Last Sunday was one of those days I'll remember for a long time, and not because of any one event - just that a whole bunch of odd happenings kept piling on one another until I thought (and my coworkers agreed) that someone had dumped us into a room filled with funhouse mirrors.

The day got off on the wrong foot when I got tangled up in traffic diversions I did not anticipate. Streets heading into downtown were blocked off to allow marathon runners access to their finish line. When I finally made it through the morass of twists and turns and dropped my bags off at the stadium office, I swung around to see if I could find a place to park quickly at a new snack shop I had heard about. Yes, I could, so I picked up a bacon and egg casserole thingy to see if I agreed the food was good.

At the office, munching on my eggs, I see notices that: (1)A small group of symphony musicians will be playing at the 7th inning stretch, and will leave their instruments with me until the bottom of the 5th inning; (2)The high school All Star game is scheduled for today, and the umpires will be dropping off their gear until the top of the eighth inning; and (3) some scouts are in town, will be on their way to the airport post game and will leave their luggage in the reception room until post game.

All right. Things will be crowded today. As the morning goes along, the weather begins to look dicey and the number of phone calls increases. Most inquiring if the game will be cancelled. Most callers rather dubious when I try to explain that it's way too early to have any kind of announcement about a delay, and that the best approach is to monitor a local radio station for weather reports. A pair of local TV reporters arrive, with THEIR gear (oh, no!) but they are just passing through the lobby picking up a media pass for Sunday only.

My coworkers arrive, head off to the briefing, and come back with a plate of eggs, cheese, and chilis - a treat sent in by the spouse of a member of our crew. Since I had a waffle at home that morning, if you're counting, you should now realize that I've had breakfast three times!

The team is working on what will become an 11 game winning streak and ticket sales are brisk, and there are long lines both to buy tickets and to enter the stadium. One of the gates is right outside the office and we can observe the hub-bub as we continue to field the unending stream of phone calls about the weather. By the time everyone is inside there are upwards of 34,000 fans at the game.

Dave, who works the media gate, comes in with tears of laughter streaming down his face. A fan arrived with a small thermos, like you might use to bring soup to the office, and heard that he can't take a hard sided object of that size inside. He proceeds to get down ON THE CONCRETE FLOOR of the stadium gate, take some hot dog buns out of another pack, place them ON THE FLOOR, remove the meat from the thermos, and fix three hot dogs. His son, about 12 years old, stood nearby and tentatively said, "Uh, Dad, I'm not going to eat that." Since he thought it might not be a good idea to have fans observe his reaction, Dave didn't stay long enough to hear what happened next.

So finally the game began. At about the 5th inning, people seated in the upper decks could clearly see a small funnel cloud drifting along in the skies to the west of the stadium. Heavy rains start, and warning sirens sound. For the first time in its 15 year history, Coors Field was evacuated for reasons of weather. It was chaotic. No one was hurt and the game eventually resumed. (Rockies won) But for about half an hour we wrestled with a very large group of people who were insistent on doing what THEY wanted to do, take cell phone pictures of the confusion, wander back into vacated seating areas searching for friends and family members, sitting on the stairs in the stairwells, impeding the progress of others coming down, and asking millions of unanswerable questions.

Supervisory staff members who end up directing this kind of thing have been honest with us in the last few days that they learned a lot about what to do if anything similar ever happens again. But speaking as one who felt like those guys in that commercial trying to herd cats, I hope we never have to do it again!

You might be thinking that I've already described enough, but the goofiness wasn't quite over. It seems the broadcast team for the Seattle Mariners has a type of crowd promotion called "rally fries." The idea is to come up with the best sign, catch the attention of the broadcasters, and be awarded an order of garlic fries. It also seems that the broadcasters do this when the Mariners are on the road. So, of course, we got a phone call from someone in Washington state requesting that we send that day's order of fries to a specific group of Mariners fans watching their team in action at Coors Field! We've since learned what "rally fries" are, but when that call came in, we had no idea, and had to tell the caller we couldn't help her.

The weather, which had cleared quite nicely, with blue skies and sunshine for the last few innings of the game, turned ugly again and the high school All Star game was cancelled. Since kids come from all over the state to play, it won't be an easy task to reschedule it.

And one more unusual event to top off the day - just as I was leaving to sign out, here came yet another group of TV reporters with their gear to interview the head of stadium operations about the tornado and the evacuation.

Quite an afternoon. And if anything similar never happens again, I will be just fine with it.

Oh, and the snack shop I stopped at DOES have good food. Check out Hi*Rise at 22nd and Larimer if you're ever in the Denver area.