Tuesday, August 05, 2008

WEEKEND PHOTOS.

Until I get everything written up, some highlights and some links:

CLASH CITY ROCKERS.

Rare Clash Performance At Shea Stadium Set For CD Release

Clash’s entire performance at the Shea Stadium in 1982 is to be released on CD.

The band’s 15-song set at the New York venue, which closed earlier this month, will be available to buy from October 15th.

More here.

[thanx, K.]

Monday, August 04, 2008

LONE STAR STATE.

This team remains an enigma. They lose to teams they shouldn’t lose to and when they win, it is valiant and dramatic and makes you believe again… until they lose to, say, Randy Wolf.

*cue annoying wolf howl that Houston pipes through its ballpark that I hope I never have to hear again*

I am not going to talk about the games very much besides that sentence. But if you want to hear about the rest of our southern sojourn, read on.

We arrived in Houston early Friday morning. We were at the airport early (LGA on a Friday in the summer? You’d do the same) and since the security line was zero and we don’t check bags, we were able to get on the 6:30am flight. We picked up our car, and proceeded to kill time until check in with trips to Target (water, drinks, snacks, photographs), the House of Pies (breakfast), and the Galleria (travel sizes). We checked in around 1pm at a lovely 4-star boutique hotel about 7 blocks from the ballpark. We had enough time for a nap and a shower before walking down to Minute Maid Park for the 4pm tour.

It was during our walk through downtown when an old unused courthouse caught my eye and I stopped to take out my camera. That’s when I realized that the battery was sitting in Brooklyn, and D40 batteries aren’t sold in the team store. TBF had his point and shoot, which he kindly allowed me to take possession of, but it’s just not the same thing. It’s funny how in the course of a few years taking photos of baseball games, and the people and the places, has become so important. I kept trying to console myself that I could just enjoy the game, but when we settled in just off of the first base side later and I watched Jose Reyes jump back to base again and again and again from an angle I never get to see, it hurt.

Saturday, August 02, 2008

TEXAS UPDATE.

Things to remember when you get on a plane to go a thousand miles to see your team play:
THE CAMERA BATTERY. I know, I know. How could I, of all people, forget the camera battery? Thank god for Best Buy.

--Texas is hot. Like 106 hot. Like 99 degrees at first pitch hot. (And if anyone here says “but it’s a dry heat” I will invite you to do our laundry when we get back.)
--I sat next to a real cowboy Friday night
--Hunter Pence is dating this really sleazy stripper, and Houston is convinced that’s why he stopped hitting. David Wright isn’t dating a stripper, but I have to wonder if his current issues aren’t related
--Houston hecklers are the most boring and unoriginal in the entire country (gotta branch out from ‘sucks’, people)
--There so definitely was a second shooter behind the picket fence
--Billy Wagner is unreliable as heck (it was Family and Faith day up in Arlington, so that was as vocal as we got) when you need him most.
--In a superiority contest between the two ballparks, Arlington wins. However, while nursing my dehydration around 6:30, my superiority about not seeing baseball in air conditioning vanished.

Please, let Oliver The Good take the hill in Houston tomorrow. We are sitting six rows up from home plate, look for me. I’ll be the one NOT waving at the camera while not talking on my cell phone. TBF is planning on having a sitdown with some diehard Astros fan to find out why on earth they hate poor Carlos Beltran so much. Pray for us all.

More later.

With love from Corsicana, TX,

MG

Thursday, July 31, 2008

TOKEN YEARLY CAT PHOTO.

(Hey, this is a chick blog, remember?)

CAPTION THE PHOTO:
“It’s for your own good. I don’t think the Houston fans would appreciate you wearing a Beltran shirt.”

I wanted to do a LOLCat but I worked 12.5 hours yesterday and was too tired. 

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

A LETTER FROM MINNESOTA.

My friend Kari, the Twins fan who came with me to last Saturday’s game, just got home, and sent me this:

We went to the Yankees game and the WHOLE time I was there, I was writing my own personal blog in my head.  I just don’t get it. When I was in elementary school, there was a girl named Julie.  She was smart, attractive, and a good athlete.  But she was mean.  She was mean in a very special way.  She could purposely hurt the feelings of every single person in the classroom at one point or another, but yet SHE was the one everyone wanted to be friends with.  Even if it meant that she just wasn’t a very good friend back.  She could have cared less how many friends she had.  She would plan parties at her house and only invite the other popular kids.  Julie was the Yankees.

