Customer: “Do you have any chicken wings?”
Me: “No, sir. I’m sorry.”
Customer: “This is the fourth store I’ve called! How is it that every grocery store forgot to order chicken wings?! It’s Super Bowl Sunday! I mean hello?!”
While visiting family in Phoenix, we went to a Diamondbacks baseball game. At the time, the team wore uniforms in teal and purple. We didn’t have any Diamondbacks gear, so we just planned to wear whatever teal or purple we had. Another fan sitting a row or two behind us must have had the same idea; she was wearing a purple shirt from a college football team a few states away.
Apparently, this was a great offense to a fan of the visiting team a row in front of us. He took it upon himself to berate the woman for wearing the “wrong color purple.” True, her shirt was a deeper purple, but it was ridiculous how much he cared or that he even noticed. The two started arguing back and forth, and suddenly, the man threw his (plastic, fortunately) beer bottle at the woman.
The fan next to her deftly caught it just before it hit her in the face and immediately threw it back right where it came from, beaning the man right on the head.
Ballpark security arrived then and ejected the man. They must have been okay with the shade of the woman’s shirt; she was allowed to stay. Even better, the visiting fan’s team lost, too.
Related:
Some Sports Fans Need To CHILL
Several years ago, I was a referee for a First Lego League (now known as FLL Challenge) competition. This is a competition where middle-schoolers build and program Lego robots to run on a board completing various challenges for points.
This year, one of my teams had some adorable homemade outfits fitting this year’s theme. They also had a large banner that they dragged in and excitedly waved, and in general, they were full of energy and excitement.
I always encourage the kids to cheer as loud as possible when their team name is called by the announcer. That’s part of the general goal of making competitions fun and enjoyable for the kids regardless of how well they do on the table. Despite this, I usually get rather lackluster responses when team names are called. Not [Team], though. I got by far the most enthusiastic full-energy cheer I’d heard in a long time from this team.
They were at my table for their first official match. I’d watched them during their practice round and knew that their robot was decent — a bit better than the average — but was still not going to come close to the score of the best few bots.
After [Team]’s robot successfully completed its first two runs, it came back to the home base so they could swap out parts for another run. The boy starting the robot up apparently ran the wrong program. This resulted in the robot running amok over the board as it tried to run a program designed for a very different section of the board, knocking pieces out of place and losing the team points.
Then came the confusion of the kids trying to decide whether to take the bot back to home base, therefore getting a touch penalty, or leave it as it was. They ended up deciding on the penalty, but they hesitated too long making the decision, meaning they didn’t have time to complete the next run before time ran out. The net result was a rather abysmal score compared to what they should have managed.
Luckily, they would get to do three runs and only the highest score of the three counted, so they still had a chance for a better score, but having your first run go so terribly can be quite discouraging to kids.
But as I listened, rather than hearing frustration or scolding directed at the kid who messed up, I heard more cheering, proclamations that they would do better next time, and multiple teammates encouraging the child who messed up. I couldn’t help but be impressed by their relentless optimism and so resolved to keep an eye on them.
As I watched, I saw not just excitement for their own team, but compliments and cheering for the other teams. At one point, I even saw one girl from [Team] offer her help to another team when their robot wasn’t starting up right. The other team was one of the top teams, and they didn’t really need her help, but still, I was impressed by her trying to aid her greatest competition.
The final score on the tables was only one of the four areas we looked at. Separate groups of judges assessed their Robot Design, their Projects, and their Core Values. Since I usually judged, I knew all three categories well.
Core Values included inspiration (team spirit), teamwork, and “gracious professionalism”, which basically means being professional and a good sport to the other teams. I deemed [Team] to have demonstrated all three of those areas far in excess of the average team.
Not able to give up on my inner judge, I couldn’t stand the idea of [Team] not getting recognition for living up to these values on the field — and not just when they were being actively judged. Thus, I took a free moment to run down to the Core Values room and let the judges there know what I’d seen.
As it turned out, [Team] had already been ranked the top team for Core Values, even before they got my recognition. However, there were other steps for deciding what trophies to hand out beyond the ranking of the teams, and one of them was picking who got the Champion award for excelling in all four areas — the score on the table plus the three judged categories.
Usually, the Champion award tended to go to one of the teams that had a high score on the table, as they usually also had a high score in Robot Design, giving them high scores in half the areas we measured even before we considered that these teams also tended to put a bit more work into their Projects.
Still, we always stressed that all categories were weighted evenly; if anything, Core Values was usually used as the tiebreaker for otherwise even teams. In this case, they had three teams with high table and Robot Design scores, but those teams either had an abysmal Project score, in one case, or decent but not exceptional Project scores and mediocre Core Values. Competing with these three teams was [Team], with a perfect Core Values score, a good Project score, and decent, if not exceptional, Design and table scores.
The judges were split between multiple potential winners. It was apparently my confirmation that [Team]’s values continued to be demonstrated at the table that pushed them over the edge to win the Champion award.
[Team] was clearly shocked when their name was announced for Champion.
Personally, I think they earned it. I gave it my all applauding for them.
I play in an adult volleyball league one night a week. You play four games each night — two games each against two different opponents — and then referee the two games your opponents play against each other.
One guy on another team has a reputation for being a major complainer about the refs. As I’m reffing his team playing, there he is complaining about everything, what is being called, what isn’t, and what he thinks the rules are.
Finally, I grow tired of him, so when he complains after his team loses a point, I walk over and hand him my whistle.
Me: “Thanks for volunteering. Here you go.”
Complainer: “What’s this for?”
Me: “I thought you were volunteering to ref the rest of the game since you seem to think you can do a better job than me.”
Complainer: “Oh, no. I don’t like reffing. I’m here to play.”
Me: “Okay, great. Then you worry about playing, and I’ll worry about reffing. Sound good?”
Complainer: “Yeah.”
He stopped complaining so much after that.
I’m in a sports bar, and playing on one of the screens is a show called “Toughman Contest.” The premise is novice amateur boxers competing against each to test their skills.
One of the contestants is a Black man in magnificent physical shape with amazing brute strength, plowing his opponents over like a tank and scoring knockouts in the first minute. It’s amazing that boxing promoters aren’t beating this guy’s door down!
A trio of guys is standing next to me, watching as well. One of them speaks up.
Guy: “Bulls***! Put the [racist slur] up against an in-shape and well-trained white guy and let’s see how long he’d last! Guarantee you, it’d be over by the second round!”
Me: “How about you step in the ring with him, call him that to his face, and see how long you’d last?!”
Other Patron: *Chiming in* “Guarantee you, it’d be over by the second punch!“
Other patrons glared at the guy. It quickly became obvious that they’d just made a frosty environment for themselves; they took the cue to quietly slink over to a table in the back and shut up for the rest of the time they were there.
