ scoreboard. According to Wikipedia, it is the largest scoreboard in Major League Baseball. It’s really, really, really big. That’s the official measurement in really-really-reallys.
Just before the seventh inning stretch I heard my name on the public address system and I look up and saw my name, all alone, on the scoreboard. The letters of my name must have been 30 feet tall. It was huge, and it was my name. It said I was some sort of all-star ballot winner and I could pick up my reward….and I saw the words "center field plaza" but quite frankly I was too busy nudging Mrs. Ender, saying "look, it’s me" to really pay attention to what I had to do next.
Well, it took nearly an entire inning, but I found the guest relations office on one side of center field plaza and they handed me my prize for winning the drawing of Saturday’s submitted ballots. A Stephen Strasburg autographed baseball. Not unlike the award for submitting 1000 completed ballots. Woo Hoo!
Now confidentially, the reason I am completing so many ballots is my hope that I’ll win the trip for two to the All-Star Game in Kansas City in early July. You can vote on the ballot and turn it in, but you can also put your name and email address on a short form that is on the ballot. The MLB will be choosing a winner of the trip for two from those entries. I figure that if I complete as many ballots as I possibly can, I’ll have at least a shot in the dark of winning the trip. My most likely competition will be someone as geeky about the ballots as I’m being.
I had been filling out the name/email address section by hand, but that was only on the first 500-600 ballots that I completed. I picked up 687 blank ballots on Saturday and I finished them last night because I fed them through my printer. Mrs. Ender had suggested that I scan a completed ballot and print just the handwritten data onto a label and affix the label to the ballots. I went one step further by removing the ballot info from the scan, leaving just the handwritten part of my entry and then I printed that part onto each ballot. It looks like a hand written ballot–not that there is any rule against printing the data electronically–and it takes about 3 seconds per ballot to print. I still have to hand punch the ballots, but I figure I could finish more than 5000 ballots before the deadline. That would earn me whatever prize the Nats are giving away for that many, and it would give me much better odds in the trip-for-two prize drawing. I’m such a geek.
So, I got bobbleheads at the start of the game, bunches and bunches of ballots to take home with me, a Stephen Strasburg autographed baseball, a day of punching and printing ballots and the possibility of increasing my odds to be at the All-Star game courtesy of someone else. Oh, and I also got a free small soda as our designated driver. What a wonderful weekend.
Other than that, I’ve got nothing.
Ender is out.