Sunday, July 27, 2008

DON’T FORGET ST. LOUIS.

Friday night was a fun night at Shea. However, just when you think that Phillies Phans are going to take the title of Worst Phans in Baseball, Shea is invaded by another sea of red. Section 12, in particular, seems to be The Place For Fans Of The Opposing Team. It’s not just one or two of them, it’s rows of them. I was going to write a diatribe about idiots who provide a standing ovation when a member of their team hits a single, but I realize I have already DONE that for the Phillies series. It’s even more moronic to do so when the player you are applauding has already struck out three times in that particular game.

The best description of St. Louis fans has to be the ladies’ room line after the game:
STL fan: “Well, so we’re not going to sweep you, but we’re still going to take the series.”
Me: “The Brewers called. They say ‘hello’.”
STL fan: *starts singing and clapping*

Saturday night was a special night because TBF was unavailable and I was going with my friend Kari from Minnesota. When I say “Minnesota” I don’t mean “a charming suburb of Minneapolis.” I mean middle-of-nowhere-Minnesota. Of course they are Twins fans and when I met her and her family (in town for Springsteen on Sunday) at Grand Central, she was wearing her daughter’s Santana jersey, much to her 15-year-old son’s concern.  He was worried that someone was going to give her a hard time. We had to actively search for someone to heckle her (one of the vendors) so his prophecy could be fulfilled.

We haven’t seen each other for over three years and it was her first time at Shea, so we got there early. I gave her the grand tour, we got two of those bargain enormous $9.50 beers, and headed for Upper Reserved Section 8. Those $9.50 beers are the best deal at Shea and I hate to write about them, because they might stop offering them. People will stop you when you are walking around with them in your hand and ask you, urgently, where you acquired them from.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

HOUSTON CONUNDRUM.

No beverage containers are allowed. Not even water.
Video cameras, the bane of MLB, *are* allowed.

No water. IN TEXAS? (I know it’s a dome.) NO WATER?
I’m sorry, but that’s almost as infuriating as disallowing sunscreen.

THE EDGE.

Dear SportsNet New York:

I am a long-standing subscriber of your network. We will omit the small fact that I have no choice but to be a subscriber of your network if I want to watch the New York Mets on television. Let’s just leave it that I am a loyal customer.

I am writing to bring your attention to a series of commercials featured on your network. While I realize you are not just a Mets station, but rather are a “New York sports” station (as you go to great lengths to remind us), these commercials are played with disturbing frequency during Mets games in particular. I am speaking, of course, of the Ford motor vehicle advertisements regarding one Derek F. Jeter* and his “edge”. These commercials air constantly during Mets games, repeatedly. They don’t just run once, twice or three times, but well over half a dozen times. Sometimes they even run one inning break after another.

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

I WAS BRUISED AND BATTERED.

There’s a neighbor on our block, an old-timer, owns the entire brownstone. He’s fond of the seasonal decorations, you know, those big blow up snowglobes and turkeys and Easter bunnies. He’s also a Mets fan, which means that the Mets flag hangs outside the front door whenever the Mets are in town. Seeing it hang there yesterday morning on the way to work made me feel proud and happy. Not that our neighborhood isn’t a Mets neighborhood, but it was one of those moments when the sun hits the brick just right and it’s quiet for two minutes and it just *feels* like Brooklyn should feel.

I was excited and happy to get to the game, even if I was so exhausted that I almost slept past the Willets Point stop. When we pulled in, I was sure we were at Junction Boulevard, and had to scramble to get past the tourists and confused and slow people. I was early, and I was happy that I would have a few minutes of peace in Section 12 before the madness began.

I do not fault the Phillies “Phans” for coming north. If I was them, I would be heartily tired of us turning CBP into Shea Stadium South for the past few years. However, the fact that it took an organized effort on the part of Philly Phandom to put the idea of the northern migration into the phanbase’s head says all you really need to know about them.