Tuesday, August 31, 2010
April 23rd, 1994 - Ball four! Ball four! Ball four....
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Monday, August 30, 2010
April 22nd, 1994 - "Your Daddy's going to jail!"
April 22nd, 1994 - Yankees host the A's
"Ron Darling vs Bob Ojeda!!"
Ah, the good old A's are in town. You know, where we get to yell at fans in A's caps (hey, you dropped an S off that hat!") - lots of joking and gagging on this Friday night, which was noted as the "79th Anniversary of pinstripes."
"You know its a bad night if YOU'RE here" someone was told, in an effort to make them sad. Things were so wild and hectic out there and security was running up so much that the observation was made that we should "put an escalator out here for security to get here quicker."
Not only were we suggesting the architectural addendum of an escalator, we also concluded "they should just put a beer tap right out here while they are at it!"
THE best, and a memory that has lived forever outside of just these scorecards was some troublemaking guy that was there with his wee one. By the end of the night, everyone had had enough of him, and he was corralled and taken out, as his kid sat there bawling. No one came to help...no one had a kind word, Hell, no one even told the little spanker simply to follow his Dad out. No, we chanted, "your Daddy's going to jail! Your daddy's going to jail!"
We were musing that there was an announcement from Bob Sheppard reminding us to act like 'professional fans.' "Hell, if we are professional fans, then pay us!!" was our hearty retort.
Some elderly soul who probably was lucky enough to have seen Miller Huggins make pitching changes now had to put up with all us young upstarts shouting, "Jump, old man!" as he peered down from the loge. Bet that didnt happen in the 30s.
Here is another funny line I remember - someone basically stated that "Don Mattingly is Jesus Christ" and was met with "then I wish Christ would wake up again come April."
As Eddie Layton went into one of his LONG EXTENDED SOLOS someone put on the best ad-man voice and bellowed "Eddie Layton - available for weddings and bar mitzvahs!"
I was at it again, marking down what I thought were milestone times. At 7:20 "Ali's bell dropped." At 7:24 we saw our "first ejection from the bleachers." And at 7:41 Ali did his first boisterous bell clank. The first A's fan did a good job of staying discreet...we did not spot him skulking about until 8:15.
Lots of "celebrities" on hand. Gotta love the lookalikes. I am seeing Seinfeld, Kamala the Ugandan Giant, NY Giant Bart Oates, and Ginger from Gilligan's Island. Speaking of nostalgic TV, we had a nice chorus chant of "We want the Florie Dories!" We also greeted the Tony Orlando Security guy with a rousing version of "Knock 3 times!" We also saw someone who looked "a lot like Patrick Ewing in that Wiz commercial."
There was also a uniformed traffic cop out there, apparently a pretty one at that, and she was serenaded with the old "show us your cones" chant.
In the 5th Terry Steinbach jacked a home run into our neighborhood in right, and a fan made a nifty catch. "Nice catch, you asshole!" was his reward. No word on here wether or not he threw it back (or should I say we FORCED him to throw it back)
Geronimo Berroa was out there in left, and was met with a heap of "GEEERRONNNNIMOO!" hollers. "You even sucked in the movie!" was a line bandied about that made the card.
Not only did I have a "mystery out" on here, I had a "mystery situation." LOL. "A mystery situation." All it looks like on the card is a bunch of crossed out things in the player boxes, so I can shed no light on what the Hell went on out there on the field to prompt this confusion.
Both teams were swatting the ball around, and back then that meant Pope Don Pall was due to saunter out of the Yankee bullpen. "Come on, your holiness!" was yapped as the door opened to usher in his appearance.
In early running for "dumbest heckle of 1994" is the one hollered at a guy who shuffled up in a tie. "Hey, you really tied one on there!"
Here is what appears to be some useless trivia....BB King sang a version of "The Wanderer." When or why, or if this is even true, I dont know, but someone wrote it on here.
This was one of those games. The Yankees pulled one out, 8-6, in just over 3 hours time. That limpwrist Ron Darling started for the A's, and was belted around pretty good much to our appreciation. The A's paraded out a host of journeymen relievers in Carlos Reyes, Ed Nunez, and finally Billy Taylor.
And starting for the Yankees....oh, I had forgotten about this one! BOBBY OJEDA! Holy fu*k, I forgot all about his stint with the Yankees. Well, in my defense it was only 2 games....
He was spanked on this night, hard. 2 1/3 innings on the hill, 7 hits and 3 walks to boot. Holy crap was he spanked in his Yankee career, all 3 innings of it. In a take off of "Ode to Indian" we sang "If you don't win, you're Ojeda!" during the 7th inning stretch, and whenever else it suited our fancy.
Bobby Ojeda vs. Ron Darling in Yankee Stadium..who'd have thunk it?
Who was in front of us in right for the A's? None other than Ruben Sierra. Steinbach was the star of the show for the A's, that fu*k, going 3-4 with that Goddamned home run. Mike Bore-dick also had 3 hits, and Rickey Henderson led off for the A's and had a couple of hits of his own.
For the Yankees Paul O'Neill went 2-3 with 2 runs, 2 RBIs, and a home run off the pretty boy Ron Darling. Mike Stanley also had a couple of hits (as always) and Bernie Williams bopped a home run.
The A's lost despite getting 14 hits off of Yankee pitching, the Yankees simply made their 9 hits count a bit more.
There was a pathetic, embarrassing crowd of 18,754 out there on a cold night (I called the place "The North Pole" in the 'played at' area on the card) and your umpires were none other than Gary Cederstrom, Jim Evans, Derryl Cousins, and Rick Reed.
Thanks for reading!
"Ron Darling vs Bob Ojeda!!"
Ah, the good old A's are in town. You know, where we get to yell at fans in A's caps (hey, you dropped an S off that hat!") - lots of joking and gagging on this Friday night, which was noted as the "79th Anniversary of pinstripes."
"You know its a bad night if YOU'RE here" someone was told, in an effort to make them sad. Things were so wild and hectic out there and security was running up so much that the observation was made that we should "put an escalator out here for security to get here quicker."
Not only were we suggesting the architectural addendum of an escalator, we also concluded "they should just put a beer tap right out here while they are at it!"
THE best, and a memory that has lived forever outside of just these scorecards was some troublemaking guy that was there with his wee one. By the end of the night, everyone had had enough of him, and he was corralled and taken out, as his kid sat there bawling. No one came to help...no one had a kind word, Hell, no one even told the little spanker simply to follow his Dad out. No, we chanted, "your Daddy's going to jail! Your daddy's going to jail!"
We were musing that there was an announcement from Bob Sheppard reminding us to act like 'professional fans.' "Hell, if we are professional fans, then pay us!!" was our hearty retort.
Some elderly soul who probably was lucky enough to have seen Miller Huggins make pitching changes now had to put up with all us young upstarts shouting, "Jump, old man!" as he peered down from the loge. Bet that didnt happen in the 30s.
Here is another funny line I remember - someone basically stated that "Don Mattingly is Jesus Christ" and was met with "then I wish Christ would wake up again come April."
As Eddie Layton went into one of his LONG EXTENDED SOLOS someone put on the best ad-man voice and bellowed "Eddie Layton - available for weddings and bar mitzvahs!"
I was at it again, marking down what I thought were milestone times. At 7:20 "Ali's bell dropped." At 7:24 we saw our "first ejection from the bleachers." And at 7:41 Ali did his first boisterous bell clank. The first A's fan did a good job of staying discreet...we did not spot him skulking about until 8:15.
Lots of "celebrities" on hand. Gotta love the lookalikes. I am seeing Seinfeld, Kamala the Ugandan Giant, NY Giant Bart Oates, and Ginger from Gilligan's Island. Speaking of nostalgic TV, we had a nice chorus chant of "We want the Florie Dories!" We also greeted the Tony Orlando Security guy with a rousing version of "Knock 3 times!" We also saw someone who looked "a lot like Patrick Ewing in that Wiz commercial."
There was also a uniformed traffic cop out there, apparently a pretty one at that, and she was serenaded with the old "show us your cones" chant.
In the 5th Terry Steinbach jacked a home run into our neighborhood in right, and a fan made a nifty catch. "Nice catch, you asshole!" was his reward. No word on here wether or not he threw it back (or should I say we FORCED him to throw it back)
Geronimo Berroa was out there in left, and was met with a heap of "GEEERRONNNNIMOO!" hollers. "You even sucked in the movie!" was a line bandied about that made the card.
Not only did I have a "mystery out" on here, I had a "mystery situation." LOL. "A mystery situation." All it looks like on the card is a bunch of crossed out things in the player boxes, so I can shed no light on what the Hell went on out there on the field to prompt this confusion.
Both teams were swatting the ball around, and back then that meant Pope Don Pall was due to saunter out of the Yankee bullpen. "Come on, your holiness!" was yapped as the door opened to usher in his appearance.
In early running for "dumbest heckle of 1994" is the one hollered at a guy who shuffled up in a tie. "Hey, you really tied one on there!"
Here is what appears to be some useless trivia....BB King sang a version of "The Wanderer." When or why, or if this is even true, I dont know, but someone wrote it on here.
This was one of those games. The Yankees pulled one out, 8-6, in just over 3 hours time. That limpwrist Ron Darling started for the A's, and was belted around pretty good much to our appreciation. The A's paraded out a host of journeymen relievers in Carlos Reyes, Ed Nunez, and finally Billy Taylor.
And starting for the Yankees....oh, I had forgotten about this one! BOBBY OJEDA! Holy fu*k, I forgot all about his stint with the Yankees. Well, in my defense it was only 2 games....
He was spanked on this night, hard. 2 1/3 innings on the hill, 7 hits and 3 walks to boot. Holy crap was he spanked in his Yankee career, all 3 innings of it. In a take off of "Ode to Indian" we sang "If you don't win, you're Ojeda!" during the 7th inning stretch, and whenever else it suited our fancy.
Bobby Ojeda vs. Ron Darling in Yankee Stadium..who'd have thunk it?
Who was in front of us in right for the A's? None other than Ruben Sierra. Steinbach was the star of the show for the A's, that fu*k, going 3-4 with that Goddamned home run. Mike Bore-dick also had 3 hits, and Rickey Henderson led off for the A's and had a couple of hits of his own.
For the Yankees Paul O'Neill went 2-3 with 2 runs, 2 RBIs, and a home run off the pretty boy Ron Darling. Mike Stanley also had a couple of hits (as always) and Bernie Williams bopped a home run.
The A's lost despite getting 14 hits off of Yankee pitching, the Yankees simply made their 9 hits count a bit more.
There was a pathetic, embarrassing crowd of 18,754 out there on a cold night (I called the place "The North Pole" in the 'played at' area on the card) and your umpires were none other than Gary Cederstrom, Jim Evans, Derryl Cousins, and Rick Reed.
Thanks for reading!
Friday, August 27, 2010
April 19th, 1994 - "Yabba Dabba Douchebag!"
April 19th, 1994 Yankees vs Mariners
"Get over it...Chivarly is dead"
Moving forever onward...
I have no idea where I was during the first weekend series against the Tigers, maybe camping or something. There's beer out there in those woods, after all. Nonetheless, my second game in 1994 was not until a Tuesday against Seattle. I have to think this is a day game, as a grumbly scrawled "we have more day games than the Cubs" is a hint. Actually....no, this was NOT my second game in 94, as I am seeing now I wrote "3" under game number, so there is a scorecard missing. D'oh! There was probably a triple play in that game that I lost to time.
First thing I noted on the scorecard was that there was "still a mystery blue jacket" in my bag. Someones jacket had ended up in my duffel bag, and I dont think we ever figured out the original bearer of such. It became a running gag, and it was never claimed.
My cranky brother Dave was there with his friends Jay and Bill. Dave said he would make "20 games" and "this was one." By the end of the year I believe he notched "three." His friend Jay was busy that night, even "reasoning with a Seattle fan," which is a nice way of noting he was telling him in a friendly fashion it was in his best interests to keep the lips zipped or he would be pummelled.
"Freddy has one eye!" is on here, with exclamation point. Ah, good old "Freddy Sez." Geez, even then Freddy was trying to spread joy, clanking his tin pan, showing off his corny signs, and catching shit about his eye.
"Yabba Dabba Douchebag!" was one invective that was hurled. The howler of this jeer was being ejected at the time. "What, do you comb your hair with a sponge?" made its inaugeral appearance as a bleacher barb, to a fat bald man. I wonder how many times I had that grenade tossed in my direction without realizing it as I moved about out there over ensuing years.
In the current events of the day - I noted that "Space Ghost rules!" Speaking of TV at the time, you also see "Paul Olden sucks!" on here. And, since then, Olden has moved from polluting the booth to handling the same role the legendary Bob Sheppard did for decades, as Stadium PA.
Looks like Dave "the Animal" was in jail. In two seperate spots on here you can read "Dave in jail." There are no further details to report on this breaking story. Well, breaking 17 years ago, anyway...whats funny is both times it was noted that he was in jail were written by me, so I must have been drunk again, or really trying to hammer the point home to put it on here more than once.
Eric Anthony was playing left for the Mariners, and we correctly ID'd him as a "former Houston Ass-blow." A woman gave us a grimace and a disgusted sigh, so we told her "get over it...chivalry is dead."
Even then there were still morons walking around with tags hanging off the caps. "Yo, G-Money, take the tag off" made the card.
The weather was a problem. Not much in the way of a breeze ("The flags are limp" was an observation) but we were being spritzed with annoying drizzle. It rained early on as I blamed one of the "mystery outs" on it ("wiping off my seat") but it picked a funny time to REALLY hit, in the bottom of the 9th with the Yankees down 7-0 and Don Mattingly leading off the frame. The tarp actually came out.....that must have went over well, huh...I likened the fleeing masses to roaches on the wall (and as a fairly new resident of NYC, I surely knew what that looked like)
Check this, it was a whopping NINE minute rain delay. Shit, I would have thought it would take them that long to run it on and off the field alone. It ended at 9:27 PM, so there goes my theory about being a day game. We should have expected the bottom of the ninth monsoon, as I see mentions of thunder and a sketch of an ominous cloud scrawled with an arrow connecting it to the top of the ninth inning.
Of all people we were shut down by Greg Hibbard. Coming in I marked next to his name that his "ERA looked like an AM radio frequency." So he promptly went out and pitched into the ninth, when the Mariners turned to Jeff Nelson (who made 71 appearances in that, his second year in the league) and finally, one Tim Davis, in his debut season. Not even a household name in his own household, to be sure.
Jay Buhner was at it again, with two home runs, aptly dubbed "moonshot" in the 3rd and "a longer moonshot" in the 5th. In the 7th he flied out to center and made a show of it, fooling just about everyone who were convinced off the bat that it was yet another moonshot.
What a goofy lineup for Seattle. Brian Turang was leading off, and playing DH. Not many DH's lead off, period. And fu*king Brian Turang...lol! The Mariner lineup also included stalwarts Greg "my last name is a line on an eyechart" Pirkl at first and the affable Felix Fermin at short. And our old friend Mike Blowers was at third. Not only did Buhner jack two, Rich Amaral plopped one of his own over the wall.
Jim Abbott started for the Yankees (Jesus Christ, every time I was there Abbott was pitching...but I missed the no-hitter. Go figure) - he left after 5 putrid innings, and Pope Don Pall came in to throw a gemstone 4 shutout innings, giving up but 2 hits.
Not much going on on the Yankee end of things. Ended up with the one run, on 6 hits. Mike Gallego was still locked in as the Yankee leadoff hitter. Bernie Williams was hitting 7th, with O'Neill right in front of him.
So with all this one-sided bitchsmacking, Queen Bee Tina lost her patience and when someone had the temerity to yap back at her, she promptly marched to the rail and had security come back and sternly warn them to shut up or face the old heave-ho.
In the main oddity of the nights, there were ZERO double plays in the entire game. None, zippo, zilch.
There were only 21,148 on hand (geez, these small crowds are funny) on this gloomy evening, and your umpires were Ted Hendry, Mark Johnson, Chuck Meriwether, and Drew Coble.
Thanks for reading!
"Get over it...Chivarly is dead"
Moving forever onward...
I have no idea where I was during the first weekend series against the Tigers, maybe camping or something. There's beer out there in those woods, after all. Nonetheless, my second game in 1994 was not until a Tuesday against Seattle. I have to think this is a day game, as a grumbly scrawled "we have more day games than the Cubs" is a hint. Actually....no, this was NOT my second game in 94, as I am seeing now I wrote "3" under game number, so there is a scorecard missing. D'oh! There was probably a triple play in that game that I lost to time.
First thing I noted on the scorecard was that there was "still a mystery blue jacket" in my bag. Someones jacket had ended up in my duffel bag, and I dont think we ever figured out the original bearer of such. It became a running gag, and it was never claimed.
My cranky brother Dave was there with his friends Jay and Bill. Dave said he would make "20 games" and "this was one." By the end of the year I believe he notched "three." His friend Jay was busy that night, even "reasoning with a Seattle fan," which is a nice way of noting he was telling him in a friendly fashion it was in his best interests to keep the lips zipped or he would be pummelled.
