Hey Man, Nice Hat

It's been a while since I last posted, but this story is a pretty good one, brought back to mind by a camera we finally got developed and the fact that hockey season is starting anew.

To start this story, you need to know that I am a silly guy. I'll do silly things for attention, but not always outright attention, more of the, "look at that guy" kind of attention. So when my then girlfriend (for now to be referred to solely as "wife") saw the huge stovepipe St. Patrick's Day hats at Wal-Mart, well, I just had to get me one to wear for the upcoming Atlantic Junior Hockey League playoffs in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She got one too.

A couple weeks before the March 17 game at Verizon Center, I had been contacted by a group to announce their post-game hockey contest on the ice at the home of the Washington Capitals. I had debated this because I knew we'd have to be up early the next morning to catch a flight to Boston. I decided to do it because it would give me a chance to wear the hat in public to a Caps game but also gives me another game to announce. As most who know me will attest, I'm abused by the announcing bug. Have game, will announce!

I get to Verizon Center ahead of my wife because, well she came in from another place and I had a pre-game hockey match-up with some kids to announce. I wish I could remember the teams, one day I'll find the scorebook from this weekend and put them in here! I did the kids game, put my announcing stuff in a locked room then waited for the gates to open. Wearing my 3-foot tall hat, I walked around the concourse then down to the ice level for warm-ups. Several people pointed and smiled, but the first person to say anything was a 5 year old little girl who tapped me on the shoulder and said, "I like your hat". She was cute!

After warm-ups, and with the wife coming in on Metro, I walked back up to the concourse where I was stopped by Rachel. Rachel, who works on the Caps game operations team, asked me if I'd be interested in participating in a contest. Gee, the hat made it easy to pull me out of a line-up and this is the ultimate, "look at that guy" kind of thing to do so I said, "sure". I wasn't quite paying attention to what the contest was, I was told to wait in my seat and they'd get me at the end of the second period. Our seats were an easy walkway from where the contest was to be held.

I get over to the contest and find out, it's "Fan Announcer of the Game". Great, this was tailored to me, wasn't it! Now, keep in mind that no less than a dozen people working for the Caps knew who I was and what I do, Rachel didn't. The official scorer for the Caps, the guy running the Caps penalty box, the P. A. announcer for the Caps, my contact for the youth games and most of the people in game ops knew what I do for a living.

So I get up there and we're about 2 minutes away from starting when Rachel tells me to go first. I hear over her headset, "Jarrod goes second. HE...GOES...SECOND" So I go second.

First, they show us a scene from a game with some keywords on the board to help us out along with the call by Joe Beninatti. My opponent, a fellow from Texas, steps up and he begins to stammer and stutter his way through it, receiving a mild round of applause and a couple of boos.

Then, it's my turn.

"Kerry Fraser and [can't remember the other ref's name] are the referees tonight and here we go as the Caps win the faceoff back to the blue line, they'll start it up along the right-wing boards to Clymer who skates across the blueline, winds up and fires it on Esche. It squeaks through and SCORE!" The place erupted. Literally erupted like the Caps had actually just scored.

The other fellow was amazed, the camera guy and Rachel were "wow" and the crowd that was in the seats watching the promo were stunned.

I won a Ben Clymer autographed puck and considered giving it to the fellow from Texas but wound up keeping it where it is prominently displayed in my sports room. After the promotion however, I had a lot of people recognize the hat and say, "wow, you did a great job!" and "wow, you sound like a pro". All I could say was, "thanks!" Except to the people who I was announcing for after the game. Nobody recognized me until after when I put the hat on!

Anyway, the game ends and the wife heads home because she is going to pack for us to head up to Boston the next morning. To most people, this would be the end of the story, not the middle of one. I mean, how many people get to hear themselves on the sound system at Verizon Center before, during and after a Caps game...I mean get to participate in a contest?

I'm down announcing the game and knowing that it's going to snow. In fact, it already had as the wife had texted me when she got back to her car. We were flying JetBlue and this was a month after they had all those problems on Valentine's Day with people stuck in planes away from the gates for over five hours.

Here is where the decision played big time.

After the game, I get into my car and head home. Had I decided not to do that game, we would've been sleeping at the time I arrived home, 1:30 a.m. Throughout the evening, Spring had checked JetBlue's web site to make sure the flight was still on. Right before she signed off at 1:30 a.m., she checked one more time and the flight was cancelled. I called JetBlue to confirm and within 20 minutes, we were on our way to Boston...in her new car...in a snowstorm...and not quite 100% sure where to go.

