ROFL! Sounds like it was a blast (pun intented).

>When I was about 16 years old, I worked at Maple Leaf Stadium. That was when Toronto had a triple-a baseball team called the Toronto Maple Leafs. They were a Boston Red Sox farm team. Anyway, I worked out in the scoreboard (before multimedia). There were 2 of us out there and our job was to put up the lineups etc before the game, put up the scores during the game, watch girls in the stands with binoculars, and light off the fireworks when the Leafs scored.
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>We used 'mortar bombs' mostly. They were in a permanently grounded 9" mortar. We alternated. We would tear off some of the paper covering the wick, light it, drop it into the mortar and jump back into the scoreboard. They were great. BUT....
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>One day I found an old thing in the storeroom. A different kind of firework. It had a wooden pointed end that you jammed into the ground. All it would do is to shoot a small pea into the air about a hundred feet or so, and then the pea would explode with a bang that could shake down walls. No fireworks, just this incredible 'BANG!'.
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>Anyway, I figured I should use it up, so I took it out to the scoreboard. It was the 1st game of a double-header against the team from Richmond, VA.
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>The Leafs scored in the 5th inning, and I let this thing go. Well, damned if it didn't refuse to shoot a hundred feet into the air like it was supposed to (did I mention it was an old one). Instead, it got up to about 15 feet, wobbling around like a drunken sailor, and floated into the infield landing about 20 feet behind the unsuspecting Richmond shortstop. To make a long story painful, he made 4 errors during those final 5 innings, and I swear his hands were shaking.
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>It was my turn that day to go into the visitor's dugout to get the lineups for the 2nd game. Wanna guess whether I did or not? I called the pressbox and got them to call the dugout for the lineup.
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>I didn't go near the vistor's dugout when Richmond was in town for the rest of the year.