Sunday afternoon, I was sitting at Marty Miller Field watching the Norfolk State Baseball Spartans take on the Le Moyne College Dolphins. I was seated about halfway up the bleachers behind home plate. Spread out throughout the stands, there were a number of player’s parents, some NSU faculty and students, and some younger fans watching the game and enjoying the beautiful Sunday sun. About three rows down from me, an NSU parent or guardian sat next to another NSU parent and instructed her three children to sit in the row behind her. It wasn’t a packed stands on Sunday, so conversations could be easily heard, or in this case overhead.

The NSU parent with the three daughters turned to the other NSU parent and asked if she had heard about Terrell Mathews. Mathews was a classmate of the oldest daughter attending the game, and since both NSU parents were originally from the area (both having grown up in Newport News), she was wondering if the news on Mathews had spread. “I haven’t heard a word, why, is that child okay?” asked the now very intrigued NSU parent. “He opened up a piece of gum, there was a code on the wrapper,” began the Mom with the 3 children, “he went online, and won one million bucks.” One million bucks tends to travel fast when spoken aloud, so now there were other intrigued parents, NSU students, and fans that were all very interested in this story.

The NSU parent’s daughter, who was the classmate of Terrell Mathews, looked up from her phone to find any number of 50 pairs of eyes on her. “Yep, T is rich. He came in Friday with a note to the school saying he would be taking a few days off.” At this point, everyone in the stands began pulling out their phones and looking up the story to see if it was valid or not. I did the same but had a secret weapon in my contacts to confirm if the story was accurate or not. A few weeks ago, at the William & Mary vs. ODU baseball game in Williamsburg, I met a school teacher who was working as a game attendant at Plumeri Park. That teacher, Evan Schmitt, taught in the Newport News school system and when I texted him the story, he confirmed it 100%.

It was then that I remembered getting a 10 piece pack of Bazooka® gum recently from Rachel, and that I had opened a number of wrappers, and there was a code at the bottom of the wrapper under the comic strip. I hadn’t looked into any of the codes yet but that would soon change. After about the fourth inning, I slipped out of the stands, jogged back to my car, took the fastest route home, and grabbed the wrappers I had saved to check on the special code, hoping that I would be the next millionaire.

Well, I guess I am not as lucky as Mr. Terrell Mathews because none of my codes amounted to anything but more gum. Apparently, when you go on the website, you enter a code and win a certain number of packages of gum, which amounts to multiples of 10 pieces of gum. The maximum prize is not in dollars and cents, but in volumes of gum. On the live chat option on Bazooka Joe’s website, I inquired about the Newport News boy. The chat ended abruptly, simply stated that a very unfortunate typo has resulted in a large cash award. So, it turns out Mathews was set to collect one million pieces of gum, not one million dollars.

Digging further on Monday morning through a corporate lawyer friend of mine, it turns out the copy that was written for the code on the website was generated by AI, not a human content writer. So, AI inserted the word “dollars” after “million” instead of “gum” because it didn’t recognize “million pieces of gum” in its database of language. Bazooka Joe and their attorneys were working on a settlement with Terrell Mathews and his family, so they invited him and the Mathews legal team to their corporate secret meeting place in Miami Beach, FL. So, it turns out that an AI generated phrase will cost the company a pretty penny or two. Still think AI is better than a human writer???

Absolutely not.

And by the way, Happy April Fools Day.

FYI – Terrell Mathews story and content 100% made up, although I did go to the Norfolk State Baseball game on Sunday. And I do love me some Bazooka Joe bubble gum, their comics, and the secret code promotion!