All Punched Out, or Up
I finished punching all my All Star Game ballots. All 10,000 of them.
Actually, that isn’t completely accurate. I picked up seven boxes at 1,500 each. That’s 10,500. I only punched six boxes. That’s 9,000. But, I already had a shopping bag with 1,000 punched ballots so I added my shopping bag to the 9,000 newly punched ballots for a total of 10,000 ballots.
Then it was time to call to make arrangements to drop all these ballots off. This was on Wednesday morning. We had tickets to last night’s game (Thursday), so I was hoping I could arrange to be at the ballpark a bit early and drop off the ballots. Easy peasy, right?
Nope, not so easy. I couldn’t make arrangements to drop off my 10,000 ballots because they stopped accepting ballots the night before. What!? I understood the words, I just couldn’t get past the fact that I’d just spent 10 nights punching ballots. My achy fingers couldn’t understand why I couldn’t turn the ballots in.
To my credit, my first thought was "what if some National’s player is within 10,000 votes of getting on the All Star Team?" That was quickly, very, very, quickly followed by "but I just hand punched all these ballots."
I hung up with the Nationals and called my wife to tell her that I was 10,000 ballots and a half a day late but in mid-call I got a callback from the Nationals. Thank you call waiting. For 10,000 ballots they would make an exception if I could deliver my ballots by 1pm. No problem. Mrs. Ender threw them in her car, drove down to my workplace and we both drove down to the stadium. Traffic was pretty bad because of all the roadwork (not to be confused by the Stephen King novella by the same name) that is being done in the area. Do you have any idea how long a 1/2 hour drive takes in heavy traffic all the while the clock is ticking steadily toward 1pm? We were two minutes later than planned, 12:32 instead of 12:30. Anxiety only seems to warp reality.
So my 10,000 ballots are in. The "prize" for completing 5,000 ballots was being able to watch batting practice from the field. That’s what I was aiming for, to get Mrs. Ender up close and within arm’s reach of some of the players. And as long as I was punching ballots for her to be on the field, I figured I could do another 5,000 to include myself. I haven’t heard back, but I’m expecting my "come on down to the field to watch batting practice" invitation. It will be double nice if they can let us do that when the Nats play the Cardinals, Mrs. Ender’s former favorite ballclub.
About 1,500 of the total ballots I submitted had my name/email address on the ballot section for the drawing for two to go to the All Star Game. Maybe that will be a second happy surprise to compensate me for the aching fingers and hands?
Other than that? It was beastly humid at last night’s game, 90 degrees and probably 40%+ humidity. I was soaking wet when we left the ballpark, but the Nat’s won 5-2 and won the series with the Tampa Bay Rays 2-1. They have a 3.5 game lead in the national league East and have the third best record in the MLB. At this point last year they were either next to last or dead ass last. Quite the turnaround.
Ender is out.