"Freddy has one eye!" is on here, with exclamation point. Ah, good old "Freddy Sez." Geez, even then Freddy was trying to spread joy, clanking his tin pan, showing off his corny signs, and catching shit about his eye.
"Yabba Dabba Douchebag!" was one invective that was hurled. The howler of this jeer was being ejected at the time. "What, do you comb your hair with a sponge?" made its inaugeral appearance as a bleacher barb, to a fat bald man. I wonder how many times I had that grenade tossed in my direction without realizing it as I moved about out there over ensuing years.
In the current events of the day - I noted that "Space Ghost rules!" Speaking of TV at the time, you also see "Paul Olden sucks!" on here. And, since then, Olden has moved from polluting the booth to handling the same role the legendary Bob Sheppard did for decades, as Stadium PA.
Looks like Dave "the Animal" was in jail. In two seperate spots on here you can read "Dave in jail." There are no further details to report on this breaking story. Well, breaking 17 years ago, anyway...whats funny is both times it was noted that he was in jail were written by me, so I must have been drunk again, or really trying to hammer the point home to put it on here more than once.
Eric Anthony was playing left for the Mariners, and we correctly ID'd him as a "former Houston Ass-blow." A woman gave us a grimace and a disgusted sigh, so we told her "get over it...chivalry is dead."
Even then there were still morons walking around with tags hanging off the caps. "Yo, G-Money, take the tag off" made the card.
The weather was a problem. Not much in the way of a breeze ("The flags are limp" was an observation) but we were being spritzed with annoying drizzle. It rained early on as I blamed one of the "mystery outs" on it ("wiping off my seat") but it picked a funny time to REALLY hit, in the bottom of the 9th with the Yankees down 7-0 and Don Mattingly leading off the frame. The tarp actually came out.....that must have went over well, huh...I likened the fleeing masses to roaches on the wall (and as a fairly new resident of NYC, I surely knew what that looked like)
Check this, it was a whopping NINE minute rain delay. Shit, I would have thought it would take them that long to run it on and off the field alone. It ended at 9:27 PM, so there goes my theory about being a day game. We should have expected the bottom of the ninth monsoon, as I see mentions of thunder and a sketch of an ominous cloud scrawled with an arrow connecting it to the top of the ninth inning.
Of all people we were shut down by Greg Hibbard. Coming in I marked next to his name that his "ERA looked like an AM radio frequency." So he promptly went out and pitched into the ninth, when the Mariners turned to Jeff Nelson (who made 71 appearances in that, his second year in the league) and finally, one Tim Davis, in his debut season. Not even a household name in his own household, to be sure.
Jay Buhner was at it again, with two home runs, aptly dubbed "moonshot" in the 3rd and "a longer moonshot" in the 5th. In the 7th he flied out to center and made a show of it, fooling just about everyone who were convinced off the bat that it was yet another moonshot.
What a goofy lineup for Seattle. Brian Turang was leading off, and playing DH. Not many DH's lead off, period. And fu*king Brian Turang...lol! The Mariner lineup also included stalwarts Greg "my last name is a line on an eyechart" Pirkl at first and the affable Felix Fermin at short. And our old friend Mike Blowers was at third. Not only did Buhner jack two, Rich Amaral plopped one of his own over the wall.
Jim Abbott started for the Yankees (Jesus Christ, every time I was there Abbott was pitching...but I missed the no-hitter. Go figure) - he left after 5 putrid innings, and Pope Don Pall came in to throw a gemstone 4 shutout innings, giving up but 2 hits.
Not much going on on the Yankee end of things. Ended up with the one run, on 6 hits. Mike Gallego was still locked in as the Yankee leadoff hitter. Bernie Williams was hitting 7th, with O'Neill right in front of him.
So with all this one-sided bitchsmacking, Queen Bee Tina lost her patience and when someone had the temerity to yap back at her, she promptly marched to the rail and had security come back and sternly warn them to shut up or face the old heave-ho.
In the main oddity of the nights, there were ZERO double plays in the entire game. None, zippo, zilch.
There were only 21,148 on hand (geez, these small crowds are funny) on this gloomy evening, and your umpires were Ted Hendry, Mark Johnson, Chuck Meriwether, and Drew Coble.
Thanks for reading!
By unpopular demand...
A bunch of years back, I guess mid to late 90s, my friend Eric, who fashioned himself an actor, was living in Pennsylvania. I used to go out there to drink a ton of Yuenglings, chase the skirts at the local pub, and listen to the Fun Lovin' Criminals on his stereo system while football played out on the screen, sound down. On some other weekends I would return the favor as he would travel into NY to attend auditions and crash at my place, annoying my grumpy roommate Ian. I actually stole Eric from Ian - they were friends and after one weekend where we all went out boozing together Eric decided he liked me better and gave my roomie the drop.
For some reason one year when I was out there we took a ride into Baltimore. I still dont know what the reasoning was. I do remember there was a huge block party, and it was near the famous "seaport" but I cant imagine we drove all that way to go to a block party. Anyway, the whole block was closed off and it was full of beer stands, beer, beer gardens, and drunk women. Drunk men too, unfortunatly, scoring women meant for us.
My friend Eric, who was quite the dandy, unfortunatly met some men this time around. A couple of hoodie types, by a beer stand. They were locals, and he was asking them all kinds of questions about the place. You would have thought he was trying to move there. Turns out he was looking for a drug connection and using "drug-speak" that I did not understand. They were exchanging inane small talk in order to estabish that neither party were Johnny Law working undercover. I did not care, I was busy watching some bikini girl in the dunk tank.
After a bit Eric comes to agreement with these two sketchy gentleman and they wave me along to follow. We end up walking to the end of the block and hook a right where there is a series of big dumpsters for all the waste of the day. It was also where people went to pee and puke, or sneak a spliff or accept a BJ.
Eric and the brothers sit down and commence to smoke up. I demurred, beer was quite enough for me. I must have looked quite the loser, standing in the street by myself drinking beer while 3 guys sat on the curb getting high. The end booths of the block party were literally 20 feet away, so I was practically at the party but appearing to enjoy the company of the dumpsters and porto-johns instead.
Next thing I know Eric is like, "ah, come on, man. what the fuck." I look over and he is still sitting on the sidewalk. Actually, they all are. Apparently between puffs and laughs one of the guys basically told him, "yo, we got guns, empty your pockets." And they were engaging in a placid conversation about it on the curb like they were the Little Rascals watching a parade or something.
Eric calls me over, later saying he did so cause he did not want me absently walking away to get more beer without knowing what was going on, cause he was afraid i would get shot in the back. I walk over and as I do both guys stand up and they both pull out TWO guns each. It was almost comical. FOUR guns on the two of us. Actually, they were all pointed at me while I was walking over, Eric was just standing there between them with this stupid look on his face. If I did not know any better and if I did not see his money taken from him with my own eyes I would have thought he was in on it. Mind you, if I turned around 20 feet away were a line of people buying hot dogs and cotton candy but here we were, in another world of guns and grit.
So I look at these four guns and mutter my infamous "Four guns?? What is this, the wild wild west??" line, which Eric later laughed at in his pickup truck but he nearly shit himself at the time when I popped this one as wisecracks need not apply. Muggers are looking for John Rockefeller, not John Candy.
They basically tell us to cut the shit and empty the pockets. Get this - not only did I tell them I forgot my wallet I ACTUALLY HAD FORGOT MY WALLET. Eric was actually covering me all day as I left my wallet at his place, which sucked in more ways than one. We were not able to get into any of the bars along the street, which is why we met these guys in the first place.
They dont believe me, of course, and i get patted down. I was drunk enough to where I found the situation more amusing than aggravating. I mean, Eric and I had wasted almost TWO HOURS hanging out with these guys! They even smoked to the last before the guys got on with the robbing! And all they were trying to do was get us alone to rob us. It seemed like a colassal waste of time.
To make a long story a little shorter, not only did they take all of Eric's money they also took his Los Angeles Dodger baseball cap. I remember him whining, "can I just keep the cap, please?" and the guy was like, "No." They also decided to keep his license, for all I know they had a collection on a wall someplace. They promised Eric they would drop it into the mail but 4 years later it had not arrived. I remember he was even a little worried they were going to come to his apartment to get high with him, and mug him again.
During this at least a handful of people walked right by, going to the porto potties over there. A couple of them near enough to touch. I guess it was pretty established around there that you don't rat. Eric actually explained it all to me on the drive back to his place - if you are dumb enough to get rolled, people are going to ignore it and let you get what you deserve. Meanwhile, HE was dumb enough to get rolled, I was following him around cause I did not have any money on me.
On top of everything else he was low on gas and had to borrow money from someone to get us out of there. I remember the next day he wanted to head back into Baltimore to this street fair again, this time with a baseball bat, to find the guys that robbed us. He considered himself "street smart" (yeah, street smart enough to get us robbed on a sidewalk just off a crowded street) and explained how those guys probably made a living feeding on the out-of-towners in that fashion.
Me? I was in no mood to go back to Baltimore. I still had MY wallet, remember? And football was on that day, and I had my Fun Lovin' Criminals cassette on hand.
A bunch of years back, I guess mid to late 90s, my friend Eric, who fashioned himself an actor, was living in Pennsylvania. I used to go out there to drink a ton of Yuenglings, chase the skirts at the local pub, and listen to the Fun Lovin' Criminals on his stereo system while football played out on the screen, sound down. On some other weekends I would return the favor as he would travel into NY to attend auditions and crash at my place, annoying my grumpy roommate Ian. I actually stole Eric from Ian - they were friends and after one weekend where we all went out boozing together Eric decided he liked me better and gave my roomie the drop.
For some reason one year when I was out there we took a ride into Baltimore. I still dont know what the reasoning was. I do remember there was a huge block party, and it was near the famous "seaport" but I cant imagine we drove all that way to go to a block party. Anyway, the whole block was closed off and it was full of beer stands, beer, beer gardens, and drunk women. Drunk men too, unfortunatly, scoring women meant for us.
My friend Eric, who was quite the dandy, unfortunatly met some men this time around. A couple of hoodie types, by a beer stand. They were locals, and he was asking them all kinds of questions about the place. You would have thought he was trying to move there. Turns out he was looking for a drug connection and using "drug-speak" that I did not understand. They were exchanging inane small talk in order to estabish that neither party were Johnny Law working undercover. I did not care, I was busy watching some bikini girl in the dunk tank.
After a bit Eric comes to agreement with these two sketchy gentleman and they wave me along to follow. We end up walking to the end of the block and hook a right where there is a series of big dumpsters for all the waste of the day. It was also where people went to pee and puke, or sneak a spliff or accept a BJ.
Eric and the brothers sit down and commence to smoke up. I demurred, beer was quite enough for me. I must have looked quite the loser, standing in the street by myself drinking beer while 3 guys sat on the curb getting high. The end booths of the block party were literally 20 feet away, so I was practically at the party but appearing to enjoy the company of the dumpsters and porto-johns instead.
Next thing I know Eric is like, "ah, come on, man. what the fuck." I look over and he is still sitting on the sidewalk. Actually, they all are. Apparently between puffs and laughs one of the guys basically told him, "yo, we got guns, empty your pockets." And they were engaging in a placid conversation about it on the curb like they were the Little Rascals watching a parade or something.
Eric calls me over, later saying he did so cause he did not want me absently walking away to get more beer without knowing what was going on, cause he was afraid i would get shot in the back. I walk over and as I do both guys stand up and they both pull out TWO guns each. It was almost comical. FOUR guns on the two of us. Actually, they were all pointed at me while I was walking over, Eric was just standing there between them with this stupid look on his face. If I did not know any better and if I did not see his money taken from him with my own eyes I would have thought he was in on it. Mind you, if I turned around 20 feet away were a line of people buying hot dogs and cotton candy but here we were, in another world of guns and grit.
So I look at these four guns and mutter my infamous "Four guns?? What is this, the wild wild west??" line, which Eric later laughed at in his pickup truck but he nearly shit himself at the time when I popped this one as wisecracks need not apply. Muggers are looking for John Rockefeller, not John Candy.
They basically tell us to cut the shit and empty the pockets. Get this - not only did I tell them I forgot my wallet I ACTUALLY HAD FORGOT MY WALLET. Eric was actually covering me all day as I left my wallet at his place, which sucked in more ways than one. We were not able to get into any of the bars along the street, which is why we met these guys in the first place.
They dont believe me, of course, and i get patted down. I was drunk enough to where I found the situation more amusing than aggravating. I mean, Eric and I had wasted almost TWO HOURS hanging out with these guys! They even smoked to the last before the guys got on with the robbing! And all they were trying to do was get us alone to rob us. It seemed like a colassal waste of time.
To make a long story a little shorter, not only did they take all of Eric's money they also took his Los Angeles Dodger baseball cap. I remember him whining, "can I just keep the cap, please?" and the guy was like, "No." They also decided to keep his license, for all I know they had a collection on a wall someplace. They promised Eric they would drop it into the mail but 4 years later it had not arrived. I remember he was even a little worried they were going to come to his apartment to get high with him, and mug him again.
During this at least a handful of people walked right by, going to the porto potties over there. A couple of them near enough to touch. I guess it was pretty established around there that you don't rat. Eric actually explained it all to me on the drive back to his place - if you are dumb enough to get rolled, people are going to ignore it and let you get what you deserve. Meanwhile, HE was dumb enough to get rolled, I was following him around cause I did not have any money on me.
On top of everything else he was low on gas and had to borrow money from someone to get us out of there. I remember the next day he wanted to head back into Baltimore to this street fair again, this time with a baseball bat, to find the guys that robbed us. He considered himself "street smart" (yeah, street smart enough to get us robbed on a sidewalk just off a crowded street) and explained how those guys probably made a living feeding on the out-of-towners in that fashion.
Me? I was in no mood to go back to Baltimore. I still had MY wallet, remember? And football was on that day, and I had my Fun Lovin' Criminals cassette on hand.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
April 8th, 1994 - "If I could I'd make love to beer"
Hi there folks! Welcome to 1994! Pull up a barstool.
April 8th, 1994 - Yankees host the Tigers
Well, I picked up right where I left off. I saw the Yankees close 93 against the Tigers, and after missing the first two games of 1993 against the Rangers here was Detroit back in town against the undefeated, 2-0 Yankees.
"Kurt Cobain is dead" has a prominent spot right at the top...without bothering to reference, I suppose that vaunted event occured around this time. It was noted that the caricature on the cover of the 1994 Yearbook looked like the "outside of Shea Stadium." Thats not good.
I was just happy to be back. So happy that at 9:20PM I got to sing "Friend of Mine." We ordered Detroit RF Danny Bautista to "bark like a dog" - I dont think he did that.
In such a good mood, so pleased to see my old friends once again, I actually told Big-nosed George at one point around the middle of the game, "George, its good to see you" and he replied, "what, you're leaving?"
I am noticing a difference from the 1993 cards...the insults are a bit more biting here. "You fat fu*k" is on here. Ironic, when you consider the physiques the section would be peppered with a decade later, mine certainly included.
Our favorite "celebrity security" was on hand. In that year alone we had security personnel that closely resembled Saddam Hussein, Queen Latifah, and BB King. And then, when trouble would start, here came Fat Elvis barking into his walkie-talkie.
Cowbell King Ali kicked the festivities off with his first bell of the night at 7:01....I missed it (and back then that was a big deal to miss it) cause I was downstairs seeking out, or peeing out, ale. However, whoever wrote this info mispelled the name of probably the most famous Bleacher Creature of them all, noting him as "Ollie." What was this, Laurel and Hardy?
My first yell towards the field was a "hey, Luis!" at Yankee centerfielder Luis Polonia at 7:46. Talk about pre-roll call....the first Met fan was sighted at 7:10, and the first Met fan was shredded at, well, 7:10. It took just about another hour, 8:09 to be exact, for a Red Sox fan to be spotted and subjected to their own form of abuse. Continuing my time on the clock fetish, I noted that beerman Cousin Brewski made his first appearance out there at 9:41PM, and was duly applauded.
Someone was openly griping about us within earshot, and was met with "eat your fu*king Carvel ice cream and go back to Jersey." The first "fight false alarm" rang at 8:40 (oof, I was heavy into marking times at this point....I hope I grew out of this soon) and in the bottom of the 6th someone in the box seats "threw a beer at us" and that resulted in a "he's out!!!"
This was the night where I first made my "If I could, I would make love to beer" statement. Or at least when it was first recorded. I ended up missing part of the 4th and a healthy chunk of the 5th "buying beers." And, thanks partially to all these beers, a bunch of us merrily belted out a few verses from the Monty Python Lumberjack song.
I am seeing yet another false fight on here....man, the beer ban really worked. We surely didnt see fights with any sort of regularity when they blocked the beer from getting to our section, and they are all over these scorecards in the Age of the Sud.
