Don't Talk Trash If You Don't Know Who Is Listening

Spoiler Alert: This is the story of how I met David Ortiz.

On May 3rd, I received an unexpected Twitter notification "Buffalo Wild Wings has followed you." Pretty cool I thought to myself, I even told some friends about it proclaiming I was "Twitter Famous." A few minutes after I received a direct message the gist of the message was that they saw by my tweets I was a big Yankees fan, and they were interviewing fans for a video, if I was interested, I should contact the producer.

I immediately called the producer, and we talked about my fandom, my thoughts on Boston, David Ortiz and I obviously mentioned that I write for The Greedy Pinstripes. The producer said that she'd let me know in a couple of days. I received an email the next day that they would like to interview me if I was available and provided me with an address and time, I gleefully accepted.

I'm going to take a quick tangent (it's important to the story). I have the Friday Night Package for the Yankees. On Friday, May 6th the Yankees beat the Red Sox 3-2. This was the game that David Ortiz went on a tirade against the umpire. I was in section 420B booing as loud as I could with my friend Sean. Tangent over, back to the story.

After work in Brooklyn on Saturday, May 6th, I headed up to the Bronx for the interview. I met with the producer and one by one we were summoned to the interview area. The director mentioned that the first portion would be about how I became a fan of New York baseball. For trademark purposes, I couldn't say Yankees. I talked about how my father and grandfather would take me to games, how my favorite moment was being at game 7 of the 2003 ALCS and generally all the things that make my heart warm and fuzzy. I headed back to the staging area; a few more fans came in, and I waited my turn for the next segment.

The next segment was in pairs, my friend Matt (who came as a guest and ended up in the video) and I were escorted to the table by an actual waitress this time. We briefly chatted with her for the camera and then the director told us this segment he would be asking about our thoughts on Boston. I talked about how I loved the city and enjoyed the history of Fenway Park. They asked my friend and me about our least favorite player; my friend said David Ortiz and I went with Kevin Youkilis. I talked about hating his goatee and his batting stance. After some prodding from the director on Ortiz, I thought to myself "if you want a sound bite I'll give you a sound bite" and went off on how I felt about his attitude and how he shows up everyone with his swagger.

At this point, I hear someone say "So you don't like my attitude?" I looked up, and it took me a moment to realize it was David Ortiz, this is when I said "Holy Shit."At this point I refer to the tangent, I thought angry Ortiz was coming after me, I truly did. Only after seeing the smile on his face to my reaction did I somewhat gain my composure. I then got to spend a few minutes speaking to Ortiz about how he kills the Yankees, how Dustin Pedroia is only a few inches taller than me and how he was a Yankees fan growing up because that is all they knew in the Dominican Republic. Ortiz thanked us for coming out and then we waited behind the camera crew as other fans interacted with him. Getting to see the reactions of the five other fans was humorous to watch. I think it is awesome that my entire segment ended up being shown in the video.

The last part was how we felt about meeting Ortiz and if our opinion had changed on him. Honestly, mine has. He was a nice to all of us especially after he had to listen to us talk trash about him. Bonus, I got a $25 gift card to Buffalo Wild Wings. I think I'll save it for the next time the Yankees play the Red Sox... You can watch the video below.