My Joe Montana Experience

awesome, BY. short, sweet, shameful. rec this post.

Rec’d.

I met Warren Spahn at Schottenstein’s in Columbus (not the arena, the discount clothing store). I didn’t piss him off, but I did feel bad about totally ignoring him for like twenty minutes while I shopped for pants (I thought he was just some old greeter dude sitting at a card table taking credit apps).

Sorry but I don’t really blame him.

Just wondering, but which son was it in the story? The older one is a backup for ND and the younger one is an incoming freshman at Washington

I got a good one for ya.

Braves Yankees inter-league game. My father had season tix right down the line 3rd base line right where it kicks out towards the leftfielder. When he didn’t didn’t take people from work he gave them to my brother and our friends. So we were always able to heckle/joke with the left fielders (Bobby Bonilla is hilarious by the way, and Barry Bonds is an ass).

Ricky Ledee is playing LF for the Yankees. My brother, two buddies and I are all giving Ricky Ledee a hard time. Nothing foul or profane, just giving Ledee the business.

Early in the game, like the third or fourth inning, Ledee comes up and just drills a bomb deep into the RF stands.

In the middle of the inning we see Ledee come out of the dugout and jogs out down the line. He gets to us turns to us and says “How did ya like that bomb ya fat bastards?” Needless to say, we were stunned. My brother and his best friend, like most of the section, died laughing. I wasn’t to be stopped. I kept it going. Later on in the game he had a RBI extra base hit to seal it. After that knock, he then came over and called me/us “Gordo” and miming a pregnant thing with his glove pointing at us.

From that moment on, I was a huge Ricky Ledee fan. He was actually traded to the Indians later on that season.

While I’ve never ran into an athlete, I do have two friends that have. Omar Vizquel was signing autographs at a giant eagle that a female friend of mine worked at. She had the biggest crush on him. She had planned on being polite and saying something along the lines of “Hello Mr. Vizquel, may I please have your autograph?”, but when she finally saw him she couldn’t stop from just blurting out “Hey Omar!”. She came home embarrassed as all hell, but hey I got an autograph out of it too haha.

The second was my main homeboy, when he was younger and living in Florida, he was at a Miami airport, upon coming out of the bathroom he wasn’t looking where he was going and walked right into a large black man, who looked very surprised at the whole instance when my boy turned to him, apologized and walked to where the rest of his family was. When he got there everyone else had that same stunned look. He simply asked them “What?”, they looked at him and said “You just ran straight into Shaq”.

I heart this story. Last line busted me up – nice work.

PNC Park is a great place to heckle left fielders- you’re right there with them and the seats are no more than $15 bucks.

I went to a Pirates/Cubs game a few years back and we were going pretty hard at Alfonso Soriano but he played right along with it the whole time. A few times he acknowledged us and would make faces or shake his head. At one point he turned around and did the DX crotch chop our way to which someone next to us shouted: “Hey Soriano! That’s kinda messed up! We’re all dudes up here….I’m just saying….” Soriano keeled over in laughter, turned around smiling and shrugged. At the end of the game he nodded our way and trotted off the field.

I became a big Soriano fan after that.

Two quick stories:

My grandfather was home from the army in a bar that had some coast guard guys in it. Among the coast guard people was one Arnold Palmer. My grandfather got into a scuffle with Palmer and called him an “arrogant draft dodger” and eventually punched him out. My grandfather was a badass.

Second, one of my teachers in high school attended the University of Miami at the same time as Warren Sapp. His wife accidentally came around a blind corner in the lunch room and was flattened by Sapp. Supposedly Sapp was extremely gracious and apologetic. Coincidentally, the same teacher shared a class with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

My friend is a little odd. He also rides a unicycle and does tricks on it. One day he told me “some black guy with cornrows” saw him riding and told him it was awesome. My friend asked the guy if he wanted to try the unicycle. He said “no, I don’t want to risk my NFL career.” My friend laughed, thinking he just met someone with an inflated sense of his skills.

That “black guy with cornrows” was Santonio Holmes.

i worked at a country club pro shop when i was in high school. a guy from my hometown was vp of toyota america for awhile, and every year he had a tournament back home at the club i worked at. he would bring some of the toyota sponsored pga tour players with him each year. i met greg norman, mark o’meara, raymond floyd, chi-chi rodriguez, and tom weiskopf.

during the opening night reception, after all of the club members were done eating, they let us go to the buffet and eat. it was just me and one other kid at the table, and guess who comes out for more food – greg norman. he came over to us and stood there and talked a few minutes and showed us how to properly peel shrimp, saying “that’s how we do it in australia.” that was pretty freakin’ exciting for a 16 year old kid.

all of those guys were very nice. i caddied for chi-chi in a 3 hole exhibition. he gave he $200 for a tip. that was obviously always the best weekend of each summer.

