|
As I cruised through the crowd in my
luxurious Honda sled with the windows down, every drunk feller felt
it necessary to say hi to me. I guess you take two months of
marketing for this event with 6 hours of crushing beers and suddenly
a fella gets a sense that "we're all in this together".
Before we parked, we pulled up to the
local radio station van and asked the guy for some 'ducketts'.
The event is free but you need to have a ticket to get in. The
guy handed me 10. Keep in mind, people waited outside hours to
get theirs in the weeks preceding the Tour Stop.
|
 |
|
When we went inside, to no surprise,
the place was 99% men between the ages of 18 and 35. I'd
guess there were about 13,000 - 15,000 of Rome's "clones" on hand. An unfortunate
surprise was the smell, which Jess described as an unpleasant
"mixture of B.O. and farts". Clone cologne, I call
it. Memo to all you clones: When you are sitting in a
blacktop parking lot for 8 hours crushing beers, tossing footballs,
etc., you might drop the occasional bead of sweat. Toss on
some Right Guard. And maybe you didn't need inhale that fifth
chili dog.
Rome, who broadcasts his sports show each weekday from
LA and can be heard locally on WDFN
1130AM in Detroit from noon to three, hit the stage at a little
after 3pm to do his thing. He comes out completely hyped-up,
gets the crowd going and then goes into some of his hilarious takes.
After about 10 minutes of takes, he brings out a guest, and then
goes into more takes and repeats. It was a pretty good show - we saw Joe
Dumars, Chuck "Daddy Rich" Daly, broadcast legend Ernie Harwell, and
Detroit Red Wing and Motor City Grinder,
Darren McCarty.
Still on the docket but after we left were new Spartan coach John L.
Smith and bad boy Bill Laimbeer.
Highlights:
- McCarty, when asked if he
hated Sergei Federov, responded, "Who?". He also mentioned how
geeked he was to have
Derian Hatcher joining the defense.
Also, McCarty said his greatest moment was "kicking that turtle
Claude Lemieux's ass".
- All the drunk guys staring at Jess
when we walked in. What's the matter you sports geeks, never
seen a woman before?
- The roars for Harwell.
He looked a little out of place (note photo above), but must have been honored by the
cheers.
- Rome resetting former Tiger pitcher
Denny McClain's 72 Pepsi-per-day habit.
- After Harwell left the stage, Rome
telling the crowd that now he felt bad about that "f-bomb" he let out
earlier in the show.
|
