Part 1 Can Be Found Here.
On Sunday, I had the opportunity to work at M&T Stadium for a Ravens Game, and this is the second part of my description of what it is like to see sports from another perspective.

After
our lunch break was over, which was about 1:50, we got moved to the
upperdeck of M&T stadium for reassignment. My first assignment on
the upperdeck lasted all of 5 minutes. The way the deck is constructed,
the concourse is like a giant outdoor porch, which is very nice, the
issue they have is people then going out of the bowl to smoke, and not
standing in the right spot. So the job of myself and my friend was to
stand 3 feet from the smoking fence, and if we saw anyone smoking in
front of us, we had to tell them to smoke behind us. This obvisously
does not sound like a job for two people, which the Supervisors figured
out and five minutes later, I was moved into a section of the upperdeck
with about 40 seconds left in the first half.

My intial job in
the section was to watch the crowd and make sure that the fans from
Philly didn’t fight the fans from Baltimore. I phrase the statement
like that because I was told to specifically watch the Philly fans,
because they were already tagged as the problem fans just because they
were the away fans. Personally, I agree with that statement to some
degree. Trouble will be centered around away fans, but as I got to see
first hand, its not always the away fan’s fault.

As soon as the
third quarter started, a Supervisor, and a few cops ran by me up to the
top of the section, took an Eagle’s fan out of the ballpark for
fighting. I was then told to stand in the back of the section and
basically babysit the Philadelphia fans. I was given a clicker which
had four buttons on it. The first one called a supervisor, the second
called a courtesy squad, the third called the police and the last one
called the medics.

For the rest of the game I stood with the
40 or so Eagle’s fans who kept on making their case to me that it was
one of the Ravens fans who started all of the trouble in the section.
They called me their babysitter, they talked to me a lot during the
game. I had to break up a few arguments with fans during the rest of
the game. That was when I was glad I have been a camp counselor for
several years, if it wasn’t for the conflict resolution skills I
developed then, I would been sunk when trying to handle these arguments
(basically I would have had to call the Supervisor for everything).

At
the end of the game, the Eagles fans gave me an ovation and tried to
get a cheer going for my first day on the job. What I found very
interesting is that I was the first level of security for that section,
and I have never been trained to be such. It was very easy for me to
get trained personell if I needed them, but it makes you wonder when
your at a game, how many people are trained secuity and how many people
are just standing to look like security to make it seem like there is
more security than there actually is. Its a very interesting dynamic
because psychologically, one is less likely to cause trouble when it
looks like theire are a ton of security guards.

Now I am not
trying to bash the security system at football games From what I
understand, in addition to the significant amount of cops in the
stadium, there are a ton of undercover cops located all over the
stadium to increase safety.

In the third installment of the
series, I will discuss the end of the day, the stadium emptying out,
and more behind the door things that happen at the stadium.

Check 213 Miles From Shea!

I know this has to do more with football than baseball, but I have
always wondered what it is like to work at a stadium. Yesterday, I had
the opportunity to work at M&T Bank Stadium where the Ravens were
playing. They were hosting regional rivals, the Philadelphia Eagles in
a sellout game.

My day started at 8:00 when I left College
Park with a few others on our way to Baltimore to get into the stadium.
We arrived at the employee lot, the Blue Lot at Montgomery Park, which
is about a 30 minute walk away from the stadium. At the parking lot we
boarded a bus (school bus) with other people working M&T stadium
for the day. It was about 9:00 when we finally reached the gate where
we were supposed to enter, and I where I got my first taste of the
system. During check in, my last name was misspelled on my “badge” (a
blue paper in side a baseball card holder with a clip) and I was told
that when I was filling out forms for the rest of the day, that I had
to use my new name. After signing in and getting checked by security,
we were handed a clip on tie and told to go down to the changing rooms.
We were all shuffled to the side of a ramp as we entered the underbelly
of the stadium where we were given our dress shirt, jacket and hat for
the day. The only part of the uniform we were required to bring was
khaki pants and dark colored shoes. So now we all look the same, in the
same color pants, purple dress shirts with the M&T logo on them,
ties, jackets and hats.

Before going on, its important to note
that most people there were like us, if they were not a supervisor, it
was their first day on the job and they were working the game for
fundrasing for different organizations (7 to 7.50 and hour per person
for 7 hours of work brings in a lot money) but there were also a good
number of people who do this as a job on the side as well.

Anyway
now that we were dressed we had the chance to buy coupons that made
food half off. Each coupon was 3 bucks, and it acted like 6. We looked
at our time cards, my friends and I were all assigned to promotion hand
out, giving out the promotion of the day which was a team photograph.
We were briefed at Gate A where we also unpacked the boxes of
photographs and programs and spread them through each terminal (For
those keeping track of time, this was at 10:00, when we were officially
on the clock). We were then split up and sent to our separate gates to
hand out the promotions. At our stations, we were provided with hand
warmers as it was about 28 degrees and dropping.

Handing out
the photographs started slow, picked up and then dropped off. I have
always treated people that work at the stadium with respect, but I know
there are people out there who don’t. Consider this, while you might be
handed a program you don’t want, if you decide to put it back, watch
where you do it. It was frustrating as people kept putting their
programs they didn’t want in my boxes while I was trying to get
photographs in them. It also makes cleaning up a bit longer. After the
gates closed, which was about midway through the second quarter, and
all of the photographs and programs that were left were taken care of,
We got to take a 20 minute lunch break and then had to meet back at our
gate to be reassigned.

In the next segment, I will be
discussing my reassignment for the rest of the game, which basically
made me a security guard for Eagle Fans in the upper deck that were
getting into fights with the Ravens fans. It was probably the most
interesting segment of the day. (Whenever you have to work Security with Philly fans, its a given that it won’t exactly be “easy”)

Disclaimer: In this series of posts, I am not offering any sort of general understanding or general argument for what it is like to work at a stadium. Rather, I am just recounting the stories from my day.

Check 213 Miles From Shea!