Duke is back and they mean business after having their lacrosse season canned last year because of the now infamous stripper crying rape who wasn't raped yet still had semen from five different men in her. Three days of fanatical lacrosse fans converged on Baltimore for the Division I, II and III championships and I do mean converge. Saturday's attendance set a record for the finals and it was broken again on Monday when the Division I game featured perennial powerhouse Duke and the local favorite Johns Hopkins.
Plenty of events were going on down on the Inner Harbor so it wasn't unusual to see people walking around with lacrosse sticks mixed in with the regular tourists and B'Morians relaxing on the water.
One particular parking lot outside M&T Bank Stadium which is also home to the Baltimore Ravens was used as an RV, mobile home, bus lot for those attending the games during the weekend. The best way to describe this lot is to say that it was a non-stop cookout/party until Monday night. One bus even had a large flat screen TV with surround sound system mounted inside the luggage area underneath the bus and the occupants had their lawn chairs arranged for their own personal movie theatre.
Duke almost didn't make it to the finals afterall when they gave up a 10-3 lead to Cornell. Cornell ended up tying the game at 11-11 with 10 seconds left in the game. Because I am a gate supervisor I made an announcement on our radios that the game is now tied while walking from the seating area towards my gate. By the time I got that announcement out Duke was able to get the ball, make their way down the field and score the game winning goal, all in 5 seconds time. Good, no overtime to extend an already long day that began at 7am and here it is already 6pm and we're looking at at least another hour or two before it's all said and done.
Most of this day was uneventful but this has to be mentioned. One gentleman approached my post and asked to speak with an officer. I summoned a BPD officer and almost laughed in the mans face when he told them what happened. Apparently he was in front of the stadium selling (in other words scalping) tickets and someone gave him forty dollars worth of counterfeit money. When he showed the police the two twenties I couldn't hold it in and had to laugh because they bills were a lime green color instead of the regular money green. The officer said "don't you realize you just told me you were breaking the law?" to which the man replied "yes but I was more concerned about getting this phony money off the street". Funny stuff. Later that day I caught another man and his partner scalping tickets with the help of one of my other supervisors. They were trying to sell tickets to a woman and her two kids when my co-worker noticed it and caught my attention on the radio. I followed the lady in and one other male who turned out to be partners with the first guy followed them in, stopped just inside the ticket turnstiles and she proceeded to hand him some money. Once I saw this I approached him and started asking what was going on, even though I already knew it's fun listening to the stories that these guys tell. He starts telling me that he didn't know why she was giving him the money to which I laughed that off and said try again because nodody is just going to give someone money like that for no reason. Then he claims that she gave him the money to get her some food even though he didn't know her or her kids. Hmmmmmmmm, try again, oh nevermind I said and then had Baltimore police escort him off the premises.
Sunday was a loooooooong day for me. I had to report at 7am again but this time I knew I was in for a longer day/night than the day before. Aside from the usual happenings like people complaining about not being able to bring their backpacks into the stadium this day was otherwise uneventful. Up until that is the point in time when one of my team members decided they wanted to try to take a beer with them that they had confiscated from a patron. She thought she was slick and had it in a bag that she had her lunch in but I noticed that the bag had more in it now than it did before. During the day we had confiscated several lacrosse balls which weren't allowed in the stadium and she had a couple of them laying on top of her bag thinking that she could keep them. That's when I noticed her lunch bag so when I went to get the balls from her I went straight into the bag and pulled out two beers. At first she looked like she was going to get mad because I went in her bag but I guess my look of "I can't wait to hear your story" caused her to pull up short and she laughed and said "you caught me". Long story short she won't be working any more events with us.
Two games were played on Sunday with the finals for Division II and III being played then. The second game ended around 7pm and the second part of my day was just getting started. Outside of the stadium several events were set up for fans. AT&T, Coca Cola, Chick-Fil-A and others had tents set up with exhibits or games that people could take part in and these had to be secured through the night. Someone had called out and I volunteered to stay and work. So, from 7am sunday morning to 3am monday morning I was on my feet after working 17 hours the day before and had to turn around and come back Monday morning at 7am to work the Division I finals between Duke and Johns Hopkins.
It's amazing how attached people can get to a backpack. One of our restrictions is that no backpacks are allowed inside the stadium. Since most people were from out of town they were unaware of this but that's really not our problem. Of course this leads to the inevitable argument and people had plenty of excuses trying to justify why THEY should be considered the exception to the rule. "Do you know who I am?", "I know so and so", "my car is too far away" etc. etc. First of all, NO I don't know who you are and even if I did you still can't get in with that backpack. If you know someone high up on the food chain then you should know that backpacks aren't allowed in so that's really not a good line to use. I tell people that even if President Bush came up with a backpack I would tell him the same thing.
I even had one worthless excuse for a man try several times to get in with his backpack. Once through my gate and when he left I radioed all of the other gate supervisors to give them a heads up and a description of him because I knew he wasn't going to give up. Sure enough he tried three other gates before he walked off into the crowd talking on his cell phone. Twenty minutes later I look up and see him standing in front of my gate looking in our direction just as a lady and her daughter with an oversized bag were coming through one of my lines. My team members stopped her becaause not only was the bag that she was carrying too large to come in but she had a backpack rolled up inside of that bag. You guessed it, she was the wife of the same gentleman that tried earlier and I guess he thought that we wouldn't hassle his wife and child.
What a moron, I thought to myself as I looked up at him and just shook my head and did the old finger wave from side to side to let him know that I knew what he tried to do and that it just won't work. I'm just too good at what I do to let something like that to slide past me.
Next up, I take a step back and try to give you an idea of what goes on pre Super Bowl. Spent a month in Miami leading up to Super Bowl XLI doing security and let's just say that it was.......challenging.
