September 30, 2006
Fandemonium!
The phone rang at the house and the kids all rushed to the caller ID to see who was calling since each of them was sure that the incoming call was for them. I am not sure how we ever lived without Caller ID since no one in our house ever thinks to just pick up the phone and say hello to see who is on the other line. In this case the display read, “Arizona Diamondbacks”.
“Dad, it’s for you!” I am not sure why they think that if the display says Arizona Diamondbacks it necessarily means that they are calling for me. Having your phone ring and the Caller ID saying it is a Major League Baseball team is probably the closest thing I will ever have to a Bat Phone. I always envision answering the call and having it be manager Bob Melvin or general manager Josh Byrnes on the other end saying they heard about my first pitch and were wondering if I would be available to sign a contract. That never seems to happen but it is always great to dream between the second and third rings. Coming out of my alternative reality, I picked up the phone.
“Hello?”
“Hi, may I speak to Jeff Summers?”
“This is he.”
“Hi Jeff this is the Diamondbacks MVP Rewards department and we have identified that you are one of our most active members and we would like to invite you to an event.”
One of their most active members? I am not sure what to think about that. Does that mean that they see me scanning my card at every game or that I have started to rack up points buying concessions or is this about the 3 jerseys I bought because I had not gotten a new jersey this century? None of these sounds like a good thing. I thought maybe this was one of those profiling things and the next thing I know a mug shot would be shown on the evening news and my neighbor would be saying stuff like, “He seemed fairly normal from October through March but then he got really strange from April through September. He’d be gone 83 nights always at 4:30 returning around 10:30. He may be a serial killer or terrorist for all I know.”
“Wow, thanks!” I said.
“We would like to invite you to the Saturday game against the San Diego Padres as our way of saying thanks. Would you like to go to the game this weekend?”
“Uh, well yeah I had thought maybe I would go to the game.” I was trying to play it cool while all the time I was dancing around like the midget on the Gieco commercial singing, “It’s my birthday, fixed my bumper, it’s my birthday, got new taillights.”
“Great, you and a guest are invited to watch the game from the owner’s suite. I’ll have the tickets at will call for you to pick up and we’ll see you at the game.”