Holy shit are there are lot of mo's here. Lots of missed outs. 2 in the top of the 3rd (apparently "while I was passing out cookies" ?? What the fuc*k...) another couple in the 5th when I was buying beer (what happened to all of my pinch-scorers?) and another one in the 7th during one of the false fights. These all came with the Tigers up, so at least I was watching the Yankees bat.
I lost my voice, and bitched about it on the scorecard as I could no longer yell at Danny Bautista, who was in right. The Tigers had since moved our old foe Tony Phillips to left. He once again became the target of our bombs, as we'd chant at him in deragatory fashion, only to see him dancing for us (he was quite the shimmy-er) across the field.
There was a major "beer controversy" in the 5th when a beer man not named Brewski walked right by us and ended up selling all his beers to the idiots behind us. That is what caused me to head out into the lobby line to miss a chunk of action.
After all the "false fights" a major bleacher brawl finally erupted just before 9PM. Not only did i mark down the exact time (8:52) but I noted it sparked with a 2-1 count on the hitter. Talk about finite detail.
What, were they selling RC Cola out there in 94? I have "RC Cola????" written on here with a frowny face. I sure hope someone didnt bring it on on their own violition. We may have simply been discussing RC Cola out there for no reason..we always ended up in dumb conversations like that.
Ah, shit, I am noticing now in the "played at" area on the scorecard this was one of those 7PM games...looks like this is where they chopped them up a half hour, cutting into our pregame drinking time. The bastards!
What the fu*k was going on circa 1993 and 1994? There was yet ANOTHER fan on the field! This individual had a romp just as Cecil Fielder popped up to first, ending the 8th. I mean, get some control! There were more fans on the field than players at any given time!
There is one autograph from a fan on here, someone claiming to be Robby Thompson's brother in law. How that came up, who knows...
As for the game, Jim Abbott pitched a shutout block of innings, God bless his merry soul! He threw a neat 7, before Bob Wickman came in to engage in funny business. He gave up a single and a walk, and that was it for him. Thanks! Steve Howe of all people came in and threw 2 strong to lock up the save.
Starting for the Tigers was one John Doherty, from the Bronx, New York! Fu*k him! Luis Polonia led off for the Yankees, and walked 3 times. Paul O'Neill was 2-3 and plated 2 runs, and Wade Boggs was 1-3 with a walk, scoring twice and driving in a run. Mike Gallego, at short, threw one away on the very first batter of the game, getting a "thanks for the throw Gallego" on the card for his efforts. Despite this, the win upped the Yankee mark to 3-0, heading into the first weekend of the season.
As for the Tigers, Juan Samuel, playing second and batting second, was feeling racist and went K K K in his first three at bats before Lou Whitaker creaked out to the field to bat for him in the 8th. Those in attendance were also lucky to see Mickey Tettleton, DHing for the Tigers, and the esteemable Milt Cuyler manning centerfield, and being yelled at in the process.
There were only 20,222 there ON A FRIDAY NIGHT! Holy crap!Your umpires for this fabled contest were Al Clark, Dan Morrison, Larry Barnett, and Greg Kosc.
Thanks for reading, and welcome to 1994!
April 8th, 1994 - Yankees host the Tigers
Well, I picked up right where I left off. I saw the Yankees close 93 against the Tigers, and after missing the first two games of 1993 against the Rangers here was Detroit back in town against the undefeated, 2-0 Yankees.
"Kurt Cobain is dead" has a prominent spot right at the top...without bothering to reference, I suppose that vaunted event occured around this time. It was noted that the caricature on the cover of the 1994 Yearbook looked like the "outside of Shea Stadium." Thats not good.
I was just happy to be back. So happy that at 9:20PM I got to sing "Friend of Mine." We ordered Detroit RF Danny Bautista to "bark like a dog" - I dont think he did that.
In such a good mood, so pleased to see my old friends once again, I actually told Big-nosed George at one point around the middle of the game, "George, its good to see you" and he replied, "what, you're leaving?"
I am noticing a difference from the 1993 cards...the insults are a bit more biting here. "You fat fu*k" is on here. Ironic, when you consider the physiques the section would be peppered with a decade later, mine certainly included.
Our favorite "celebrity security" was on hand. In that year alone we had security personnel that closely resembled Saddam Hussein, Queen Latifah, and BB King. And then, when trouble would start, here came Fat Elvis barking into his walkie-talkie.
Cowbell King Ali kicked the festivities off with his first bell of the night at 7:01....I missed it (and back then that was a big deal to miss it) cause I was downstairs seeking out, or peeing out, ale. However, whoever wrote this info mispelled the name of probably the most famous Bleacher Creature of them all, noting him as "Ollie." What was this, Laurel and Hardy?
My first yell towards the field was a "hey, Luis!" at Yankee centerfielder Luis Polonia at 7:46. Talk about pre-roll call....the first Met fan was sighted at 7:10, and the first Met fan was shredded at, well, 7:10. It took just about another hour, 8:09 to be exact, for a Red Sox fan to be spotted and subjected to their own form of abuse. Continuing my time on the clock fetish, I noted that beerman Cousin Brewski made his first appearance out there at 9:41PM, and was duly applauded.
Someone was openly griping about us within earshot, and was met with "eat your fu*king Carvel ice cream and go back to Jersey." The first "fight false alarm" rang at 8:40 (oof, I was heavy into marking times at this point....I hope I grew out of this soon) and in the bottom of the 6th someone in the box seats "threw a beer at us" and that resulted in a "he's out!!!"
This was the night where I first made my "If I could, I would make love to beer" statement. Or at least when it was first recorded. I ended up missing part of the 4th and a healthy chunk of the 5th "buying beers." And, thanks partially to all these beers, a bunch of us merrily belted out a few verses from the Monty Python Lumberjack song.
I am seeing yet another false fight on here....man, the beer ban really worked. We surely didnt see fights with any sort of regularity when they blocked the beer from getting to our section, and they are all over these scorecards in the Age of the Sud.
Holy shit are there are lot of mo's here. Lots of missed outs. 2 in the top of the 3rd (apparently "while I was passing out cookies" ?? What the fuc*k...) another couple in the 5th when I was buying beer (what happened to all of my pinch-scorers?) and another one in the 7th during one of the false fights. These all came with the Tigers up, so at least I was watching the Yankees bat.
I lost my voice, and bitched about it on the scorecard as I could no longer yell at Danny Bautista, who was in right. The Tigers had since moved our old foe Tony Phillips to left. He once again became the target of our bombs, as we'd chant at him in deragatory fashion, only to see him dancing for us (he was quite the shimmy-er) across the field.
There was a major "beer controversy" in the 5th when a beer man not named Brewski walked right by us and ended up selling all his beers to the idiots behind us. That is what caused me to head out into the lobby line to miss a chunk of action.
After all the "false fights" a major bleacher brawl finally erupted just before 9PM. Not only did i mark down the exact time (8:52) but I noted it sparked with a 2-1 count on the hitter. Talk about finite detail.
What, were they selling RC Cola out there in 94? I have "RC Cola????" written on here with a frowny face. I sure hope someone didnt bring it on on their own violition. We may have simply been discussing RC Cola out there for no reason..we always ended up in dumb conversations like that.
Ah, shit, I am noticing now in the "played at" area on the scorecard this was one of those 7PM games...looks like this is where they chopped them up a half hour, cutting into our pregame drinking time. The bastards!
What the fu*k was going on circa 1993 and 1994? There was yet ANOTHER fan on the field! This individual had a romp just as Cecil Fielder popped up to first, ending the 8th. I mean, get some control! There were more fans on the field than players at any given time!
There is one autograph from a fan on here, someone claiming to be Robby Thompson's brother in law. How that came up, who knows...
As for the game, Jim Abbott pitched a shutout block of innings, God bless his merry soul! He threw a neat 7, before Bob Wickman came in to engage in funny business. He gave up a single and a walk, and that was it for him. Thanks! Steve Howe of all people came in and threw 2 strong to lock up the save.
Starting for the Tigers was one John Doherty, from the Bronx, New York! Fu*k him! Luis Polonia led off for the Yankees, and walked 3 times. Paul O'Neill was 2-3 and plated 2 runs, and Wade Boggs was 1-3 with a walk, scoring twice and driving in a run. Mike Gallego, at short, threw one away on the very first batter of the game, getting a "thanks for the throw Gallego" on the card for his efforts. Despite this, the win upped the Yankee mark to 3-0, heading into the first weekend of the season.
As for the Tigers, Juan Samuel, playing second and batting second, was feeling racist and went K K K in his first three at bats before Lou Whitaker creaked out to the field to bat for him in the 8th. Those in attendance were also lucky to see Mickey Tettleton, DHing for the Tigers, and the esteemable Milt Cuyler manning centerfield, and being yelled at in the process.
There were only 20,222 there ON A FRIDAY NIGHT! Holy crap!Your umpires for this fabled contest were Al Clark, Dan Morrison, Larry Barnett, and Greg Kosc.
Thanks for reading, and welcome to 1994!
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
October 2nd & 3rd, 1993 - Close the Curtain!
October 2nd and 3rd, 1993 - Yankees host Tigers
The curtain closes on 1993
This puts a wrap on 1993. By this point, we were mentally strained as the Yankees had fallen out of the race in the previous week. The Stadium was barren, empty and cold, and psychologically we were all set to resume our lives outside the Stadium. For me, it was mundane. I was new to the city, having moved there just a year before, and still heading home to Long Island every weekend to be with my friends there.
I found another family in the bleachers, and I enjoyed the camraderie. There were no Bleacher Creature offseason happy hours back then, and outside of the two or three people we each ended up running with, for the most part we did not even exchange phone numbers. When we left the Stadium that cold October 3rd afternoon, we knew we would not see one another again for 6 months. And it sucked.
These scorecards are devoid of anything. So I am just going to combine them and tie a bow on 1993. Leafing ahead, things pick up in 1994, the jokes are more biting and there are are a whole host of new characters you will learn to love to help spice things up.
October 2nd, 1993 was a chilly Saturday, and the Yankees were hushed by the Tigers 4-1 behind the efforts of Bill Krueger of all people. The day started off with some smirks as Chuck Mangione played the Anthem on his trumpet. I know he was sincere and all, but it was still Chuck Mangione and the Anthem did not sound right.
In clear letters I see "Velarde - Player of September" on here...I do not have the interest in checking to see if this was a Yankee thing, and if it was in any way legit. Judging by the snide Velarde remarks I have seen on these, I dont think he cold have had that kind of month. Walkman John?
Ah, I see even back in 1993 a Chinese man could still be met with the old "I'll take the number 4 with spare ribs" joke. A few of the regulars were in bad spirits, as I mentioned Old Ali the Cowbell King "clocked the soda guy" (I am sure it was not as serious as that sounds) and "Brewski leaves with buttons - top 7th" - as in he up and left, choosing not to give out his free "COUSIN BREWSKI" pins to people simply asking for them as he usually did. Instead he handed out a few to the more jovial insiders of the group, and that never went over well with the others.
Tony Phillips out in right gave us the finger, that was always good for a laugh. Future skip Alan Trammell had a Hall of a day, going 3-4, with a home run, and Doofy Dan Gladden went 4-5.
I had "a reporter" autograph the scorecard, so even then they were lurking about trying to sniff out a story. I also wrote a quote from him - "just a matter of time." I wish I knew what he was talking about....till assigned seating? An alcohol ban? The Yankees in the playoffs? What???? Fu*k, I hate when I write things thinking they would make sense 17 years later.
Wade Boggs went 3-4, and I noted he was at .300 with just one more game to go. He finished the year at .302, sitting out the final afternoon (where Bernie Williams actually led off in his place) Jim Abbott started for the Yankees and pitched ok, but was tagged for a loss ending his nondescript 11-14 season. Future bullpen coach Rich Monteleone mopped it up. For a meaningless end of year affair, I am not seeing many unknowns in the lineups, even though the ever-mysterious Mike Humphries played left for the Yankees and went 0-3.
33,249 actually showed up for this game (or so they claim....that would severely drop the next day) and your umpires remained Ken Kaiser-roll, Mark Johnson, Jim McKean, and Vic Voltaggio.
LAST DAY - OCTOBER 3rd, 1993
Well, this was a wrap. I remarked it was quite cold - I have a handful of pics from that day and we were bundled up like Nanook of the North. I mentioned that on my ride in my train got stuck, and I ended up drinking the 6 pack I was carting up with me for sidewalk sips on the subway instead. I already had the 6-pack and was bringing it along cause the old "cant buy beer till noon" edict that ran afoul of us back in those olden days. Thank God I had it. I was not even late for the game, cause back then I would show by 9:30 for a 1:00PM start to get my drink on.
"Quite the insulting remark towards a gabby woman was not only snarled, but written on the card for posterity...I am pretty sure that sorta word does not appear on too many of these. We stayed away from sexist comedy, as there were plenty of women out there who were willing to throw a punch.
There were a few Tiger fans near the front of the empty bleachers for whatever reason - Christ knows what they were doing there, and we were letting them have it. We finally hollered to our buddy Tony Phillips in right "Tony, go back to Detroit and take the front row with you!" Phillips, as was his wont on this sort of occassion, broke into a dance for our entertainment.
Someone was out there "looking like a movie usher with that jacket." We sang the "lets go out to the lobby - and grab ourselves a snack" song for him a few dozen times. A beach ball actually found its way out there, and security actually chased it down after a merry chase. They usually dont get so directly involved in that sort of thing and let the drunks pop it on their own.
We spent the top of the second arguing about Don Mattingly...I dont know who was on what side, but he was a source of argument even then...I wonder if it was the old Puckett/Mattingly argument with different voices doing the arguing. On the old Bleacher Creature message board a Mattingly / Puckett Hall of Fame argument spanned a couple of hundred pages and a number of years.
One funny note was a boxseat scuffle that ended with a few people tumbling down a couple of rows. That was always funny. The amiable and bearded Captain Bob signed my scorecard yet again (geez, I hope I grew weary of this gimmick by 1994) with a nice "just have a good offseason" message. That was big for me back then, I was in awe of people like Bob.
Yankees ended up pinching one with a run in the 9th for a walk-off win. Mike Stanley was a fitting hero, capping off a fine season, stroking the game winning hit and plating pinch-runner Spike Owen, who came in after Jim Leyritz was plunked and removed with one out. Danny Tartabull was intentionally walked, and Stanley notched his single off of Tom Bolton. The beneficiary of this was Bobby Munoz, who actually stunned the crowd by tossing up a scoreless 2 innings for the win.
The announced crowd was 28,942, but there was nothing close to that inside the Stadium. In my pics you see us posing with a beautiful background of emtpy blue seats framing us completely. And your umpires were STILL Mark Johnson, Jim McKean, Vic Voltaggio, Ken Kaiser.
So that was that. I was basically just finding my place out there, still a newbie, and still keeping to myself a bit. I think I still thought Big-Nosed George of all people ran the place to some extent, and Queen Bee Tina was indeed the muscle. I had nothing but reverence for them, Captain Bob, Animal, Ali and his cowbell, Chico and his sketchy money pools, and the rest of the clowns festering about. My pack back then consisted of this guy Chris, who simply dropped off the Earth, Dennis who appears mysteriously every few years like a wraith, and a few others lost to memory. You just wait until the likes of Big Tone Capone, Gang Bang Steve, 41, Grover, Knoblauch, Metssuckballs, Bald Vinny, and Midget Mike and the like make their way out there, and on here.
Hope you enjoyed 1993....business is about to pick up!
The curtain closes on 1993
This puts a wrap on 1993. By this point, we were mentally strained as the Yankees had fallen out of the race in the previous week. The Stadium was barren, empty and cold, and psychologically we were all set to resume our lives outside the Stadium. For me, it was mundane. I was new to the city, having moved there just a year before, and still heading home to Long Island every weekend to be with my friends there.
I found another family in the bleachers, and I enjoyed the camraderie. There were no Bleacher Creature offseason happy hours back then, and outside of the two or three people we each ended up running with, for the most part we did not even exchange phone numbers. When we left the Stadium that cold October 3rd afternoon, we knew we would not see one another again for 6 months. And it sucked.
These scorecards are devoid of anything. So I am just going to combine them and tie a bow on 1993. Leafing ahead, things pick up in 1994, the jokes are more biting and there are are a whole host of new characters you will learn to love to help spice things up.
October 2nd, 1993 was a chilly Saturday, and the Yankees were hushed by the Tigers 4-1 behind the efforts of Bill Krueger of all people. The day started off with some smirks as Chuck Mangione played the Anthem on his trumpet. I know he was sincere and all, but it was still Chuck Mangione and the Anthem did not sound right.
In clear letters I see "Velarde - Player of September" on here...I do not have the interest in checking to see if this was a Yankee thing, and if it was in any way legit. Judging by the snide Velarde remarks I have seen on these, I dont think he cold have had that kind of month. Walkman John?