Both of us had been awake around 6 a.m. Friday morning so this was going to be a teamwork happening. She slept through most of the first part of the trip as we headed up I-95 on some roads that were good, some not so much. It didn't get back until we got on the New Jersey Turnpike around 3 a.m. It was almost like they didn't touch it. Finally, I needed a break with my adrenaline already on low from the Caps game. She took over and as we hit Newark, the roads got bad. I could feel the car slipping a sliding but she stayed on the road well. By divulging how fast we were going (under the posted speed limits), we could still get a ticket, thankfully nobody was on the road with us, not even plows.

We got up to the other end of the Turnpike and I forget which way to go so I decided to keep her on I-95. We wound up going over the George Washington Bridge (only about a 1 minute wait there was!) and through the upper part of New York City into Connecticut. She drove from about Trenton up to about 20 miles into Connecticut then I took over again. You could tell the sun was starting to come up around five in the morning.

With the game starting at 10 a.m. and we need to be there by 9 a.m., it's still a crunch to get there. I took over and we had clear sailing up until Hartford. I'd decided to cut through Hartford on I-84 up to Worcester, it's the straightest line between Bridgeport and Boston.

We're doing fine, then the weather gets worse about 20 miles south of Hartford when it was hard to see the road. The trucks would come out and plow some parts, making it easy to drive on, then the road would disappear all of a sudden and you're sliding around. We make it through Hartford in two of the most harrowing hours I've ever spent driving a car. I'm so glad I had that experience driving an ice resurfacer.

We hit the Massachusetts border and the roads become wet, that's it. Not slippery, but just wet. Mass knows how to care for their roads. So 65-75 mph we went but doing it safely. We get to the exit near Cambridge (at least the directions said to take that exit) and we got lost. With my cell about to die and Glenn Hefferan calling to see where I am, he came out to meet us and got us on the right track back to the arena.

Both of us were still in pajamas (we wanted to be comfortable) so off to the restrooms to chang. Personally, I went and got set-up first and then went to change. After putting the time on the scoreboard to count down to warm-ups, the Zamboni takes the ice to go over it again. They'd misunderstood my timing to be that of the NCAA in that the Zamboni takes the ice at 20:00 on the scoreboard or something like that. Them doing the ice one more time, gave me enough time to write in the team rosters, get the starting line-ups and have everything ready for the game.

Spring worked the ticket table that had all the info on the games so she made a little bit by being there.

The Washington Jr. Nationals were playing the second game of the day at Harvard so I had something to look forward to, keeping me going through the first game. As I head up to check on Spring between games, I run into some Jr. Nats parents, one of which walks up to me and says, "Where's the hat? I saw you last night at the Caps game? I thought they called in a ringer!" I got that a lot that day and the following week!

A Junior-A game can take the same length as an NHL game, maybe a little less without TV timeouts but it's still a lengthy process that's not easy to do. The games get over around 4 p.m. and we head to the hotel to check in. A nice hotel, right on the Charles River, Fenway park off to the east and Boston's glory right in front of us. It was a beautiful room (thanks Glenn!).

It's now 34 hours since we last had real sleep and we have one more game in the morning. I've already announced four games and appeared at a fifth. So what do we do? Go to Cheers! Yep, had to eat at Cheers and it was awesome! Boston, on St. Patrick's Day and Cheers. Actually, it's the Bull N Finch Pub and we wound up eating upstairs at what was Melville's in the TV show but we got to see Boston Common and a few other landmarks on the cab ride. It was a great meal and the Boston Creme pie was amazing. I had a green drink named after Woody from the show, but can't remember the name of it. It was good too! Hey, I'm not a restaurant critic, I'm an announcer.

After dinner, we get back to the hotel and both are asleep by 9 p.m. Dead to the world are we until about 6 a.m. when I woke up for no reason, then fell back to sleep for a couple more hours before having to get to the rink for the AJHL championship game.

After the game, we hopped in the car and visited an aunt in Ludlow, Mass which was kind of on the way. It was a detour around 84 but we got back down to where we needed to go and I had some help from people to get us to the Tappan Zee Bridge.

Anyway, we take the detour and I pull into her house. I hadn't been there in over 10 years, yet I remembered where it was. I knocked on the door, no answer, then called her to see where she was. She asked me, "Where are you?" I told her, "In your driveway!"

She got there and we followed her out for a steak dinner then drove home after that. I almost stopped off in New Jersey to introduce her to some friends of mine that live there that she wound up meeting a year or so later. It was about 6 p.m. as we passed through the Oranges in New Jersey, but we had to be at work on Monday.

A wrong turn delayed us from getting home before 1 a.m., but we were asleep by 2 a.m. on an uneventful ride home.

It's amazing how so much happened in one day. Two good, solid stories on their own, brought together because I like to announce!