Monday, July 03, 2006

7-3-06: there are no words

WORST.
GAME.
EVER.

It was the worst game ever because it was the night AFTER that massacre in the Bronx.  It was the worst game ever because THE PIRATES ARE THE WORST TEAM IN THE LEAGUE and not only did we lose, WE LOST 11-1! OH MY GOD! What is WRONG with all of you! You can’t even blame Angel Hernandez for anything that happened this time! I mean, a single-digit loss I could live with, a one-run loss I could shrug off -

BUT ELEVEN RUNS TO ONE!  HELLO???! IS ANYBODY *REALLY* ALIVE OUT THERE?

I can curse Bradford but I won’t, he’s gotten us out of tight spots before, I can curse Feliciano but look at his numbers and, again, what he’s done for us before.

WHERE WERE THE BATS? WHERE WERE THE RUNS? WHERE WAS THE DEFENSE?

I know it is miserably humid tonight but the guys from PITTSBURGH didn’t seem to have any problems.

TBF decided to keep score tonight, since I was not home until around 9pm, but somewhere around the 8th inning he suddenly yelled, “What’s the point?!” and smashed his pen against the clipboard and wrote, ‘SHITTY GAME, NOT WORTH KEEPING SCORE’ across the scorecard.

He also bought a bag of Doritos for the game tomorrow, and while I normally can’t stand Doritos, and had a perfectly nice dinner with a girlfriend earlier in the evening, found the bag awfully attractive about the 7th inning. I finally made TBF take them away and HIDE them.
“Be glad you didn’t find them a few innings earlier; it’s the type of game you would have eaten the whole bag by now.”
“I thought only girls did that kind of thing.”
He shakes his head in a manner meant to indicate disbelief.

TBF: “Don’t worry, Glavine’s pitching tomorrow.”
Me: “And that consoles me how?”
TBF: “It’s Glavine.”
Me: “Who has had some less than stellar outings lately.”
TBF: “But we always seem to win anyway.”
Me: “Yes, when we bring some offense and defense, and I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but THERE ISN’T ANY RIGHT NOW.”

I am kicking the ground in disgust.

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7-2-06: the cricket score

I spent enough time in the UK to understand what people mean when they would say, “That’s almost a cricket score.” I’ve used this phrase. I am under the apparent misconception that it makes me seem urbane, sophisticated, well-informed. I have used it when discussing teams such as the Braves, the Phillies, the Washington Nationals.

I did not, this year, forsee a situation where I would be using it to describe a Mets game.

I think I get it now. “Mortified” would be a good word to describe how I feel this morning, and I did not even make it through the entire game - I had to be in the office at 8:30 this morning as I am the only senior person around today- so I had to go to bed “early”.  “Early” to me meant “as soon as the game is over”.  I didn’t tell TBF that, because he would be lecturing me about health and well-being, while at the same time secretly being pleased that he had a compatriot to sit up and watch the game with.

No, I stalked off to bed some time around when it became 6-4 - I do not recall exactly which event precipitated it, which gazillionth home run whichever Yankee hit up the right field line that caused me to stomp off to bed in a fashion my 4-year-old nephew would appreciate.  I emerged some time later to see the score at 9-4, TBF flying for the remote to turn off the screen, feeling that if he didn’t, I would be sitting up all night watching us lose in horrible fashion, not get any sleep, and therefore be worthless in the office today. He shouldn’t have worried. The god-awful boulder in the pit of my stomach made me happy I had an out, that I had a valid reason for turning my back on the apocalpyse in the Bronx.

Motherfucker.

The morning was a little subdued, and I wasn’t even going to look - all I asked was, “Do I want to know?” and TBF said “It got worse” and I held off knowing until I was at work and going through email and there was the helpful Postgame Alert with the fucking score in the fucking headline, and as much as I wanted to have the energy to hurl things around the office (me being the only one in and the only one scheduled to be in for at least another hour) I realized it wasn’t going to make me feel any better.