Ah, I see even back in 1993 a Chinese man could still be met with the old "I'll take the number 4 with spare ribs" joke. A few of the regulars were in bad spirits, as I mentioned Old Ali the Cowbell King "clocked the soda guy" (I am sure it was not as serious as that sounds) and "Brewski leaves with buttons - top 7th" - as in he up and left, choosing not to give out his free "COUSIN BREWSKI" pins to people simply asking for them as he usually did. Instead he handed out a few to the more jovial insiders of the group, and that never went over well with the others.
Tony Phillips out in right gave us the finger, that was always good for a laugh. Future skip Alan Trammell had a Hall of a day, going 3-4, with a home run, and Doofy Dan Gladden went 4-5.
I had "a reporter" autograph the scorecard, so even then they were lurking about trying to sniff out a story. I also wrote a quote from him - "just a matter of time." I wish I knew what he was talking about....till assigned seating? An alcohol ban? The Yankees in the playoffs? What???? Fu*k, I hate when I write things thinking they would make sense 17 years later.
Wade Boggs went 3-4, and I noted he was at .300 with just one more game to go. He finished the year at .302, sitting out the final afternoon (where Bernie Williams actually led off in his place) Jim Abbott started for the Yankees and pitched ok, but was tagged for a loss ending his nondescript 11-14 season. Future bullpen coach Rich Monteleone mopped it up. For a meaningless end of year affair, I am not seeing many unknowns in the lineups, even though the ever-mysterious Mike Humphries played left for the Yankees and went 0-3.
33,249 actually showed up for this game (or so they claim....that would severely drop the next day) and your umpires remained Ken Kaiser-roll, Mark Johnson, Jim McKean, and Vic Voltaggio.
LAST DAY - OCTOBER 3rd, 1993
Well, this was a wrap. I remarked it was quite cold - I have a handful of pics from that day and we were bundled up like Nanook of the North. I mentioned that on my ride in my train got stuck, and I ended up drinking the 6 pack I was carting up with me for sidewalk sips on the subway instead. I already had the 6-pack and was bringing it along cause the old "cant buy beer till noon" edict that ran afoul of us back in those olden days. Thank God I had it. I was not even late for the game, cause back then I would show by 9:30 for a 1:00PM start to get my drink on.
"Quite the insulting remark towards a gabby woman was not only snarled, but written on the card for posterity...I am pretty sure that sorta word does not appear on too many of these. We stayed away from sexist comedy, as there were plenty of women out there who were willing to throw a punch.
There were a few Tiger fans near the front of the empty bleachers for whatever reason - Christ knows what they were doing there, and we were letting them have it. We finally hollered to our buddy Tony Phillips in right "Tony, go back to Detroit and take the front row with you!" Phillips, as was his wont on this sort of occassion, broke into a dance for our entertainment.
Someone was out there "looking like a movie usher with that jacket." We sang the "lets go out to the lobby - and grab ourselves a snack" song for him a few dozen times. A beach ball actually found its way out there, and security actually chased it down after a merry chase. They usually dont get so directly involved in that sort of thing and let the drunks pop it on their own.
We spent the top of the second arguing about Don Mattingly...I dont know who was on what side, but he was a source of argument even then...I wonder if it was the old Puckett/Mattingly argument with different voices doing the arguing. On the old Bleacher Creature message board a Mattingly / Puckett Hall of Fame argument spanned a couple of hundred pages and a number of years.
One funny note was a boxseat scuffle that ended with a few people tumbling down a couple of rows. That was always funny. The amiable and bearded Captain Bob signed my scorecard yet again (geez, I hope I grew weary of this gimmick by 1994) with a nice "just have a good offseason" message. That was big for me back then, I was in awe of people like Bob.
Yankees ended up pinching one with a run in the 9th for a walk-off win. Mike Stanley was a fitting hero, capping off a fine season, stroking the game winning hit and plating pinch-runner Spike Owen, who came in after Jim Leyritz was plunked and removed with one out. Danny Tartabull was intentionally walked, and Stanley notched his single off of Tom Bolton. The beneficiary of this was Bobby Munoz, who actually stunned the crowd by tossing up a scoreless 2 innings for the win.
The announced crowd was 28,942, but there was nothing close to that inside the Stadium. In my pics you see us posing with a beautiful background of emtpy blue seats framing us completely. And your umpires were STILL Mark Johnson, Jim McKean, Vic Voltaggio, Ken Kaiser.
So that was that. I was basically just finding my place out there, still a newbie, and still keeping to myself a bit. I think I still thought Big-Nosed George of all people ran the place to some extent, and Queen Bee Tina was indeed the muscle. I had nothing but reverence for them, Captain Bob, Animal, Ali and his cowbell, Chico and his sketchy money pools, and the rest of the clowns festering about. My pack back then consisted of this guy Chris, who simply dropped off the Earth, Dennis who appears mysteriously every few years like a wraith, and a few others lost to memory. You just wait until the likes of Big Tone Capone, Gang Bang Steve, 41, Grover, Knoblauch, Metssuckballs, Bald Vinny, and Midget Mike and the like make their way out there, and on here.
Hope you enjoyed 1993....business is about to pick up!
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
October 1st, 1993 - Pop that mustard!
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Monday, August 23, 2010
September 22nd, 1993 - "To Hell with Donnie - I want McGwire"
September 22nd, 1993! Yankees host the Twins
Bad crowd, bad weather
Getting close to wrapping 1993. Moving on to late September, and the Twinkies are in town.
Nothing much to see here. I actually noted a new girl started at my job on the scorecard, as if that was big news, and mentioned there was a long discussion about my friend Chris' beer. It was noted that we spent the entire 7th inning "telling stupid jokes." So what else was new? Obviously not much was going on out there in the bleachers.
Someone was handing out "DON" signs before the game, with the old bullseye in place of the letter 0. I did not get one, and was pissed enough about it to note that on the scorecard. Somewhere in my vaunted archives I have a pic ripped out of one of the local newsrags with a gaggle of guys holding these home-run dartboards aloft in an otherwise empty area of the RF bleachers, but Im not one of them, cause no one gave me a sign.
By now we were trailing Toronto by 4 games, with but a week left in the season. "A sad way to end the season" was noted. "An empty place" was scrawled. "Thomas, I cant fu*king believe it" was on there too.
I did nab Cousin Brewski's autograph on here. For the unitiated, Brewski was a jolly beerman who would sing songs and otherwise pester the crowd while slinging his suds. When he became too much of a celebrity and started handing out pins that said "Cousin Brewski" on them, they moved him to selling other wares to cool him off. "Cousin Cotton Candy" does not sound as marketable.
See a mention on here that moments after mentioning Mike Gallego sucked he banged out a triple. Perhaps we should have talked about how much he sucked more often. And here is what may be the most controversial statement of all of 1993, and possibly up there with the most throughout my bleacher tenure....
"To Hell with Donnie....I want McGwire."
That was Animal that said that. That raucous drunkard. Ohhhh boy. I did not remember him saying that, but there it is, written on here for all to see. Scorecard doesnt lie.
5 more fans ran on the field that night...I dont know what the Hell was going on in late 1993, but this was getting ridiculous by this point. Even I was getting annoyed. After I had mentioned "3 people on field!!!" I popped an X underneath that and added "2 more!!!"
There was a home run thrown back, I did not realize that little tradition went back that far....a Pedro Munoz blast in the top of the 2nd which gave the Twins a 4-0 lead off of Scott "my last name is worth a lot of Scrabble points" Kamienieki. That lunkhead Kent Hrbek had led off that same inning with a bomb of his own, and we were simply tired of it by this point. I missed the Hrbek home run, someone had noted "Thomas was taking a piss" - good to know. Id have preferred "Thomas was buying beer"
Celebrity sighting of the night was "Malcolm X" standing for the National Anthem. And of course there was some of the obligatory Danny Tartabull grumbling, as I snarled, "how bout a solo home run for Tartabull....that would be typical."
There were only 2 "ww's" on here, one because I was distracted while "watching 2 kids joke fighting" and the other cause I was "getting a shoe wedgie" whatever the Hell that is.
Yankees lost this sleepy one 5-2....they were shut down by Kevin Tapani of all people. The win upped Tap's record to 10-15. It had been noted before the game that he "sucks this year." Well, he was good enough to shut down these Yankees. After the nondescript Carl Willis threw a scoreless 8th, we got to see that dick Rick Aguilera and his stupid beard close it off for the bad guys.
We also got to see one of Lee Smiths handful of appearances in a Yankee uniform, as he threw a scoreless top of the 9th and struck out Munoz, who was lustily booed due to the personal affront he commmited on us, homering like he did.
Other luminaries on hand were former Yankee and recent honoree Dave Winfield, who went 3-4 as the Twins DH, and Scott Stahoviak playing third. Chuck Knoblauch led off for the Twins, that pesky fu*k. Sadly, I dont see any throwing errors on his part anywhere on here.
On the Yankee side of things, Gallego led off the 8th with a home run to go with his nifty triple, but there was not much else going on with the sticks outside of Randy Velarde getting 2of the 6 Yankee hits.
I called the crowd ridiculously small, but the announced attendance on this bleak Wednesday night was a reasonable 25,128. Sounds like a lie. Your umpires were Mike Reilly, Rocky Roe, Dale Scott, and Dave Phillips, and even though the game was far from a wild affair it still managed to plod on for almost 3 hours.
Thanks for reading!
Bad crowd, bad weather
Getting close to wrapping 1993. Moving on to late September, and the Twinkies are in town.
Nothing much to see here. I actually noted a new girl started at my job on the scorecard, as if that was big news, and mentioned there was a long discussion about my friend Chris' beer. It was noted that we spent the entire 7th inning "telling stupid jokes." So what else was new? Obviously not much was going on out there in the bleachers.
Someone was handing out "DON" signs before the game, with the old bullseye in place of the letter 0. I did not get one, and was pissed enough about it to note that on the scorecard. Somewhere in my vaunted archives I have a pic ripped out of one of the local newsrags with a gaggle of guys holding these home-run dartboards aloft in an otherwise empty area of the RF bleachers, but Im not one of them, cause no one gave me a sign.
By now we were trailing Toronto by 4 games, with but a week left in the season. "A sad way to end the season" was noted. "An empty place" was scrawled. "Thomas, I cant fu*king believe it" was on there too.
I did nab Cousin Brewski's autograph on here. For the unitiated, Brewski was a jolly beerman who would sing songs and otherwise pester the crowd while slinging his suds. When he became too much of a celebrity and started handing out pins that said "Cousin Brewski" on them, they moved him to selling other wares to cool him off. "Cousin Cotton Candy" does not sound as marketable.
See a mention on here that moments after mentioning Mike Gallego sucked he banged out a triple. Perhaps we should have talked about how much he sucked more often. And here is what may be the most controversial statement of all of 1993, and possibly up there with the most throughout my bleacher tenure....
"To Hell with Donnie....I want McGwire."
That was Animal that said that. That raucous drunkard. Ohhhh boy. I did not remember him saying that, but there it is, written on here for all to see. Scorecard doesnt lie.
5 more fans ran on the field that night...I dont know what the Hell was going on in late 1993, but this was getting ridiculous by this point. Even I was getting annoyed. After I had mentioned "3 people on field!!!" I popped an X underneath that and added "2 more!!!"
There was a home run thrown back, I did not realize that little tradition went back that far....a Pedro Munoz blast in the top of the 2nd which gave the Twins a 4-0 lead off of Scott "my last name is worth a lot of Scrabble points" Kamienieki. That lunkhead Kent Hrbek had led off that same inning with a bomb of his own, and we were simply tired of it by this point. I missed the Hrbek home run, someone had noted "Thomas was taking a piss" - good to know. Id have preferred "Thomas was buying beer"
Celebrity sighting of the night was "Malcolm X" standing for the National Anthem. And of course there was some of the obligatory Danny Tartabull grumbling, as I snarled, "how bout a solo home run for Tartabull....that would be typical."
There were only 2 "ww's" on here, one because I was distracted while "watching 2 kids joke fighting" and the other cause I was "getting a shoe wedgie" whatever the Hell that is.
Yankees lost this sleepy one 5-2....they were shut down by Kevin Tapani of all people. The win upped Tap's record to 10-15. It had been noted before the game that he "sucks this year." Well, he was good enough to shut down these Yankees. After the nondescript Carl Willis threw a scoreless 8th, we got to see that dick Rick Aguilera and his stupid beard close it off for the bad guys.
We also got to see one of Lee Smiths handful of appearances in a Yankee uniform, as he threw a scoreless top of the 9th and struck out Munoz, who was lustily booed due to the personal affront he commmited on us, homering like he did.
Other luminaries on hand were former Yankee and recent honoree Dave Winfield, who went 3-4 as the Twins DH, and Scott Stahoviak playing third. Chuck Knoblauch led off for the Twins, that pesky fu*k. Sadly, I dont see any throwing errors on his part anywhere on here.
On the Yankee side of things, Gallego led off the 8th with a home run to go with his nifty triple, but there was not much else going on with the sticks outside of Randy Velarde getting 2of the 6 Yankee hits.
I called the crowd ridiculously small, but the announced attendance on this bleak Wednesday night was a reasonable 25,128. Sounds like a lie. Your umpires were Mike Reilly, Rocky Roe, Dale Scott, and Dave Phillips, and even though the game was far from a wild affair it still managed to plod on for almost 3 hours.
Thanks for reading!
Friday, August 20, 2010
The Annals of August 2001!
THE ANNALS OF AUGUST 2001
The FIRST Hawaiian Shirt Night! The LAST Dave Winfield Day!
"I love the Tom drum...whats your name again?"
Tuesday, August 14th, 2001 - Yankees vs. Tampa Bay
With Tampa Bay in town it was an easier ticket to get than a peeing in public one, and I have enough of those, so most of the regular crowd shuffled in. An old man was sitting next to me, making love to his tonic and gin.
Talk turned to the upcoming Hawaiin Shirt night, and where to pick up the offending outfits. Someone mentioned a magical bodega-ish sort of place where you could "get a Hawaiin shirt, a number 6 with white rice, and an umbrella all in the same trip" I decided I needed to visit this fantasyland, as Bad Mouth Larry horiffically warbled a croaking "Yo!!!!.....Beeeeernie!!!!!" to kick off the roll call, proving just how out of practice he was. "Someone shoot that old horse." we heard someone mutter after Larry's wretched display.
A pack of nerdy guys ambled up, prompting the always jolly Little Mike to yap, "finish your math problems later - find your seats now!" Larry stolled over to his little adversary Mike, extended his hand, and said as greeting, "what's up, can I squash you like a grape?"
It was the first inning and the crowd was already turning on Jeter in surly fashion for whatever reason. The prickly heat was probably getting to them. "Come on, pretty boy, get a hit!" Junior hollered. "Hey, sorry, you can't order champagne out there!!" Little Mike added.
Diggety Dan placidly sat eating creamy white ice cream out of a ridiculous little Yankee helmet cup. When this was pointed out to "Mr. Make It Happen" Phil, he snidely said with a wink and a grin, "That's not ice cream."
This soon became photo night for me at least, as I spent a high propensity of the game gazing through photos handed to me from Bald Ray, the new bride Lindsay, and Nicole of security-duty fame. Interestingly noticed that in Nicole's pics, I noticed the girls can pose jollily with the Toronto Blue Jay mascot in friendly international peace, but in contrast us guys riled up a guy in a cow suit so much he gives us a finger, or a hoof, every time we step to a Staten Island Yankee game . And even as I leafed through yet even more pictures of Ray in compromising positions with bottles of beer, Security Honcho "Honeymooner" Sean, Ralph Kramden lookalike extraordinaire, plodded up to confiscate a plastic horn from an overzealous, or drunk, fan near the top rows. Of course he was met with a crescendo of appeals to "play us a tune on it Sean!" but he beat a hasty retreat, crumpled horn in hand.
Meanwhile Grover was the life of the party. Between calling all his fellow white men "crackers" and "white boy" he pawed through his odd collection of Bazooka Joe comics with all the jokes in Israeli. Stupid things were going on above us on the scoreboard, as Fox News Channel's conservative talking head Bill O'Reilly was actually asking Bad News Bears Trivia questions up there. Following that, a Mickey Mantle tribute video was played, with the background music of "Hey Mickey!" from Toni Basil, whose sole claim to fame was making me very horny when I was 11 in her silly cheerleader costume. Very disrespectful. To top it off, bullpen stalwart and Texas native Randy Choate had to actually answer a dumb question about the Alamo from a fan with nothing else to do but send in questions about the Alamo to a guy who pitches mop-up for a living. I am not sure what Choate said in response, but it may have sounded like, "I did not shoot any Mexicans."
For some reason a USA! USA! chant started, prompting Grover, just looking to be on the other side of every issue to rankle others, to yell, "Boooo!!! We should have lost the Cold War!!!"
