The Roseville Reds came from 7 runs down in their last at bat to sting the E-team from Cadott setting up a title game with the Ladysmith Slippers.
Pete, Kathy, Vicki, and Coach Suter sat in their own corners of the station’s break room to talk about the next night’s game and how they wanted the four-person booth to sound.
Vicki and Kathy planned to record pre-game interviews with both managers in the morning. Emjay, who started back to work part-time this week, offered to put together a feature on fan on the street reaction.
When Vicki and Kathy came up with the series as great additional programming, no one expected it to create the excitement sponsors were getting from the sudden fan support.
The two women already arranged a pre-game show at Gus & Tom’s to capitalize on the excitement.
The coach interviews and news feature plus commercials will give Kathy and Coach Suter time to get back to the station before the game.
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After Dr. Straw finished the mid-day COVID-19 update he looked at his phone where he found a text from Ken Records asking him to call.
“Hello?” was the weary sound on the other end of the line.
“Ken, it’s Max. How are you?”
“Thanks for calling, Max. I want you to know I had a positive test, but Dr. Noel expects the symptoms to be mild. If this is mild, I don’t want the full-fledged version of coronavirus.”
“I’m sorry, Ken, hang in there and do what the doctor tells you and you’ll get through this.”
“I hope so, Max. Is there anything I can do?”
“There is so much we don’t know, but to the extent you can, try to get up and walk every two hours. Don’t do much, just walking down the hall and back will exercise the lungs. That seems to help.”
“How is everyone at the station?”
“Everyone is worried about you. The county nurse came out to test everyone at the station this morning, so people are worried about themselves too.”
“I sure hope I didn’t spread this to anyone, Max. I’m sorry.”
“Ken, you did everything you could, took precautions... sometimes people just get it. You can’t blame yourself, Ken. I don’t think you infected anybody, focus on getting better. I’ll call you later.”
“Thanks, Max. Bye.”
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Emjay was in the newsroom going through the interviews. It was a puff-piece, but she enjoyed the challenge of looking for the right soundbites that embody the thrill she noticed on the streets of
Roseville today.
She wasn’t as tired as she expected. In fact, coming back to work was a nice break. Mom taking care of John meant she didn’t worry about the baby and it was nice to focusing on her job. It was invigorating.
The soundbites in hand, Emjay made two versions of the story – one for the newscast and a longer five-minute version for tonight’s pre-game.
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Dane Blaney was doing what he loved best that afternoon, playing video games. He smiled at the idea that instead of just him and a few buddies playing Call of Duty, there were hundreds of people in Roseville who wanted the Reds to win, which meant they wanted him to win.
As his thoughts looked back to high school, no one saw this coming.
Blaney is smart. He always has been, but he wasn’t a jock and he wasn’t popular. While he didn’t wear a pocket protector, Blaney fit all the stereotypes back then for a geek/dweeb/pointdexter. He wore
glasses, was in the audio-visual club, did well in math and science, and played video games.
Ten years later, his hometown is counting on him to deliver a championship.
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