In June, I’d been at my internship for no more than four games. It was my first homestand for the White Sox. Sitting in the press box brings a certain amount of responsibility. This is a lesson that I learned the hard way. My bosses were always very lenient with me. For whatever reason, they allowed me to socialize with my friends during the game.

Fast forward to the end of the game, when all the media people exit via the stairs to the interview room. Well, this route passes by the Drunk Tank, and low and behold, a buddy of mine with whom I’d been sitting in the stands earlier was being led out in cuffs. He said he’d wait for me outside of the stadium, so, after I finished my interviews, I went out to talk to him and his girlfriend.

My friend, Mike, told me a story that included White Sox fans picking a fight with him because his girlfriend was rooting for the Detroit Tigers. As the security guards deemed him uncooperative, they hauled him off to the Drunk Tank. He was also banned from U. S. Cellular Field until 2007. Mike’s girlfriend was clearly distraught, and said she just wanted to apologize to Curtis.

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Who Curtis was, I didn’t know. Nor did I know at that time that she had gotten the tickets from a Tigers’ player. That was until I showed up in the Tigers’ clubhouse the next day, and was asked by my boss to interview Curtis Granderson, the Tigers center fielder who also happens to be from Chicago (“just don’t say anything” is what my boss told me).

So, as I stood by Granderson’s locker waiting to not talk, a Detroit reporter asked him to elaborate on some problems his friends and family were having at the game the previous night. This reporter claimed that she’d heard someone got taken out in cuffs and was subsequently banned from the stadium for the year.

“Yeah,” Granderson replied, “a friend of mine and her boyfriend were sitting in the stands, and they were getting some flak (yeah, he said flak) from some nearby family because they were rooting for me. When they stood up to this family and said that they could root for whomever they want, the mother went and got a security guard, and claimed that my friend and the boyfriend had made physical threats on her family, and her boyfriend and her were asked to leave, which they declined to do, and they took her boyfriend out in cuffs and banned him from the stadium. I told him to fight it though.”

That was the answer that Granderson gave to the question. I was shocked, and when the reporters left, I stepped forward.

“Is your friend named Leoconie Dolor by chance?” I asked, followed by, “and is her boyfriend named Michael Sorensen?”

“Yeah!” He responded enthusiastically. “Did you hear about that BS (edited version)? I couldn’t believe that! He got banned from the stadium for some stupid stuff.”

Shocked, the only thing I could say was, “I know man, I saw them after the game, they told me everything.” I then introduced myself and shook his hand.

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Upon witnessing this exchange, my boss ran to see why I had broken the only rule they had set for me. When I told him the story about my friend and his girlfriend, he was kind of stunned.

The only thing he could say was “Well, did you tell him?”