Meanwhile, out on the field, where rumor has it the reason we show up is being played out for all to see, a ball clanked off Clay Bellinger's glove, providing the birth of the "way to Bellinger it!" prop to errors. This went on to supercede the old "Thanks a lot, Knoblauch!" whenever a Yankee commited a boner on the field.
Junior was feeling vibrant, hopping up and down every time the count reached 2 strikes, which is like every batter if you really think about it. This popping up and down prompted us to dub him a "Jack-off in the box." A beefy blonde fan next to him, who looked a bit like Chris Jericho, Edge, Christian, Test, and HHH all at once was greeted with "way to be a generic blonde wrestler lookalike" by Muttssuckballs Marc. As all this was going on, the Yankees win, theeeeeeeee Yankees win!!!! (Geez, that is as annoying to type as it is to listen to, although winning does rock). Next game please.
Wednesday, August 15th, 20001 - Yankees vs. Tampa Bay
With also rans Tampa Bay still polluting our town, security figured there would be so little interest in the nights proceedings they only had one bleacher gate open to enter through. So I spent the better part of the first inning in line trying to get in and leafing through Raw Magazine, which is wrestling, not porno for once. The first thing I saw upon entering the Stadium was someone eating corn on the cob, so I figured this was going to be one of those nights.
15 year old Cactus James was running around annoying the public, with a thin mustache that looked like it was put on by eye liner. I told him to get some milk to cover it, and he could shave it off by having a cat lick the milk. Cactus was in rare form, arguing with a few latecomers and stolidly asserting his weight. (all 110 pounds of it)
It was bottle opener night, and of course me being the biggest alcoholic out there I someow managed to not get one. Even people who hand out cheap props at the gate don't want to encourage me, I guess. However, practically a dozen fans volunteered theirs to me as they apparently find me entertaining either drunk and sleeping or fighting the innocent, so rest assured, I can open Saranac bottles for life after that nights giveaway.
Diggety Dan, fresh off his ice cream helmet cup travesty the night before, was munching a pretzel with so much salt on it that I believe it was Phil that said the pillars of salt on it would come in handy to "in the event of snow."
A fan booed as David Justice was intentionally walked in the 3rd, explaining it away by saying "any man who beats Halle Berry is ok with me."
This game was a romp, and the guy in the music booth upstairs was in such a subsequent good mood he dusted off and played "My Sharona" which of course became "My Bologna" in a spontaneous tribute to songster maven Weird Al. Although we noticed the chick factor was "down 200% from last night" while the little kid factor was "up 500%" we made due. As I shared pleasantries with Bald Vinny near the end of the Yank spank, a fan of mine came over for a picture together and said, "You're the best, I'm a big fan of the Tom drum...what's your name again?" No joke.
A guy in a referee type shirt then leaned in from the loge seats to see what was going on, and heard a cacophony of "Time out!" calls and signals for holding and false starts. Well, that seems to be all on that game. Forward march.
Friday, August 17th, 2001 - Hawaiin Shirt Night (T. Bay)
Well, it was weeks in the planning, but the fruits of our labor finally came to fruition, as Hawaiin Shirt night commenced in Section 39. Most guys thought it was a gag on them all along, and they would arrive to be the only one showing up and looking like an ass, only to pull up to the gates of Yancey Park to see a dozen guys, beer in bags, bedecked in the ugliest collection of shirts since the 1970's era Houston Astros. Palm trees, tropical drinks, boats, sand dunes. But for some reason 41's shirt had cars on it. Could have been worse, could have been KISS on there. Walkman John, missing the point, had an Oriental theme, albeit colorful. Bald Ray was wearing a mesh Hawaiin shirt, I had never even heard of such a thing. "Fat Rak" Scott topped all, with a Hawaiin colored shirt with women playing golf on it. In one of the more blatant oddites, Phil and "I'm not Israeli" Joe had the SAME SHIRT ON, and anyone who went in to buy one of these and saw how many hundreds were on every rack knows how strange a fact that really is. The fact these two had no use for one another made it even more amusing.
Strolling in that night we noticed Security Codger Old Man 200 had been demoted, as his stupid security baseball cap now has the number 175 on it. "Way to slide 25 spots" we hollered in greeting. He got me back an inning later, accusing me of "misdirecting" people who could not find thier seats, only to spark a snippy exchange with Tina the Queen, who was in fine form and fighting with everyone like in the old days. Crazy Dave roamed around passing out pictures, so I dubbed him "Johnny Photoseed."
Just about 30 Creatures went with the theme, complete with Ignorant Evan handing out lei's and Metssuckballs waving around the Tiki that F'd with the Brady Bunch on those Hawaiin episodes of lore. Bald Vinny proudly announced he had his hula girl boxers on and showed them proudly on the 4 train out of there.
Basically, according to my notes, these names will go down for posterities sake as participating...Uptown Mike, Phil, Walkman John, Little Mike, Big Tone Capone, Bald Ray, Bald Vinny, Cowbell Man Milton, 41, Diggety Dan, the future-Navy Tommy, 2 guys I do not really know, me, Justin, Metssuckballs, Cuban Monica, Felix, Fat Rak and his friend Paul, Blonde Rachel, Ignorant Evan, Water Girl Debbie, X-pac Kenny, Kwik, "I am not Israeli" Joe, Stacey, my future sister-in-law Laura, and Frankie Vybe. Junior missed the boat, despite the fact that he seems to wear a Hawaiin shirt every other day he shows up. Donald also went un-Hawaiin, but I was too afraid to ask him why. And of course, Mike Donahuge was not there even though this was the brainchild of he and I. Ironically enough he was in Florida on a beach (posing for pictures from wayward whale watchers, most like) but the show must go on and without him, it did, though it was pretty much his idea in the first place.
The shirts themselves went over as expected, they were met with disgust. I went over in 37 to rap with chicks, and the concensus over in that section was that Little Mike had the worst shirt, some sort of red-based analogram of putridity. My shirt was an orange hue, but going in I had a goal, I wanted natives on my shirt. Along with the requisite boats and oceans, my shirt featured some native folk climbing trees for no reason. Sad to say, these were an ugly lot of natives, the same color as the coconuts they held aloft. One native was sitting behind a mound of coconuts, which looked more like a drum set. Wounded have sounded great with the horn Honeymooner Sean destroyed earlier in the homestand. People immediatly deemed the shirt "racist" saying they may have well just put cotton on it when they made the shirt.
Late in the game the girls in 37 pointed out that one of the guys on a boat in my shirt had a strange protrusion extending from his shadowed self, and upon closer inspection, yes - I must admit I had a Hawaiin shirt on featuring a guy on a sailboat seemingly with a rampant boner.
The game was nondescript despite the fact that in a non-drinking phase I killed off 6 Gatorades and Cowbell clank Milton ushered in the return of the RKB 2000 ("Rally Killing Bell 2000 as dubbed by Gang Bang Steve) as every time he clanked on this night we rapped into a double play. Oh, also there was an Eddie Munster lookalike who did a rousing version of the Cotton Eye Joe dance, but that was it.
The postgame was even more amusing, as Diggety Dan was drunk and in an inviting mood. He coaxed a score of us down to his place to "swim in his pool" and "drink a lot." Dan was way ahead of us even still at the Stadium, swigging beer and letting it cascade down his chest in his best "Stone Cold Steve Austin" impersonation, which was a pretty bad one.
The ride down on the 4 was priceless, mainly cause I was sober and I remember it. First there was a sign on the train from the Pork Board (I would love to chair THOSE meetings) with the hokey slogan "I scream, you scream, we all scream for pork loins." - Um, ok. Sure we do.
Bald Vinny, in his zest to make a needless point whomped his head on a subway pole, only to be followed by Dan doing the same thing moments later. Basically once down to his apartment things got out of hand with the likes of Pops and Milton diving on top of one another and myself in the blowup pool, beer and gatorade being dumped in the cloudy seas of water, and near fisticuffs between the always bombastic "Big Tone Capone" Anthony G and everyone else.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 18 - Yankees vs. Mariners
Dave Winfield Day. Ceremony was to be as expected, with Queen Bee Tina breaking into tears twice, and the pompous John Sterling using such flowery verbiage as "donned the pinstripes", "blossomed", and "exemplary."
We sat through the ceremonies, Teddy and I side by side complaining about everything in the world, and watched Don Mattingly get an ovation twice as loud as Big Daves on his own day. Cuban Monica scored an autograph as the Don waited down in the ramp to drive a gift car to the plate, which I offered to trade a dance with me for. Needless to say, it is still her ball. "They should have held this ceremony in May." Bad Mouth Larry quipped, scoring off the infamous Steinbrenner "Mr. May" tag. Of course Winfield kissed pinstriped Yankee ass during the speech, but as many rightfully grumbled he "still went into the Hall as a Padre."
The Ichiro Suzuki jokes abounded in fine fashion. The Mike who sits down near the front, in retort to a Japanese homosexual tag hollered off of a translation sheet we printed off the computer, claimed Ichiro could not be gay as he was a "real man's lady." I bought out my old line saying that the worst thing about Ichiro manning right field is that every time an inning ends he leaves a menu behind.
After getting kudos for my S.O.D. shirt from Bald Vinny (Milano Mosh for life) I settled in for the ongoing, and ultimately boring, ceremony. Winfield got some dumb gifts, including a treadmill and a pogo stick for his kid. I immediatly made a note to self to go pogo stick shopping. Capone was down on the rail chatting up a cop for some reason, prompting Bald Ray to hop up and yell, "Hey, get off his blackjack!!" Business as usual in 39.
Teddy was leading rollcall today, and it went without incident until we made our way to third base, and he boomed out a bombastic "Scott Brosius!" instead of a tepid "Clay Bellinger!" with Clay manning the sack and Brosius riding pine. Got to love the rollcall blooper.
Bad Mouth Larry came down to join Angry Teddy and I in complaining about everything, bedecked in a Gran Teton shirt. "I have a Gran Teton hat at home, too." he said with unabashed glee and oddly enough no shame. At this moment an Oriental woman (oops, wait, RUGS are Oriental, PEOPLE are Asian...)swooped up and ushered him out of his seat, and it all happened so fast I told him he was "Pearl Harbored."
Joe Torre was introduced, which must have thrilled him to death cause there were cameras and a microphone on hand, to hand Winfield some sort of useless proclomation, prompting a bored fan who had enough of it to boo. Tina went bezerk, hopping up to physically threaten the man, adding the famous quip, "I LIKE to get arrested!" This harried attack actually prompted to the guy to cheer the next guy introduced, Bobby Murcer, like he was Jesus Christ making bread rain from the sky, just to escape her rage. At this point, I think he would have popped for Dion James, Dale Mohorcic, or Wayne Tolleson. But maybe not Tucker Ashford.
Tina was in fine form, after some Japanese chick hollered out that Ichiro was God she snapped "God is not Japanese!!" "No, he's black." someone retorted from the back, prompting yet someone else to question wether or not God is unemployed then.
Behind us a string of rowdies on stop number 1 of a frenetic Bachelor Party were looking in vain for a strip club to check out later, being Mayor and resident party pooper Rudy G closed them all and I know all about it. Someone mentioned the village, which oddly provoked a strangely bitter Junior to grumble that there are "a lot of faggots in the Village." These guys were a Hell of a lot of fun, and promised to make the Stadium an annual visit, as they enjoyed our mix of supreme fandom and theatrical carnivality. (EDITORS NOTE 10 years later - they were never seen again)
Soon enough, as I went down the aisle to wish Nicole a Happy Birthday and ask her to pop out of a cake for us, a USA USA chant sparked up due to Ichiro's annoying presence on the field. What was funny about this one was a bunch of the Japanese in attendance merrily chanted along, in between taking pictures and planning on driving badly later of course.
This is the annoying game that saw us fall behind 7-1 by the 2nd inning, prompting a madcap argument between Stat Man and Tina, which had more comedic value than even the "Cripple Fight" on South Park. Of course we came back to pull within 7-6, only to lose anyway.
I got to do a wild Rocky reenactment, and even ended up hurting my arm doing it, throwing shadow boxes at Bald Ray's outstretched hands for the sake of the scoreboard cam. Only I can hurt my arm in a bit that really consists of running up stairs and being doused with literal bucketloads of water.
The highlight of the Rocky dance to me was not the mention on Fox 5, or the Sheriff Tom Groupies I met out on River Avenue after the game, but the fact that the handicapped section was so into the bit, God Bless Them, that they all wheeled over to the stairs to see better and actually got a couple of wheelchairs stuck together that I had to help pull apart. It was then I went to slap someone 5 down there only to see there was a big bandage wrap on what looked to be a seriously burned hand. Being the Sheriff, he let me sorta slap anyway.
Well, that is all. I am going now to contemplate who actually looks up the word dictionary in the dictionary and how do they know to do it, and who exactly cuts a barbers hair. Keep following the antics of all your friends from Section 39 here on The Tom Drum! Now go drink something.
The FIRST Hawaiian Shirt Night! The LAST Dave Winfield Day!
"I love the Tom drum...whats your name again?"
Tuesday, August 14th, 2001 - Yankees vs. Tampa Bay
With Tampa Bay in town it was an easier ticket to get than a peeing in public one, and I have enough of those, so most of the regular crowd shuffled in. An old man was sitting next to me, making love to his tonic and gin.
Talk turned to the upcoming Hawaiin Shirt night, and where to pick up the offending outfits. Someone mentioned a magical bodega-ish sort of place where you could "get a Hawaiin shirt, a number 6 with white rice, and an umbrella all in the same trip" I decided I needed to visit this fantasyland, as Bad Mouth Larry horiffically warbled a croaking "Yo!!!!.....Beeeeernie!!!!!" to kick off the roll call, proving just how out of practice he was. "Someone shoot that old horse." we heard someone mutter after Larry's wretched display.
A pack of nerdy guys ambled up, prompting the always jolly Little Mike to yap, "finish your math problems later - find your seats now!" Larry stolled over to his little adversary Mike, extended his hand, and said as greeting, "what's up, can I squash you like a grape?"
It was the first inning and the crowd was already turning on Jeter in surly fashion for whatever reason. The prickly heat was probably getting to them. "Come on, pretty boy, get a hit!" Junior hollered. "Hey, sorry, you can't order champagne out there!!" Little Mike added.
Diggety Dan placidly sat eating creamy white ice cream out of a ridiculous little Yankee helmet cup. When this was pointed out to "Mr. Make It Happen" Phil, he snidely said with a wink and a grin, "That's not ice cream."
This soon became photo night for me at least, as I spent a high propensity of the game gazing through photos handed to me from Bald Ray, the new bride Lindsay, and Nicole of security-duty fame. Interestingly noticed that in Nicole's pics, I noticed the girls can pose jollily with the Toronto Blue Jay mascot in friendly international peace, but in contrast us guys riled up a guy in a cow suit so much he gives us a finger, or a hoof, every time we step to a Staten Island Yankee game . And even as I leafed through yet even more pictures of Ray in compromising positions with bottles of beer, Security Honcho "Honeymooner" Sean, Ralph Kramden lookalike extraordinaire, plodded up to confiscate a plastic horn from an overzealous, or drunk, fan near the top rows. Of course he was met with a crescendo of appeals to "play us a tune on it Sean!" but he beat a hasty retreat, crumpled horn in hand.
Meanwhile Grover was the life of the party. Between calling all his fellow white men "crackers" and "white boy" he pawed through his odd collection of Bazooka Joe comics with all the jokes in Israeli. Stupid things were going on above us on the scoreboard, as Fox News Channel's conservative talking head Bill O'Reilly was actually asking Bad News Bears Trivia questions up there. Following that, a Mickey Mantle tribute video was played, with the background music of "Hey Mickey!" from Toni Basil, whose sole claim to fame was making me very horny when I was 11 in her silly cheerleader costume. Very disrespectful. To top it off, bullpen stalwart and Texas native Randy Choate had to actually answer a dumb question about the Alamo from a fan with nothing else to do but send in questions about the Alamo to a guy who pitches mop-up for a living. I am not sure what Choate said in response, but it may have sounded like, "I did not shoot any Mexicans."
For some reason a USA! USA! chant started, prompting Grover, just looking to be on the other side of every issue to rankle others, to yell, "Boooo!!! We should have lost the Cold War!!!"
Meanwhile, out on the field, where rumor has it the reason we show up is being played out for all to see, a ball clanked off Clay Bellinger's glove, providing the birth of the "way to Bellinger it!" prop to errors. This went on to supercede the old "Thanks a lot, Knoblauch!" whenever a Yankee commited a boner on the field.
Junior was feeling vibrant, hopping up and down every time the count reached 2 strikes, which is like every batter if you really think about it. This popping up and down prompted us to dub him a "Jack-off in the box." A beefy blonde fan next to him, who looked a bit like Chris Jericho, Edge, Christian, Test, and HHH all at once was greeted with "way to be a generic blonde wrestler lookalike" by Muttssuckballs Marc. As all this was going on, the Yankees win, theeeeeeeee Yankees win!!!! (Geez, that is as annoying to type as it is to listen to, although winning does rock). Next game please.