“It won’t matter if we make it to October,” I complained last night. “We won’t make it through a playoff game.”
“Not with Soler pitching,” TBF offered.
“Fuck Soler. Not with no offense, no defense, and nothing resembling a championship team on the field.”

What on earth was going on in Willie’s mind? What on EARTH?

My stomach still hurts, and there is no joy in Greenpoint, and the fact that we have FOUR baseball games to attend this week (Tuesday and Friday of course, and we have tickets for the double-header on Saturday), does not make it any better.

Sunday, July 02, 2006

7-1-06: the battle of good vs. evil

What a major let-down.

No, seriously, this is Yankee Stadium. This is the team with the largest payroll. This is supposed to be a monumental fucking event, attending a game there, it’s supposed to be so incredible and so much nicer and the Ultimate.

Instead, it’s not much better than Shea. (No, come on, it’s not.) And, at least Shea has decent concourses and enough bathrooms.

• The food is all more expensive. As TBF continually snarked, “Gotta make up for that payroll somehow.”
• The food is not that much better - okay, I know. Nothing is going to be Safeco Field with the chocolate-covered strawberries on skewers, and the salmon and chips, and the sushi (although I trusted the sushi at Safeco about as much as I ever trusted the hotdogs at the Kingdome).  But, still.
• The scoreboard was an atrocious letdown. No starting lineup? No out of town scoreboard to speak of? At least at Shea they change the lightbulbs every once in a while.
  
• And the sound system - I understand that this is baseball, but you would think, given the amount of money in this park and the rock star status of its players and the unbelievable amount of attention lavished in defense of Mariano Rivera’s use of “Enter Sandman,” I would have thought that the Yankees would have had this kick-ass sound system that would shake the walls and been crystal clear. Surely someone in baseball has thought of this, now that a player’s walk-on music has become *that* important.
  
• It’s not any bigger than Shea. Now, remember I know jack shit about baseball, but even as recently as a month or two ago, I had people lecturing me on the impact of walking through the tunnel for the first time and seeing the field before me and how awe-inspiring it was. Maybe if you’re a Yankees fan, that’s true, but that means the impact is emotional - which I can certainly understand - and not physical.

The history is undeniable, and the emotional aspect is absolutely real and true and valid. But don’t lecture me that the awesomeness is based on the physical plant or the facilities or the field. What a crock of inflated bullshit. And, as I have come to quickly learn, how typically YANKEE.

We pulled tier box seats late on Friday, just off first base, view of the Mets dugout and everything. We scurried up to the Bronx on Saturday morning, found parking, and walked the few blocks to the stadium.

It felt like an enemy incursion, walking through the hordes of blue and white and pinstripe-wearing crowds. We got glares. It was kind of exciting, in a West Side Story kind of way. We budgeted enough time for parking and will-call and security (all food in a plastic bag at Yankee Stadium, and they make you show your camera and turn on your cell phone), and even with all of that, we arrived in enough time to make it through Monument Park and catch the Mets relief staff warming up in the outfield, while the Yankees took BP in the infield.  We were close enough for me to lament that I left the good camera at home, and got to watch Billy Wagner talking shop with Mike Mussina and Duaner and Chad Bradford working out.

The seats were excellent, if a bit sunny; it was WARM, and we didn’t bring enough water (I got a bottle through security, but the ‘no bottles or cans’ disclaimer on the Stadium web site dissuaded us from bringing as much water as common sense would have dictated for this day). The place, obvs, was packed. Enough Mets fans around us, and even more above us in the cheap seats.

It was a very Trachsel-like game, which meant it got a little plodding at times, and at one point during the 4th inning I was so hot that TBF was insisting on going out to get me water and a lemon ice as soon as the Yankees were up—but then we kept GOING and then I was on my feet and knocked over my lemonade cheering, and suddenly felt much better.

I’m glad we went, but I didn’t like it - I mean, we *won* and I didn’t like it—and would be hard-pressed to want to go back. It just left a bad taste in my mouth.

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