Friday afternoon, I spent an hour with NBC4 Washington’s Heather McDonough and cameraman Brooks Meriwether. I answered questions and gave them a tour of RMNB Headquarters, which is a suuuuuuper elaborate way of saying my basement.

The feature was on NBC4’s Caps Stadium Series: Live from Annapolis pregame show Saturday night and aired directly after Sherree Burruss’s interviews with Gary Bettman and Ted Leonsis. I note this because the NHL commissioner and the Caps owner were my warmup acts. Thank you, gentlemen. 👍

My 11-month-old son Ethan Wesley, who we named after Caps PA announcer Wes Johnson, even made an appearance.

Video

Ethan was the best part wasn’t he?

Over the last eight-plus years, a majority of my 6,526 articles (it’s really been that many?) have been written on one of these two computers, and many of the artifacts I have up in my basement are things people have donated to me through RMNB. For instance, the NASCAR hood that RMNB sponsored from Ryan Ellis’s Dover Downs XFINITY race lays against the wall behind my computer desk. I also have one of Mike Green’s game-used Easton Stealth CNT sticks and a goal puck of his which he scored with a RMNB reader’s twig. Memorabilia like that is a constant reminder that our site has accomplished a lot and we’re nothing without our dedicated community of readers (that’s you). I never take that for granted.

I posted some photos after the filming on my Instagram account. (Please follow if you love cute babies who will be forced to love hockey.)

The most ironic part of the feature was I did not cover the Stadium Series game from home due to a nearly three-day power outage caused by the nor’easter. But I relocated to Germantown, got everything set up in someone else’s basement, and was able to watch the pregame show and game live. While I find it personally difficult to watch myself on TV, Ethan was very excited to be a TV star.

During the clip, I made reference to Ethan meeting NBC Sports Washington’s Alan May. When Ethan was a week old, May was kind enough to visit after a skate for kids he hosted in Hagerstown. After we were done taking this photo, Al said to me “he’s wet.”

That moment seemed like fate and now here we are.

Full RMNB Coverage of Stadium Series