Wednesday, August 15th, 20001 - Yankees vs. Tampa Bay
With also rans Tampa Bay still polluting our town, security figured there would be so little interest in the nights proceedings they only had one bleacher gate open to enter through. So I spent the better part of the first inning in line trying to get in and leafing through Raw Magazine, which is wrestling, not porno for once. The first thing I saw upon entering the Stadium was someone eating corn on the cob, so I figured this was going to be one of those nights.
15 year old Cactus James was running around annoying the public, with a thin mustache that looked like it was put on by eye liner. I told him to get some milk to cover it, and he could shave it off by having a cat lick the milk. Cactus was in rare form, arguing with a few latecomers and stolidly asserting his weight. (all 110 pounds of it)
It was bottle opener night, and of course me being the biggest alcoholic out there I someow managed to not get one. Even people who hand out cheap props at the gate don't want to encourage me, I guess. However, practically a dozen fans volunteered theirs to me as they apparently find me entertaining either drunk and sleeping or fighting the innocent, so rest assured, I can open Saranac bottles for life after that nights giveaway.
Diggety Dan, fresh off his ice cream helmet cup travesty the night before, was munching a pretzel with so much salt on it that I believe it was Phil that said the pillars of salt on it would come in handy to "in the event of snow."
A fan booed as David Justice was intentionally walked in the 3rd, explaining it away by saying "any man who beats Halle Berry is ok with me."
This game was a romp, and the guy in the music booth upstairs was in such a subsequent good mood he dusted off and played "My Sharona" which of course became "My Bologna" in a spontaneous tribute to songster maven Weird Al. Although we noticed the chick factor was "down 200% from last night" while the little kid factor was "up 500%" we made due. As I shared pleasantries with Bald Vinny near the end of the Yank spank, a fan of mine came over for a picture together and said, "You're the best, I'm a big fan of the Tom drum...what's your name again?" No joke.
A guy in a referee type shirt then leaned in from the loge seats to see what was going on, and heard a cacophony of "Time out!" calls and signals for holding and false starts. Well, that seems to be all on that game. Forward march.
Friday, August 17th, 2001 - Hawaiin Shirt Night (T. Bay)
Well, it was weeks in the planning, but the fruits of our labor finally came to fruition, as Hawaiin Shirt night commenced in Section 39. Most guys thought it was a gag on them all along, and they would arrive to be the only one showing up and looking like an ass, only to pull up to the gates of Yancey Park to see a dozen guys, beer in bags, bedecked in the ugliest collection of shirts since the 1970's era Houston Astros. Palm trees, tropical drinks, boats, sand dunes. But for some reason 41's shirt had cars on it. Could have been worse, could have been KISS on there. Walkman John, missing the point, had an Oriental theme, albeit colorful. Bald Ray was wearing a mesh Hawaiin shirt, I had never even heard of such a thing. "Fat Rak" Scott topped all, with a Hawaiin colored shirt with women playing golf on it. In one of the more blatant oddites, Phil and "I'm not Israeli" Joe had the SAME SHIRT ON, and anyone who went in to buy one of these and saw how many hundreds were on every rack knows how strange a fact that really is. The fact these two had no use for one another made it even more amusing.
Strolling in that night we noticed Security Codger Old Man 200 had been demoted, as his stupid security baseball cap now has the number 175 on it. "Way to slide 25 spots" we hollered in greeting. He got me back an inning later, accusing me of "misdirecting" people who could not find thier seats, only to spark a snippy exchange with Tina the Queen, who was in fine form and fighting with everyone like in the old days. Crazy Dave roamed around passing out pictures, so I dubbed him "Johnny Photoseed."
Just about 30 Creatures went with the theme, complete with Ignorant Evan handing out lei's and Metssuckballs waving around the Tiki that F'd with the Brady Bunch on those Hawaiin episodes of lore. Bald Vinny proudly announced he had his hula girl boxers on and showed them proudly on the 4 train out of there.
Basically, according to my notes, these names will go down for posterities sake as participating...Uptown Mike, Phil, Walkman John, Little Mike, Big Tone Capone, Bald Ray, Bald Vinny, Cowbell Man Milton, 41, Diggety Dan, the future-Navy Tommy, 2 guys I do not really know, me, Justin, Metssuckballs, Cuban Monica, Felix, Fat Rak and his friend Paul, Blonde Rachel, Ignorant Evan, Water Girl Debbie, X-pac Kenny, Kwik, "I am not Israeli" Joe, Stacey, my future sister-in-law Laura, and Frankie Vybe. Junior missed the boat, despite the fact that he seems to wear a Hawaiin shirt every other day he shows up. Donald also went un-Hawaiin, but I was too afraid to ask him why. And of course, Mike Donahuge was not there even though this was the brainchild of he and I. Ironically enough he was in Florida on a beach (posing for pictures from wayward whale watchers, most like) but the show must go on and without him, it did, though it was pretty much his idea in the first place.
The shirts themselves went over as expected, they were met with disgust. I went over in 37 to rap with chicks, and the concensus over in that section was that Little Mike had the worst shirt, some sort of red-based analogram of putridity. My shirt was an orange hue, but going in I had a goal, I wanted natives on my shirt. Along with the requisite boats and oceans, my shirt featured some native folk climbing trees for no reason. Sad to say, these were an ugly lot of natives, the same color as the coconuts they held aloft. One native was sitting behind a mound of coconuts, which looked more like a drum set. Wounded have sounded great with the horn Honeymooner Sean destroyed earlier in the homestand. People immediatly deemed the shirt "racist" saying they may have well just put cotton on it when they made the shirt.
Late in the game the girls in 37 pointed out that one of the guys on a boat in my shirt had a strange protrusion extending from his shadowed self, and upon closer inspection, yes - I must admit I had a Hawaiin shirt on featuring a guy on a sailboat seemingly with a rampant boner.
The game was nondescript despite the fact that in a non-drinking phase I killed off 6 Gatorades and Cowbell clank Milton ushered in the return of the RKB 2000 ("Rally Killing Bell 2000 as dubbed by Gang Bang Steve) as every time he clanked on this night we rapped into a double play. Oh, also there was an Eddie Munster lookalike who did a rousing version of the Cotton Eye Joe dance, but that was it.
The postgame was even more amusing, as Diggety Dan was drunk and in an inviting mood. He coaxed a score of us down to his place to "swim in his pool" and "drink a lot." Dan was way ahead of us even still at the Stadium, swigging beer and letting it cascade down his chest in his best "Stone Cold Steve Austin" impersonation, which was a pretty bad one.
The ride down on the 4 was priceless, mainly cause I was sober and I remember it. First there was a sign on the train from the Pork Board (I would love to chair THOSE meetings) with the hokey slogan "I scream, you scream, we all scream for pork loins." - Um, ok. Sure we do.
Bald Vinny, in his zest to make a needless point whomped his head on a subway pole, only to be followed by Dan doing the same thing moments later. Basically once down to his apartment things got out of hand with the likes of Pops and Milton diving on top of one another and myself in the blowup pool, beer and gatorade being dumped in the cloudy seas of water, and near fisticuffs between the always bombastic "Big Tone Capone" Anthony G and everyone else.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 18 - Yankees vs. Mariners
Dave Winfield Day. Ceremony was to be as expected, with Queen Bee Tina breaking into tears twice, and the pompous John Sterling using such flowery verbiage as "donned the pinstripes", "blossomed", and "exemplary."
We sat through the ceremonies, Teddy and I side by side complaining about everything in the world, and watched Don Mattingly get an ovation twice as loud as Big Daves on his own day. Cuban Monica scored an autograph as the Don waited down in the ramp to drive a gift car to the plate, which I offered to trade a dance with me for. Needless to say, it is still her ball. "They should have held this ceremony in May." Bad Mouth Larry quipped, scoring off the infamous Steinbrenner "Mr. May" tag. Of course Winfield kissed pinstriped Yankee ass during the speech, but as many rightfully grumbled he "still went into the Hall as a Padre."
The Ichiro Suzuki jokes abounded in fine fashion. The Mike who sits down near the front, in retort to a Japanese homosexual tag hollered off of a translation sheet we printed off the computer, claimed Ichiro could not be gay as he was a "real man's lady." I bought out my old line saying that the worst thing about Ichiro manning right field is that every time an inning ends he leaves a menu behind.
After getting kudos for my S.O.D. shirt from Bald Vinny (Milano Mosh for life) I settled in for the ongoing, and ultimately boring, ceremony. Winfield got some dumb gifts, including a treadmill and a pogo stick for his kid. I immediatly made a note to self to go pogo stick shopping. Capone was down on the rail chatting up a cop for some reason, prompting Bald Ray to hop up and yell, "Hey, get off his blackjack!!" Business as usual in 39.
Teddy was leading rollcall today, and it went without incident until we made our way to third base, and he boomed out a bombastic "Scott Brosius!" instead of a tepid "Clay Bellinger!" with Clay manning the sack and Brosius riding pine. Got to love the rollcall blooper.
Bad Mouth Larry came down to join Angry Teddy and I in complaining about everything, bedecked in a Gran Teton shirt. "I have a Gran Teton hat at home, too." he said with unabashed glee and oddly enough no shame. At this moment an Oriental woman (oops, wait, RUGS are Oriental, PEOPLE are Asian...)swooped up and ushered him out of his seat, and it all happened so fast I told him he was "Pearl Harbored."
Joe Torre was introduced, which must have thrilled him to death cause there were cameras and a microphone on hand, to hand Winfield some sort of useless proclomation, prompting a bored fan who had enough of it to boo. Tina went bezerk, hopping up to physically threaten the man, adding the famous quip, "I LIKE to get arrested!" This harried attack actually prompted to the guy to cheer the next guy introduced, Bobby Murcer, like he was Jesus Christ making bread rain from the sky, just to escape her rage. At this point, I think he would have popped for Dion James, Dale Mohorcic, or Wayne Tolleson. But maybe not Tucker Ashford.
Tina was in fine form, after some Japanese chick hollered out that Ichiro was God she snapped "God is not Japanese!!" "No, he's black." someone retorted from the back, prompting yet someone else to question wether or not God is unemployed then.
Behind us a string of rowdies on stop number 1 of a frenetic Bachelor Party were looking in vain for a strip club to check out later, being Mayor and resident party pooper Rudy G closed them all and I know all about it. Someone mentioned the village, which oddly provoked a strangely bitter Junior to grumble that there are "a lot of faggots in the Village." These guys were a Hell of a lot of fun, and promised to make the Stadium an annual visit, as they enjoyed our mix of supreme fandom and theatrical carnivality. (EDITORS NOTE 10 years later - they were never seen again)
Soon enough, as I went down the aisle to wish Nicole a Happy Birthday and ask her to pop out of a cake for us, a USA USA chant sparked up due to Ichiro's annoying presence on the field. What was funny about this one was a bunch of the Japanese in attendance merrily chanted along, in between taking pictures and planning on driving badly later of course.
This is the annoying game that saw us fall behind 7-1 by the 2nd inning, prompting a madcap argument between Stat Man and Tina, which had more comedic value than even the "Cripple Fight" on South Park. Of course we came back to pull within 7-6, only to lose anyway.
I got to do a wild Rocky reenactment, and even ended up hurting my arm doing it, throwing shadow boxes at Bald Ray's outstretched hands for the sake of the scoreboard cam. Only I can hurt my arm in a bit that really consists of running up stairs and being doused with literal bucketloads of water.
The highlight of the Rocky dance to me was not the mention on Fox 5, or the Sheriff Tom Groupies I met out on River Avenue after the game, but the fact that the handicapped section was so into the bit, God Bless Them, that they all wheeled over to the stairs to see better and actually got a couple of wheelchairs stuck together that I had to help pull apart. It was then I went to slap someone 5 down there only to see there was a big bandage wrap on what looked to be a seriously burned hand. Being the Sheriff, he let me sorta slap anyway.
Well, that is all. I am going now to contemplate who actually looks up the word dictionary in the dictionary and how do they know to do it, and who exactly cuts a barbers hair. Keep following the antics of all your friends from Section 39 here on The Tom Drum! Now go drink something.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
September 19th, 1993 - "The game is NOT over"
September 19th, 1993 - Yankees Host Boston
"The game is NOT over."
A game not only saved for posterity in my scorebook journal, but hanging on my wall, over my couch, for years until a fall shattered the glass frame. But it will be back up! A wonderful panaromic Stadium shot that I picked up a few years later, and it wasnt until I did some Holmesian deduction did I realize it was indeed this game I had attended in the photographic vista. And a "historical one" to boot, as these things go.
The shot is taken from along the first base line, taking in the field, the outfield, our bleacher lair...I snagged this in the mid-90s when I worked for a poster and framing company. It was not dated, but due dilligance, checking my scorecard against the looming scoreboard in the background told me this was the game. I have since confirmed this information in an ad for the panorama.
Anyway, the card is a mess. Not only was it a rainy day, for some reason I kept score with a RED MARKER. There seem to be zero games before, and none since, where I did something so outlandish as keep score with a red marker or pen. Though, sadly, red has appeared on some archaic scorecards in the form of being blood. The rain made the red ink run all over, there are smudges everywhere - its a real mess. But it is striking, and easy to find when I want to leaf through and show it and point at my framed picture up there. I have considered framing this scorecard and hanging it next to the panaroma, but have not gone through with it yet. Too busy drinking.
Sox scored 2 in the first inning, pretty much bringing on the rain. These games started at 3 on these Saturdays - the good old game of the week - and I ermarked "rain delay" from 3:18 through 4:22. The picture above my couch has 4:30 on the clock, top of the second, with Boston's Bob Zupcic at the plate, Jimmy Key on the mound. Zupcic ended up tripling in the at-bat, bringing more rain in the form of boos.
Someone wrote the attendance at the top, 55,672 (about as big a crowd as you can get - sure the Yankees were thrilled at the extra concessions during the early rain delay), and that crowd was earmarked as "45,672 Yankee fans, 10,000 assholes." Red Sox fans were all over, including a "gang of morons" in the bleachers with us.
"Big Ass Umbrella Confusion" was written. These were the days when umbrellas were allowed in...or could this have been an umbrella day that actually saw rain? An annoyance was umbrella day on a 95 degree scorcher, when umbrellas would pop open to be used as parasols. Soon they were handed out after the game, as people were more likely to use them as weapons or projectiles as anything.
More jokes that make no sense, or are not funny, on here. "Its Godzilla!" is one. Must have been someone of Asian persuasion out there, cause I also see "Yokozuna sucks!" on here. Cheap humor yes, but we were young and unpolished. "Hey, didnt we blow you up 50 years ago?" was the obligatory offensive comment of the game.
A bleacher virgin asked "how come there are no fights in the bleachers" and we answered "we used them up during the Blue Jay series." But later on, with an arrow pointing to the 8th, there is record of "a scuffle out here."
In the very first inning, with Tim Naehring (who actually went on to run some teams farm system, I forgot which) on first, Mo Vaughn tried to walk with 3 balls on him. We hooted and laughed as he was called back, and called him names. He pretty much shut us up with a 2 run bomb right afterwords. "Tries to walk with 3 balls...would have been preferred" was hastily jotted down as the ball clanged around in the seats and Vaughn (now quite a NYC real estate magnate) lumbering around the bases.
"Where's Mel Hall when you need him" someone wrote during the game, while the Yankees trailed. If that was asked today, someone could rightfully answer "Jail." The card was passed around like a sorority sister, I wrote that everyone took a turn. I even marked down when I kept score....I kept the bottom 3rd, all of the 4th, top of the 8th, and the 9th. Someone named Chris kept the first 2 1/2 innings. Sadly, these were the days where not everyone had a colorful nickname.
"The dykes dont douche" someone scrawled. I remarked that someone "threw money" and even drew a $ with two squiggly lines off of it, like flying money. I later stole this trick, when I was mad or called cheap, I would throw money around in exasperation or rage.
"This pennant race interferes with the Gang Bang" someone groused, cause by then our silly ditties were rendered not as important. When it looked like the Yankees were going to lose, "lets go home and break some shit" was jotted. Meanwhile, with the Yankees chipping away original Cowbell clanker Ali sat there peacefully, not playing the bell, and someone bellowed in his direction, "um, Ali, this is what you call a rally."
When it did rain, it really rained. A heavy downpour. Gorilla Monsoonish conditions. I pull the card from the protective sleeve in my binder and feel a decades worth of murk in it.
The Sox had a 3-0 lead heading into the 7th inning, behind rook Nate Minchey, who had only 5 starts all year and 15 in quite the nondescript career. Minchey came out after giving up a leadoff poke to Paul O'Neill in the 7th and a Matt Nokes single, making way for one Ken Ryan.
Ryan and good old Tony Fossas cleaned up, then handed it over to Greg Harris for the 9th, the Yankees down 3-1. Four hits and 3 runs later, the Yankees win the game!
