Today's screwy sportsdesk call

We used to get calls from this bar in town (never knew which one it was) and they would ask stuff like, "Didn't Robert Traylor play at Michigan in college?" or "Who was the second baseman for the Reds when they won it all in 1988" and the like.
I finally started telling everyone in the sports department to be sure to answer all of those questions wrong. "The second baseman was Dave Concepcion, sir, I have it right here in front of me."
I always figured I was costing some drunk a round by doing this.

 

Ah yes, the drunk trivia phone call. Always a favorite :

 

I didn't mind the drunk trivia questions, as long as I wasn't on deadline.

 

About a year ago, I fielded a call at the station that went like this:
Caller: (angrily) Are you aware of the guinea hen epidemic?
Me: Ummm. No, let me transfer you
Caller: I've been transferred enough. My neighbor's guinea hens are eating my lettuce. I want to lodge a complaint.
Me: This is not the place to lodge your complaint.
Caller: Do you know why my neighbors are raising guinea hens? They are advocates of global warming!
Me: Utterly at a loss for words
Caller: Do you know what guinea hens are?
Me: (I had several responses I wanted to deliver, but just didn't have the balls to actually say) No
Caller: Weapons of mass destruction
Me: Then they don't exist. Have a nice day.

 

Great answer. Certainly better than one crusty old ME at a small shop where I worked long ago. The guy never picked up a phone unless he knew for sure who was calling, and I finally found out why. One day, he for some reason picked up a call from a reader and after about a minute, yelled "Take a hike, asshole!" and slammed down the phone. Mmm...customer service.

 

We spent most of last night calling each other's phones on the sports desk.

It was a pure time waster, considering our deadline for football and soccer tabs are early Saturday ...

 

I don't answer phones anymore, but at my shop, there's an old guy who calls every day that tennis occurs and wants EVERY. SINGLE. SCORE. OF. EVERY. SINGLE. MATCH.

No lie. They call Tennis Guy.

The funniest phone call we ever got at my old place was actually just a voicemail. A drunk redneck called, obviously wanting to settle a bet with his buddy, another drunk redneck. We weren't in the office yet, so he left a voicemail.

He forgot to hang up the phone.

I wish I could go into detail about the things he and drunk redneck buddy talked about for the next 30 minutes, but I can't remember some of it, and most of it, well, was drunken sex talk between two plastered rednecks. We kept that message for months.

 

Can he not read or something? Holy shit.

 

I'm not sure of the whole story, but he calls almost every day. Today, he wanted every score from the Olympics. I can't believe he hasn't been told to buy a paper or get on the friggin' Internet. I'm pretty sure he's ancient, which means he probably doesn't have a computer and doesn't get out much.

 

We've got a guy who wants every single minor league baseball score.

Not just one league, either. He hops around. Quite the aficianado, he is.

They don't let me talk to him, anymore.

 

Instantly reminded me of The Office.

Oscar: Both my parents were born in Mexico, and they moved to the United States a year before I was born, so I grew up in the United States… my parents were Mexican.

Michael Scott: Wow, that is a great story. That’s the American dream right there, right? Um, let me ask you, is there a term besides ‘Mexican’ that you prefer? Something less offensive?

 

Hell, I've talked to that guy for years, Zeke.

We had a guy who used to call my old paper around 11:30 p.m. for random Cal League scores twice a week in the summer -- and not for the local team we covered, but random-ass shit like Visalia vs. Stockton.

Can't imagine where he found a place that would take bets on Single-A games, but he had to have something riding on it.