Of Pop Machine Vandals, Elevators, and Rob Neyer
Late Friday night, after going through the pictures I took of the Cardinals game, writing the post below, going over the A’s loss, looking through the minor league games, and so on… all I wanted was a cold pop to drink while I watched some TV. I flipped on the set, found that Survivorman — one of my favorite shows — was on, and went out to the vending machine on my floor during the commercial break.
It appeared that someone broke into the vending machine recently, and it had an out of order sign on it. I just went up a floor, but I found the same problem. On the next two floors, you guessed it: busted pop machines.
On the ride down from the 15th to 14th floor, I had a co-rider in the elevator: Rob Neyer. Though I wanted to say hello, tell him that I enjoy his writing, and that I really appreciated him commenting on his ESPN blog about something I wrote on Catfish Stew back in May… I was tired, he looked tired, and we rode down wordlessly. The machine on that floor accepted my dollar — but ate it without disgorging a can of pop. I went down to the front desk to find out what was going on, and found out that someone broke into all the machines in the building a few weeks ago, and they have yet to be repaired. Any of them.
I returned to the elevator, resigned to the fact that I wouldn’t have that cold pop that I, by now, really wanted. Who should be on the elevator again, but Neyer. He was telling a gentleman from Montreal a story about the time he was in the Adam’s Mark Hotel at the same time as the Mets, and he ran into David Cone and former Expo, then-Cardinal Andres Galarraga. I didn’t overhear where the story went, as he departed on a different floor than I.
The moral of the story, if there is one, is this: you never know who you’ll run into when vandals force you into a fruitless search for a pop at a national baseball research convention.
July 30th, 2007 at 6:51 pm
Ryan,
My camera blows and your convention log puts mine to shame. You were wise to play it cool with Neyer. My buddy Kevin nearly tried to dry hump him at the Piano Bar Friday night and succeeded only in embarassing himself.
I’d love to grab a beer (or five) with you next year. But what’s with the slight against the Twins? After last year’s ALDS I can’t imagine an A’s fan would have grounds for complaint.
Kyle