As described earlier, we all thought the last out was made, but a fan found it a good time to run onto the field. The umpire claimed time was called even though the ball was popped up for the proverbial home run in the silo, and caught for what we thought was the final out. While we threw our garbage around in resignation and snarled epitaphs, the Godlike voice of Bob Sheppard rang through the misty evening....."the game is NOT over...."
Here was Whalerfans description, from a Bleacher Creature message board a decade or so later....
"The Yankees could never get that fu-k Scott Fletcher out. And if I remember correctly, the Yanks won a game once vs. the Sox when a fan ran out on the field while Mike Stanley was making the final out. The ump called time, Stanley got a hit and Donnie Baseball got the GW single. It might've been 93 or 94. Not sure, though.
And we ended up winning. One of THE FIRST magic moments I was out there for. I remember on the subway ride out of there turning to whoever and saying "that is something I will never forget."
Thank you, Whalerfan. As for me, 17 years later here I am typing about it, soon to be on my couch underneath that picture, beer in hand, sardonic grin on my visage. Take that, Bosux! The game is not over, bitch!
Your arbiters for this wild affair were Drew Coble, the late and lamented Durwood Merrill, John Hirschbeck, and Tim Welke. The gametime was 3:29, and you can tack on that rain delay too while you're at it.
Thanks for reading!
"The game is NOT over."
A game not only saved for posterity in my scorebook journal, but hanging on my wall, over my couch, for years until a fall shattered the glass frame. But it will be back up! A wonderful panaromic Stadium shot that I picked up a few years later, and it wasnt until I did some Holmesian deduction did I realize it was indeed this game I had attended in the photographic vista. And a "historical one" to boot, as these things go.
The shot is taken from along the first base line, taking in the field, the outfield, our bleacher lair...I snagged this in the mid-90s when I worked for a poster and framing company. It was not dated, but due dilligance, checking my scorecard against the looming scoreboard in the background told me this was the game. I have since confirmed this information in an ad for the panorama.
Anyway, the card is a mess. Not only was it a rainy day, for some reason I kept score with a RED MARKER. There seem to be zero games before, and none since, where I did something so outlandish as keep score with a red marker or pen. Though, sadly, red has appeared on some archaic scorecards in the form of being blood. The rain made the red ink run all over, there are smudges everywhere - its a real mess. But it is striking, and easy to find when I want to leaf through and show it and point at my framed picture up there. I have considered framing this scorecard and hanging it next to the panaroma, but have not gone through with it yet. Too busy drinking.
Sox scored 2 in the first inning, pretty much bringing on the rain. These games started at 3 on these Saturdays - the good old game of the week - and I ermarked "rain delay" from 3:18 through 4:22. The picture above my couch has 4:30 on the clock, top of the second, with Boston's Bob Zupcic at the plate, Jimmy Key on the mound. Zupcic ended up tripling in the at-bat, bringing more rain in the form of boos.
Someone wrote the attendance at the top, 55,672 (about as big a crowd as you can get - sure the Yankees were thrilled at the extra concessions during the early rain delay), and that crowd was earmarked as "45,672 Yankee fans, 10,000 assholes." Red Sox fans were all over, including a "gang of morons" in the bleachers with us.
"Big Ass Umbrella Confusion" was written. These were the days when umbrellas were allowed in...or could this have been an umbrella day that actually saw rain? An annoyance was umbrella day on a 95 degree scorcher, when umbrellas would pop open to be used as parasols. Soon they were handed out after the game, as people were more likely to use them as weapons or projectiles as anything.
More jokes that make no sense, or are not funny, on here. "Its Godzilla!" is one. Must have been someone of Asian persuasion out there, cause I also see "Yokozuna sucks!" on here. Cheap humor yes, but we were young and unpolished. "Hey, didnt we blow you up 50 years ago?" was the obligatory offensive comment of the game.
A bleacher virgin asked "how come there are no fights in the bleachers" and we answered "we used them up during the Blue Jay series." But later on, with an arrow pointing to the 8th, there is record of "a scuffle out here."
In the very first inning, with Tim Naehring (who actually went on to run some teams farm system, I forgot which) on first, Mo Vaughn tried to walk with 3 balls on him. We hooted and laughed as he was called back, and called him names. He pretty much shut us up with a 2 run bomb right afterwords. "Tries to walk with 3 balls...would have been preferred" was hastily jotted down as the ball clanged around in the seats and Vaughn (now quite a NYC real estate magnate) lumbering around the bases.
"Where's Mel Hall when you need him" someone wrote during the game, while the Yankees trailed. If that was asked today, someone could rightfully answer "Jail." The card was passed around like a sorority sister, I wrote that everyone took a turn. I even marked down when I kept score....I kept the bottom 3rd, all of the 4th, top of the 8th, and the 9th. Someone named Chris kept the first 2 1/2 innings. Sadly, these were the days where not everyone had a colorful nickname.
"The dykes dont douche" someone scrawled. I remarked that someone "threw money" and even drew a $ with two squiggly lines off of it, like flying money. I later stole this trick, when I was mad or called cheap, I would throw money around in exasperation or rage.
"This pennant race interferes with the Gang Bang" someone groused, cause by then our silly ditties were rendered not as important. When it looked like the Yankees were going to lose, "lets go home and break some shit" was jotted. Meanwhile, with the Yankees chipping away original Cowbell clanker Ali sat there peacefully, not playing the bell, and someone bellowed in his direction, "um, Ali, this is what you call a rally."
When it did rain, it really rained. A heavy downpour. Gorilla Monsoonish conditions. I pull the card from the protective sleeve in my binder and feel a decades worth of murk in it.
The Sox had a 3-0 lead heading into the 7th inning, behind rook Nate Minchey, who had only 5 starts all year and 15 in quite the nondescript career. Minchey came out after giving up a leadoff poke to Paul O'Neill in the 7th and a Matt Nokes single, making way for one Ken Ryan.
Ryan and good old Tony Fossas cleaned up, then handed it over to Greg Harris for the 9th, the Yankees down 3-1. Four hits and 3 runs later, the Yankees win the game!
As described earlier, we all thought the last out was made, but a fan found it a good time to run onto the field. The umpire claimed time was called even though the ball was popped up for the proverbial home run in the silo, and caught for what we thought was the final out. While we threw our garbage around in resignation and snarled epitaphs, the Godlike voice of Bob Sheppard rang through the misty evening....."the game is NOT over...."
Here was Whalerfans description, from a Bleacher Creature message board a decade or so later....
"The Yankees could never get that fu-k Scott Fletcher out. And if I remember correctly, the Yanks won a game once vs. the Sox when a fan ran out on the field while Mike Stanley was making the final out. The ump called time, Stanley got a hit and Donnie Baseball got the GW single. It might've been 93 or 94. Not sure, though.
And we ended up winning. One of THE FIRST magic moments I was out there for. I remember on the subway ride out of there turning to whoever and saying "that is something I will never forget."
Thank you, Whalerfan. As for me, 17 years later here I am typing about it, soon to be on my couch underneath that picture, beer in hand, sardonic grin on my visage. Take that, Bosux! The game is not over, bitch!
Your arbiters for this wild affair were Drew Coble, the late and lamented Durwood Merrill, John Hirschbeck, and Tim Welke. The gametime was 3:29, and you can tack on that rain delay too while you're at it.
Thanks for reading!
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
September 17th, 1993 - Fans on the Field! Fans on the Field!
September 17th, 1993 - Yankees host Bosucks!
Welcome to Fans On The Field Night!
Not much on this scorecard, except a slew of comments relating to fans running on the field. I dont know what was in the beer that night, but there were FOUR documented incidents of fans running onto the field.
Another Friday night! Even then I was a big fan of the Friday nights. "To Thomas...I hope you get to 40 games!" my friend Jamie, who is long since lost to history, wrote across the top. Well, this was my 31st and peeking ahead, spoiling the end of the story for 1993, I ended up making 38. Within the next to years, I was up near 60.
Again, and I know this is getting repetitive, but the card is written in drunken scrawl, along with smudges which I hope are beer spills.
"This is a dirty fu-king night" someone wrote.
"Another guy on field!!!" is scrawled in the right margin. "Fan safe at 2nd!!!" is underneath the Red Sox lineup. I dont recall if this was the instance of the guy who hopped the bleacher walls and motored into second and nailed a head-first slide that Ill remember forevermore, but nonetheless -being safe at second is impressive regardless as far as these things go. "4th fan on field!!!" is a little lower, and to the left of an earlier account noting "fan on the field!!"
You need to go all the way to the bottom of the card to read about the "3rd fan on the field!!! - just before the seventh inning stretch!" I even drew a running stick figure in the left margin, with "fans on the field!!!" as a tagline.
And finally, we got ourselves into the mix with "We should all run out after game is over to prove we have a sense of humor about this."
The scorecard, as mentioned, was a mess. Someone was pitching in to help, to no avail. "We are behind a batter, but who cares?" is on here. In another spot you can read, "What did I miss? Don't know, but I heard a lot of "aaaahhhh!" I also see an "I F'd up...need an explanation."
We still must have been in the hunt, cause I am reading "season is on the line, and Paul Gibson is on the mound??" And after Bob Wickman's name was added to the pitching log, we simply wrote "why?"
Someone wrote on the card "write that down" - what they were talking about specifically is lost to posterity. There was an "Elvis Sighting" in the top of the 5th, which I would have to assume was simply that head security guy that looked like the King, fat version.
8 "wasnt watchings!" on the scorecard. EIGHT! Thats more like it! We missed lots of plays! Yay Friday nights!
I wrote down at one point, in big letters, "THROWN OUT IN BIG PURGE." Was I thrown out? There is no arrow pointing anywhere on the card, or no names mentioned...was it me? Not sure...someone finished the scorecard regardless. I WAS thrown out now and again back in those days especially, this night seems as good as any. But I can not confirm said information all these years later.
The game itself was a wild one - Yankees ended up pulling it out 5-4, with Boston parading 5 pitchers to the mound (including that fu-khead Paul Quantrill) and the Yankees 4. Gibson ended up getting the win, despite all the smirks we levelled in his direction, with 2 solid innings of relief. And nailing the save? One LEE FU-KING SMITH! Hoo-ah! Smith was in town for an 8 game stint with the Yankees. A young man named Scott Taylor finished up for the Sox - another name lost to history outside of my Scorecard Memories column. And no, this was not the "Scott Taylor" who later appeared on WWE television as "Scotty Too Hotty"
Mike Stanley did NOT hit a home run! Not many times I was out there in 93 where he didnt seem to. But he did rock a double. In other random gameries, Sterling Hitchcock had a balk and a wild pitch for the good guys.
As for other luminaries we saw on this night....the immortal Bob Zupcic was in center for the Sox, and Carlos Quintana was the butt of our jokes in right. If you were there, you got to see Ernest Riles pinch hit. Scott Cooper, one of most hyped prospects I can ever remember (and Im a longtime prospect mark), manned third. And the man we called an "Oriole Legend" - one Bob Melvin, was behind the plate for the hated Boston squad. Who would have thought (or remembered) that he would have 14 at bats for the Yankees the very next year? Hell, as Im putting this up here now, I still cant!
Scott Fletcher led off the Sox. One thing I remembered about him was he was an "aw, shucks" kind of guy. He used to strike out and say "darn it!" and it was a joke around baseball. We used to call him a square. I remember we used to pass some time during BP trying to get him to curse at us. He never did, but he would wave.
There were a stacked 48,051 on hand, and your arbiters were the esteemed Tim Welke, Drew Coble, the late Durwood Merrill, and John Hirschbeck. The game dragged along, 3 hours and 42 minutes.
Thanks for reading!
Welcome to Fans On The Field Night!
Not much on this scorecard, except a slew of comments relating to fans running on the field. I dont know what was in the beer that night, but there were FOUR documented incidents of fans running onto the field.
Another Friday night! Even then I was a big fan of the Friday nights. "To Thomas...I hope you get to 40 games!" my friend Jamie, who is long since lost to history, wrote across the top. Well, this was my 31st and peeking ahead, spoiling the end of the story for 1993, I ended up making 38. Within the next to years, I was up near 60.
Again, and I know this is getting repetitive, but the card is written in drunken scrawl, along with smudges which I hope are beer spills.
"This is a dirty fu-king night" someone wrote.
"Another guy on field!!!" is scrawled in the right margin. "Fan safe at 2nd!!!" is underneath the Red Sox lineup. I dont recall if this was the instance of the guy who hopped the bleacher walls and motored into second and nailed a head-first slide that Ill remember forevermore, but nonetheless -being safe at second is impressive regardless as far as these things go. "4th fan on field!!!" is a little lower, and to the left of an earlier account noting "fan on the field!!"
You need to go all the way to the bottom of the card to read about the "3rd fan on the field!!! - just before the seventh inning stretch!" I even drew a running stick figure in the left margin, with "fans on the field!!!" as a tagline.
And finally, we got ourselves into the mix with "We should all run out after game is over to prove we have a sense of humor about this."
The scorecard, as mentioned, was a mess. Someone was pitching in to help, to no avail. "We are behind a batter, but who cares?" is on here. In another spot you can read, "What did I miss? Don't know, but I heard a lot of "aaaahhhh!" I also see an "I F'd up...need an explanation."
We still must have been in the hunt, cause I am reading "season is on the line, and Paul Gibson is on the mound??" And after Bob Wickman's name was added to the pitching log, we simply wrote "why?"
Someone wrote on the card "write that down" - what they were talking about specifically is lost to posterity. There was an "Elvis Sighting" in the top of the 5th, which I would have to assume was simply that head security guy that looked like the King, fat version.
8 "wasnt watchings!" on the scorecard. EIGHT! Thats more like it! We missed lots of plays! Yay Friday nights!
I wrote down at one point, in big letters, "THROWN OUT IN BIG PURGE." Was I thrown out? There is no arrow pointing anywhere on the card, or no names mentioned...was it me? Not sure...someone finished the scorecard regardless. I WAS thrown out now and again back in those days especially, this night seems as good as any. But I can not confirm said information all these years later.
The game itself was a wild one - Yankees ended up pulling it out 5-4, with Boston parading 5 pitchers to the mound (including that fu-khead Paul Quantrill) and the Yankees 4. Gibson ended up getting the win, despite all the smirks we levelled in his direction, with 2 solid innings of relief. And nailing the save? One LEE FU-KING SMITH! Hoo-ah! Smith was in town for an 8 game stint with the Yankees. A young man named Scott Taylor finished up for the Sox - another name lost to history outside of my Scorecard Memories column. And no, this was not the "Scott Taylor" who later appeared on WWE television as "Scotty Too Hotty"
Mike Stanley did NOT hit a home run! Not many times I was out there in 93 where he didnt seem to. But he did rock a double. In other random gameries, Sterling Hitchcock had a balk and a wild pitch for the good guys.
As for other luminaries we saw on this night....the immortal Bob Zupcic was in center for the Sox, and Carlos Quintana was the butt of our jokes in right. If you were there, you got to see Ernest Riles pinch hit. Scott Cooper, one of most hyped prospects I can ever remember (and Im a longtime prospect mark), manned third. And the man we called an "Oriole Legend" - one Bob Melvin, was behind the plate for the hated Boston squad. Who would have thought (or remembered) that he would have 14 at bats for the Yankees the very next year? Hell, as Im putting this up here now, I still cant!
Scott Fletcher led off the Sox. One thing I remembered about him was he was an "aw, shucks" kind of guy. He used to strike out and say "darn it!" and it was a joke around baseball. We used to call him a square. I remember we used to pass some time during BP trying to get him to curse at us. He never did, but he would wave.
There were a stacked 48,051 on hand, and your arbiters were the esteemed Tim Welke, Drew Coble, the late Durwood Merrill, and John Hirschbeck. The game dragged along, 3 hours and 42 minutes.
Thanks for reading!
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
September 3rd, 1993! The Ump is a Cockhead!
September 3rd, 1993 - Yankees host Indians
Manny cracks two jacks!
A Friday night at the Stadium, with rain about. The combination of rain and lots of beer made the scorecard a bit messy, shall we say. Bob Ojeda was on the mound for the Indians, so the "Take Me Out To The Ocean" ode we penned to remember the Indians boating crash was being belted for sure. In the linescore, someone actually wrote "Boats" in the visitors column, and "good guys" for the Yankees. Well, we are not all Ernest Hemingways.
The very top of the scorecard, which is usually reserved for a REALLY FUNNY joke, or an important note regarding the days affairs, has something lost to the annals of time....it says "I'm Kirby the....." and then indecipherable scrawling. Wayne Kirby, the guy who laughed when we sang "Row Row Row Your Boat" to make fun of the fatal Indian crash, was the beneficiary of that lost gem. Even now, in sober state, I cant come up with anything funny to complete the line.
A "Spanish family" was on hand, and after they looked piqued at some of our rowdy verbiage, we actually cursed in Spanish for them. Two shifty looking guys were called "Omar and Ishkabibble" whatever that means.
