I Was There, Spring Break Edition: Breaking Stuff In Harold Reynolds's Hotel Room

In 1999, Kevin and a group of friends spent their Spring Break in Orlando, for reasons that surpasseth all understanding. ESPN's Harold Reynolds was there, too. Slapstick ensued. Here is Kevin's story:

It was spring break of 1999 and for some God awful reason my group of friends decided to go to Orlando for spring break. Two carfulls of guys drove from Stonehill College (suburb of Boston) to Florida. We were staying at a Days Inn a couple miles from Disneyworld while a group of girls from our school had a room at the BoardWalk. When they check in they tell us some "famous baseball guy" is staying in the room next to them. It turns out this was Harold Reynolds who was down with ESPN for spring training.

Cut to 4am a couple nights in to the trip. Surprisingly, Harold had struck up a friendship with our friends. He was going to take them out to breakfast the next day. We were all under 21, but that night I was the only one that got into the Pleasure Island bar area. So I was stranded when all my friends left to go back to our hotel. I manage to stumble my way to the girls room. Being 4am they are all passed out and not waking up to my incessant banging on their door. Harold, however, did wake up. He not so politely asked me to stop making all that noise. I apologized to Mr. Reynolds and he shut his door.

So now I'm standing in the middle of the hallway wondering what the fuck I was going to do. Somehow I remember that the lock on the door that connects these adjacent hotel rooms is broken. So I knock on Harold's door. He answers - "What the fuck do you want?" I explained my situation and at first he tells me to screw. After explaining that I'll have to go back to banging on my friends door he lets me in. Now it's pitch black in his room, and I'm trying to navigate to the back door. His suitcase is open on the floor and I trip all over it, fall and break a glass that was on a end table. Harold's pissed off level is really climbing, and try to recover and crawl to the door, jimmy it open and disappear into my friends room.

The next morning as he comes in their hotel room to take them out for breakfast, he looks at looks at me half dead on the floor and tells the girls, "Your friend is a real fucking asshole." They just say, "Believe us, we already know."

Keep sending your Spring Break stories to [email protected]. Our favorite submissions will win the storyteller a free copy of Harper's Magazine's new sportswriting anthology, Rules of the Game.