By Angela Hill for the Oakland Tribune
THIS MAY COME as a shock to those who know me, but for once in my life I am forced to challenge the infinite wisdom of Homer Simpson who, in reference to something about his legendary cartoon beer drinking, once uttered the following axiom for the ages: “Foam wasn’t spilt in a day.”
Clearly Homer never has attended the Oakland A’s MUG Root Beer Float Day, because in the span of a mere two hours Wednesday morning, foam was not only spilt but flung from wall to wall in the Eastside Club concourse at the Oakland Coliseum as a surging mass of green-and-gold humanity slurped bubbles and sticky-sweet goo in a frenzy of float-making good will to raise a whopping $31,000 for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.
Sure, there were sales of autographed photos and a silent auction of sports memorabilia, but the bulk of the bucks came $2 at a time as fans bought commemorative plastic mugs, then had floats scooped and poured by A’s players such as Trevor Cahill, Cliff Pennington and Gio Gonzalez, first-base coach Todd Steverson, various Raiderettes, local TV celebrities such as Dan Noyes and Carolyn Johnson and some people from the MTV reality show “Real World/Road Rules: Fresh Meat 2,” whatever that is.
Oh, and me. Yes, technically I was there as a “celebrity” (snicker, chortle-chortle, harrumph, guffaw), assigned to a table with Bay Area News Group sports columnist Cam Inman and his two cute little daughters,
Advertisement
and my pal Zoe Francis, a former reporter and mom of a teenager with type-1 diabetes. (Hence we manned the sugar-free-float stand, a big draw for diabetics, people on a diet and those who gave up on the long lines at the table with the Raiderettes.)
As celebrities go, all of my scoop mates were far more celebrated than I: Cam for his sports columns, his kids for their cuteness and Zoe for her volunteer work for the JDRF, frequently thronged by fellow foundation workers who hugged her, chatted about insulin pumps and praised her on her brilliant choice of a yellow JDRF shirt because it matched the A’s colors, while I had selected a regrettably blue sweater which turned out to be the exact shade of the Kansas City Royals, the opposing team in that day’s game, causing several savvy A’s fans to recoil in horror.
We went through the lineup. I was a designated diet-root-beer pourer. Cam’s kids would also pour, while their dad and Zoe would lead off by scooping the sugar-free ice cream from huge 5-gallon tubs donated by Dreyer’s, which was pretty darned frozen solid when it arrived, but hey, surely there was time for it to soften. Surely.
And then it began. The hordes stampeded into the concourse as if being chased by bulls through a small Spanish town. Scooping was initiated and I started popping cans like a mad can popper on a popping rampage during a can-popping pop-a-palooza. It got extra crazy when A’s shortstop Cliff Pennington came by our table to sign autographs, making it clear who was the real celeb. (Even Cam’s cute kids took a back seat.)
Pretty soon we couldn’t keep up with demand, mostly because the ice cream was hard as a rock. A rock rolled in milk and sugar and buried in an arctic ice cave for several millennia. We thought we might eventually discover a leg-bone fossil of Early Man in there. Zoe scraped its unforgiving surface with such force that, in an explosion of springs and metal levers, her scoop broke.
“My kingdom for a pick ax,” she called out.
A new scoop appeared out of nowhere, and she was at it again. I felt terrible (sort of) that she was working so hard. Although my job was significantly more taxing anyway. Not only because pouring is the true art of float-making (one must pour gently, with finesse, so as not to fizz the foam and cause cups to runneth over), but also because, while Zoe and Cam jabbed at the glacial core samples, I was left to placate the mobs, offering jocular small talk as people waited in line with their cups extended in patient anticipation. “Heh heh. Our scoopers sure won’t have to go to the gym today!” I’d say. Or, “Hey, I see you’re wearing a lot of A’s gear. Come here often?”
I got a couple of charity laughs, but mostly people just wanted their dang floats and to go drool some more over Cliff. Eventually, runners brought us some huge metal spoons, which helped — until we ran out of diet root beer, and then it was all over anyway. The concourse cleared out to reveal gobs of ice cream mashed into the carpet, paper napkins strewn about like shingles after a tornado, foam oozing down table legs, and a lot of pooped scoopers.
Zoe went home with blisters, a sore wrist and a bent-back thumbnail. Cam had ice cream in his hair. Somehow I thought I could make it through the day without getting root beer in my shoes. Silly me.
To read the full article as it appeared in the Oakland Tribune on August 8, 2010, please click here.
{ 1 comment }