Mine is short and sweet. I live in the hometown of Len Dawson, the Super Bowl winning QB of the Kansas City Chiefs (he was with the Browns first, damnit.)

The man is so embarrassed of being from a small town (I don’t think our town is that bad really) that he claims his hometown is Canton.

I hate Len Dawson.

Keep the stories coming guys. These are fun reads!

I got another one.
You guys probably haven’t seen it, but on FSN Bay Area, there is a show called "Hooked on Golf". It’s these two old fat guys who golf around Cali. There names are Mitch and John.
One morning, my friend and I got put in a foursome with them. I didn’t realize at first, even after I introduced myself and shook their hands. But right after we tee’d off, my friend said "Dude, I think those are the Hooked on Golf guys". I went "OH shit".
We were super nice to them and didn’t let them know that we knew who they were. On the 15th tee, I decided to end my silence. Friendships are building now.
On the 16th tee, I asked them if they wanted to toke up with my friend and I. Mitch said "No, I don’t do that anymore. John says "I’ll fucking smoke with you guys. Let’s do it." I almost fell on the ground laughing, but I held it in.
After the round was over, Mitch invited us to the clubhouse and bought a few rounds of beer and calamari.

Here’s what they look like. Mitch is the shorter one.

Digger Phelps is a mean old man. That is all.

I have never met a celebrity or athlete. I feel left out :(. I did see Brad Pitt this summer though because I was in LA when Inglorious Basterds premiered.

I used to have some pretty crazy hair (hence the nickname/username). I also used to date a girl with a huge mohawk. One day we were biking through OSU’s campus and we spotted the tallest man I have ever seen along with four other kids who were 6’ to 6’5". They were Gred Oden, Mike Conley, et al. I audibly said “holy shit, that’s Greg Oden”.

Another day that same girlfriend was riding her bike and saw Oden again and he asked where I was.

I have been just apathetic to put up this story but I finally will:

It was 2007 and the browns were actually good. My dad’s cousin had seats first row of the 50 yard line. They were also behind the opposing players bench. these were the best seats I ever sat in. So he had extra tickets to the miami dolphins game that year at home. This was also the year Miami almost went winless.

So in the game, the browns were commanding most of the game. Miami still scored some but they sucked this year and the browns were in control. By the 4th Quarter the game was pretty much locked up. So, since we were right behind the opponents bench we had been doing a lot of booing and heckling. The first player we were really starting to heckle was Joey Porter. Its obvious why we picked him as a target. However he has been heckled so much in his career, especially in Cleveland. Then we started to heckle Ronnie Brown. At this point he was still a young player and it was fun to heckle a guy taken high when his team was terrible. He had a decent game but stilll…We heckled him a bit telling him that he sucked and that him and his team were terrible. Then he got fed up, stood ON the bench, turned around, flicked us off and said:

“F%&^ you guys! Why don’t you go suck a D&$^! I don’t know where y’all are going after this. All I know is I am going back to my 200,000 dollar car and driving it to my 2 million dollar house, so suck it!” Then he spit in our direction.

Sometimes I do believe in Karma because the next game he tore his ACL and was out for the rest of the season. Word to the wise Ronnie: Karma is a bitch. Don’t diss Cleveland fans again.

My Dominican ex-girlfriend was leaving her house when her dad pulled up with a guest for dinner. Pedro Martinez was in Cleveland when he was with the Red Sox and was homesick for Dominican food. She didn’t stick around for dinner, which made me realize that she and I would never truly work out.

Also, Pierre Garcon is from my town’s powerhouse DIII College.

It’s pretty cool.

I was sitting in Gritsby’s, a local watering hole in what used to be Keystone at the Crossing (Indy) before they remodeled it. I was sitting right next to this guy and he was getting plenty of attention but I didn’t want to blatantly look right at him (like – who the hell are you?). So I was trying to catch his profile when he turned back my way. At first I thought it was Barry Manilow, then I started putting 2 and 2 together: he was with some of the biggest guys I’d ever seen; he was signing autographs; the 49ers had just won their first Super Bowl.

Finally I looked him right in the eye – Joe Montana. I said “Hey Joe, good to meet you.” We talked on and off for about 30 minutes. He was back in Indy to give a talk for Crossroads Rehabilitation – charity work he’d promised prior to the season starting. The big guys were his O-line from ND.

Asked him about the NFC Championship and the pass to Dwight Clark, he said “I was just trying to put the ball up there so high no one could catch it. i was throwing it away.”

I notice since that time he’s changed his story. So would I.