I am often asked, “what is it like to live at the 108 Pre and Post-game headquarters?” Let me give you a glimpse…
Opening Day
Every year on the home opener, I need to be comfortable with the ambiguity that between 40-75 people will be walking through my front door between 10am and 30 minutes before game time. This year, there will likely be closer to 40 people since our beloved team will be terrible.
The ‘Loaf and I like to host and we also like meeting new fans. We only really have one rule on Opening Day and that is: “don’t be a jerk.” It is pretty all encompassing, and usually people behave themselves, even if after five too many beers. Most of these characters I will know, but, every year there are random folks that come with others, who do amazing things – like leave their car keys at my home, post-game, and have to do the walk-of-shame the following day to retrieve them. Or a guest might profess their love to BeefLoaf, while their boyfriend is standing right there – usually a Chorizy-E coworker… you’ll see a theme throughout…
Regular Season – Weekends
Since there are 81 home games in the season and 40 of those fall on the weekends, we see a variety of 108ers. Friday nights have the best turnouts and since the game is later, the crew has more time to imbibe before the fireworks signal game time.
Who can one expect to see at the 108 Pre and Post-game headquarters? Usually, Beefloaf, MySoxSummer and Chorizy-E do not miss a game. If it is Friday, you can expect to see Biguns and Slumpbuster join in with the afore mentioned. On Saturdays, you may see Polish w/Extra Onions traded in for the missing Biguns and Slumpbuster. Sundays – it is a small crowd. It is also a water-drinking-trying-not-to-vomit, crowd. It is hard on the liver to be a 108er – that is for certain.
This all sounds too normal, though… there is definitely a whole host of anomalies, that although each unique, becomes more of the norm as the season wears on…
- “The Pisser” Yes, someone, who shall remain nameless, is known to pee in the street instead of walking the 12 steps up to our home. But then comes upstairs to the house after to have one last beer – then likely pees in the street before heading home.
- “The Slovaks” These guys were really fun Chorizy-E co-workers from Slovakia that ate, drank and smoked their way through pre-game to post-game. Even commenting “It’s so weird, Americans don’t smoke!” One of the two wasn’t feelin’ so hot the next day at work and had to go to his hotel room.
- “The ‘Over-stayed Their Welcome’ Folks”: Although rare, occasionally, whether it is Opening Day or a regular game, there are people whom don’t seem to leave until every can of beer has been crushed and every bottle of booze, drained. This does not include the nights that Beefloaf and MySoxSummer stay up, outside on the deck until 2am trading “I love you, mans”.
- We have also served as an Urgent Care facility when Polish w/Extra Onion’s poor son fell and skinned his knee on the way to their car. And since they live in the burbs – it was best to get some band-aids on that scrape – STAT!
All in all, it is a pleasure to host so many interesting folks and it definitely gives us lots of stories to share with friends and family around the dinner table. Will we be seeing you this year? Let us know!
Mrs. Beefloaf is an avid wine drinker, traveler, animal lover, business owner, wife and mom. You can follow Mrs. Beefloaf on Twitter @KRamos25