Our buddy Saddam on security was busy that night. Warnings were afoot. "Cops is filmed live before a studio audience" was noted as he came up for the first time....little did we know in a few years we WOULD have real cops stationed all around our rowdy bunch. Someone did a funny speech, mimicing Saddam....it went like this...
"In my country, if you sing "Horses Ass" you are taken out and shot, no questions asked."
I noted a lot of the trouble was caused by a "bleacher virgin" who did not deserve to lead chants or shout jokes in boisterous fashion. So the term "bleacher virgin" was alive and well in 1993, and it did not simply refer to all the girls that said no to us. The bottom of the 2nd was noted as a "VERY rowdy inning....disgraceful" on this scorecard. I wish i knew why!
The first pitch was not tossed until 7:39, which was at least 3 or 4 minutes late. "Well, its worth it for Hispanic Night" we wrote, and yes, according to us, the hispanics were simply being honored on that night for "not yet stealing my car."
Again, there are autographs all over the scorecard. To think about how dumb this was, imagine if during our heydey I would have Grover, Gang Bang Steve, or Big Tone Capone autographing the scorecard 10 times a year...it makes no sense! Some of the scribes on this night were our good buddy Dennis, who had already signed this year a handful of times, bleacher stalwart George (you know, Angel's ex) and Melle Mel, the real rapper and member of The Furious Five that ran with Grandmaster Flash.
Melido Perez started for the Yankees...apparently I stuck up for him, spurring someone to write "Thomas thinks Melido is not that bad....how many beers has he had?" I dont know what is more a head-scratcher, the fact I was sticking up for Melido, or the fact that someone was calling me Thomas out there.
Lots of snide comments directed at the Yankees' play during this game, including "we can't run" and "what the fuck." I missed a few plays, with excuses like "too busy saying go down" and "handing out cigars" and "too busy telling jokes." As to that, too bad no good ones made this card.
Someone DID write "we already heard that one..." with a frowny face attached...how catty. Can you imagine if we commented on every joke, line and remark we heard out there in the rightfield bleachers? Sadly, everything seems to be recycled.
Manny Ramirez was still a no-name merely irritating us at that point, and he was doing so from a distance, DH'ing and not within shouting distance. He did get to say hello with a monster crank in the 6th inning, then he poked one out to left in the 8th, which literally bought down rain. While the next batter was settling in, it started to pour. We even called it "BIG rain" They apparently played through this as the last two innings have that "wet pen" look about them. As for Ramirez' first home run of the evening, it was noted that "we HEARD that one."
Ramirez was not the only bugaboo that night. Paul Sorrento was killing us. He had been in the league since 1989, but whoever wrote the lineups and the bulk of the comments on here (not me, I was too drunk, a Friday and all) wrote "Us, the scoreboard, and the Yankees dont know who this guy is, and he is 2 for 3 with a double and a home run."
Someone wrote "the umpire is a cockhead" and signed their autograph. I have no idea if they meant to say COKEHEAD, or if cockhead was their intention. I think I like cockhead better. It seems back then there was a lot more anger towards the umpires, there are anti-umpire rants, even signs in the crowd, all over these scorecards.
Celebrity lookalike sightings included WWF wrestler Razor Ramon, and Mr. Clean. Unlike many of the previous offerings that were pretty cleanly scored, there were SEVEN "mystery outs" (still called WW's - wasnt watching's) - thats more like it!
Out on the soggy field, the Yankees dropped the game by a 7-2 score. Ramirez was 3-4, with 2 jacks, 3 runs scored, and 3RBIs. That idiot Carlos Baerga had 3 hits and plated 2, and Kenny Lofton led off for the tribe and scored twice. Other luminaries that appeared in the Indian colors on that day were ex-Yank Alvaro Espinoza, a young Jim Thome, that madman Albert "Joey" Belle, and Felix Fermin. Jerry Dipoto, of all people, notched the save.
Melido was hit hard, giving up 6 runs on 9 hits in 5 innings of work. That nerd Paul Gibson actually threw 3 decent innings in relief, before Steve Howe put down the pipe to pitch an uneventful top 9.
Mike Stanley had ANOTHER home run.
29,041 were on hand...I would KILL for that kind of crowd on a Friday night and the room it affords out there, and they got to see Ed Hickox, Ted Hendry, Jim Evans, and Terry Craft ump the game, which went on for 3 hours and 12 minutes.
Thanks for reading!
Manny cracks two jacks!
A Friday night at the Stadium, with rain about. The combination of rain and lots of beer made the scorecard a bit messy, shall we say. Bob Ojeda was on the mound for the Indians, so the "Take Me Out To The Ocean" ode we penned to remember the Indians boating crash was being belted for sure. In the linescore, someone actually wrote "Boats" in the visitors column, and "good guys" for the Yankees. Well, we are not all Ernest Hemingways.
The very top of the scorecard, which is usually reserved for a REALLY FUNNY joke, or an important note regarding the days affairs, has something lost to the annals of time....it says "I'm Kirby the....." and then indecipherable scrawling. Wayne Kirby, the guy who laughed when we sang "Row Row Row Your Boat" to make fun of the fatal Indian crash, was the beneficiary of that lost gem. Even now, in sober state, I cant come up with anything funny to complete the line.
A "Spanish family" was on hand, and after they looked piqued at some of our rowdy verbiage, we actually cursed in Spanish for them. Two shifty looking guys were called "Omar and Ishkabibble" whatever that means.
Our buddy Saddam on security was busy that night. Warnings were afoot. "Cops is filmed live before a studio audience" was noted as he came up for the first time....little did we know in a few years we WOULD have real cops stationed all around our rowdy bunch. Someone did a funny speech, mimicing Saddam....it went like this...
"In my country, if you sing "Horses Ass" you are taken out and shot, no questions asked."
I noted a lot of the trouble was caused by a "bleacher virgin" who did not deserve to lead chants or shout jokes in boisterous fashion. So the term "bleacher virgin" was alive and well in 1993, and it did not simply refer to all the girls that said no to us. The bottom of the 2nd was noted as a "VERY rowdy inning....disgraceful" on this scorecard. I wish i knew why!
The first pitch was not tossed until 7:39, which was at least 3 or 4 minutes late. "Well, its worth it for Hispanic Night" we wrote, and yes, according to us, the hispanics were simply being honored on that night for "not yet stealing my car."
Again, there are autographs all over the scorecard. To think about how dumb this was, imagine if during our heydey I would have Grover, Gang Bang Steve, or Big Tone Capone autographing the scorecard 10 times a year...it makes no sense! Some of the scribes on this night were our good buddy Dennis, who had already signed this year a handful of times, bleacher stalwart George (you know, Angel's ex) and Melle Mel, the real rapper and member of The Furious Five that ran with Grandmaster Flash.
Melido Perez started for the Yankees...apparently I stuck up for him, spurring someone to write "Thomas thinks Melido is not that bad....how many beers has he had?" I dont know what is more a head-scratcher, the fact I was sticking up for Melido, or the fact that someone was calling me Thomas out there.
Lots of snide comments directed at the Yankees' play during this game, including "we can't run" and "what the fuck." I missed a few plays, with excuses like "too busy saying go down" and "handing out cigars" and "too busy telling jokes." As to that, too bad no good ones made this card.
Someone DID write "we already heard that one..." with a frowny face attached...how catty. Can you imagine if we commented on every joke, line and remark we heard out there in the rightfield bleachers? Sadly, everything seems to be recycled.
Manny Ramirez was still a no-name merely irritating us at that point, and he was doing so from a distance, DH'ing and not within shouting distance. He did get to say hello with a monster crank in the 6th inning, then he poked one out to left in the 8th, which literally bought down rain. While the next batter was settling in, it started to pour. We even called it "BIG rain" They apparently played through this as the last two innings have that "wet pen" look about them. As for Ramirez' first home run of the evening, it was noted that "we HEARD that one."
Ramirez was not the only bugaboo that night. Paul Sorrento was killing us. He had been in the league since 1989, but whoever wrote the lineups and the bulk of the comments on here (not me, I was too drunk, a Friday and all) wrote "Us, the scoreboard, and the Yankees dont know who this guy is, and he is 2 for 3 with a double and a home run."
Someone wrote "the umpire is a cockhead" and signed their autograph. I have no idea if they meant to say COKEHEAD, or if cockhead was their intention. I think I like cockhead better. It seems back then there was a lot more anger towards the umpires, there are anti-umpire rants, even signs in the crowd, all over these scorecards.
Celebrity lookalike sightings included WWF wrestler Razor Ramon, and Mr. Clean. Unlike many of the previous offerings that were pretty cleanly scored, there were SEVEN "mystery outs" (still called WW's - wasnt watching's) - thats more like it!
Out on the soggy field, the Yankees dropped the game by a 7-2 score. Ramirez was 3-4, with 2 jacks, 3 runs scored, and 3RBIs. That idiot Carlos Baerga had 3 hits and plated 2, and Kenny Lofton led off for the tribe and scored twice. Other luminaries that appeared in the Indian colors on that day were ex-Yank Alvaro Espinoza, a young Jim Thome, that madman Albert "Joey" Belle, and Felix Fermin. Jerry Dipoto, of all people, notched the save.
Melido was hit hard, giving up 6 runs on 9 hits in 5 innings of work. That nerd Paul Gibson actually threw 3 decent innings in relief, before Steve Howe put down the pipe to pitch an uneventful top 9.
Mike Stanley had ANOTHER home run.
29,041 were on hand...I would KILL for that kind of crowd on a Friday night and the room it affords out there, and they got to see Ed Hickox, Ted Hendry, Jim Evans, and Terry Craft ump the game, which went on for 3 hours and 12 minutes.
Thanks for reading!
Monday, August 16, 2010
August 31st, 1993 - "Who the F*ck comes to the bleachers in a tie?"
August 31st, 1993 - Yankees host the White Sox
"Hip Hip, you're gay!"
Well, the Yankees caught a beating on this night. But we were out standing strong there on this Tuesday night....the "Tuesday Night Titans" as I described us. "Is the guy who burns his hair off here?" someone asked. Maybe not, but "Dennis was here" is scrawled in big letters to the left of the Chisox lineup. We have speculated in the past, but I can verify that this idiot Dennis helped with this scorecard by the "correcting Dennis' mistakes" markings on here, and the constant x-outs, and scribbles over plays in the wrong box.
Bo Jackson was in the house. Oh, did we ever have fun with him. Him and his bogus hip. "Hip Hip...you're gay!" flooded the Stadium seats back in those days. "Bo recycles....with a plastic hip!" was a proper refrain that August night. The group also partook in a rousing "Na Na Na Na...Na Na Na Na....hey, left hip.....goodbye!" Jackson, highly appreciative of our kind sentiments, simply blew us a kiss.
Since the Bo Jackson odes went over so well, a number of Creatures partook in a few choruses of the "Hokey Pokey" which seems like a fun thing to do.
"If you try and you don't succeed, you're a Met fan" someone mused. There was a Mutt fan being harrassed, and in between insults some of the bleacher denizens were trying to get him to "see the light" by coaxing him to throw his OWN hat on the field. When that was not successful, we threw that hat around amongst ourselves for him, with ugly "burn that hat" chants booming all around.
The age-old query of "who the fuck comes to the bleachers in a tie" was bandied about on this night. And there is a line involving security guard Saddam (a dead ringer for Saddam Hussein who will appear frequently in this annals) that mentions "Palestine" in there. Sad to say, it is written in drunk hand and practically illegible. The word "steroids" is also written on here, and not really directed to anyone...it is sort of written in the middle of nowhere. I guess it could have been aimed at Bo Jackson.
It appears my brother Dave was on hand with a lady friend, who endeared herself to everyone by saying "I gotta suck on that for a while" albeit while simply talking about some hard candy that was being passed around. Not sure of her relationship with my brother, but she identified herself as "Dave Browns only friend" when she signed the scorecard. Another girl on hand who accompanied her, a friend named "Laurie" was so entertained by the capers and antics she signed "Thanks for the memories....I really enjoyed myself." As I have absolutely no recollection of her, she apparently did not enjoy herself enough to ever come back.
While all this zaniness was abound, the Yankees were stinking it up on the field. After one play that we all missed, when wondering what to put on the scorecard someone said "they got a run somehow...everyone went BOOO! real loud at the end, so it must have been close!"
All kinds of "addendums" were connected to plays with arrows to the margin, like "It hit the fucking base!" and "two guys on one base!" and "out tag...what was the point?" I even called a 9th inning 6-4 Gallego to Jim Leyritz grounder the "play of the year." No further details on that, though, but it sounds like i was reaching a bit. After a double by Chicago's Tim Raines, someone took my pen and wrote "we should give him a strikeout instead - that would be peachy."
One interesting note of interest is that the soda guy apparently dropped his tray on this night. Unfortunately the number of sodas lost was not earmarked.
I am seeing a few "ww's" here (wasnt watching) and whole half innings that simply don't look complete...
The Yankees gave up 5 homers on this night, 2 by Raines, and one each by Frank Thomas, Joey Cora, and Ellis Burks. Sterling Hitchcock started (he had not yet made 10 major league starts at this point) and was cuffed around a bit, but the main offender on the Yankee hill was old favorite Richard Monteleone (1.1 innings, and 5 earned runs on 6 hits and a walk). Steve Howe ambled in to pitch the 9th, and promptly gave up the Burks homer. So, since Monteleone was taken deep by Raines and Cora in the 9th as well, that means THREE White Sox bombs in the final frame.
Wilson Alvarez went for the White Sox, and after Jose DeLeon came in to throw to one batter, Scott Radinsky finished up for the Sox. Radinsky is better known these days for fronting Cali punk band Pulley, who sound like Bad Religion/Green Day clones to me. I just nabbed one of thier CDs off Amazon used for $2, but have not given it enough spins yet to come up with anything further than that.
Other noteworthy names on hand for the Chisox were former Yankee Dan Pasqua (who came in as a defensive replacement at first late in the game) and Ivan Calderon, who is now dead.
On the Yankee front Mike Stanley had a homer, and Gallego went 2-4 and plated 2 runs.
37,511 were on hand, and your umpires on this putrid evening were Larry Barnett, Greg Kosc, Dan Morrison, and Al Clark.
Thanks for reading, yo!
"Hip Hip, you're gay!"
Well, the Yankees caught a beating on this night. But we were out standing strong there on this Tuesday night....the "Tuesday Night Titans" as I described us. "Is the guy who burns his hair off here?" someone asked. Maybe not, but "Dennis was here" is scrawled in big letters to the left of the Chisox lineup. We have speculated in the past, but I can verify that this idiot Dennis helped with this scorecard by the "correcting Dennis' mistakes" markings on here, and the constant x-outs, and scribbles over plays in the wrong box.
Bo Jackson was in the house. Oh, did we ever have fun with him. Him and his bogus hip. "Hip Hip...you're gay!" flooded the Stadium seats back in those days. "Bo recycles....with a plastic hip!" was a proper refrain that August night. The group also partook in a rousing "Na Na Na Na...Na Na Na Na....hey, left hip.....goodbye!" Jackson, highly appreciative of our kind sentiments, simply blew us a kiss.
Since the Bo Jackson odes went over so well, a number of Creatures partook in a few choruses of the "Hokey Pokey" which seems like a fun thing to do.
"If you try and you don't succeed, you're a Met fan" someone mused. There was a Mutt fan being harrassed, and in between insults some of the bleacher denizens were trying to get him to "see the light" by coaxing him to throw his OWN hat on the field. When that was not successful, we threw that hat around amongst ourselves for him, with ugly "burn that hat" chants booming all around.
The age-old query of "who the fuck comes to the bleachers in a tie" was bandied about on this night. And there is a line involving security guard Saddam (a dead ringer for Saddam Hussein who will appear frequently in this annals) that mentions "Palestine" in there. Sad to say, it is written in drunk hand and practically illegible. The word "steroids" is also written on here, and not really directed to anyone...it is sort of written in the middle of nowhere. I guess it could have been aimed at Bo Jackson.
It appears my brother Dave was on hand with a lady friend, who endeared herself to everyone by saying "I gotta suck on that for a while" albeit while simply talking about some hard candy that was being passed around. Not sure of her relationship with my brother, but she identified herself as "Dave Browns only friend" when she signed the scorecard. Another girl on hand who accompanied her, a friend named "Laurie" was so entertained by the capers and antics she signed "Thanks for the memories....I really enjoyed myself." As I have absolutely no recollection of her, she apparently did not enjoy herself enough to ever come back.
While all this zaniness was abound, the Yankees were stinking it up on the field. After one play that we all missed, when wondering what to put on the scorecard someone said "they got a run somehow...everyone went BOOO! real loud at the end, so it must have been close!"
All kinds of "addendums" were connected to plays with arrows to the margin, like "It hit the fucking base!" and "two guys on one base!" and "out tag...what was the point?" I even called a 9th inning 6-4 Gallego to Jim Leyritz grounder the "play of the year." No further details on that, though, but it sounds like i was reaching a bit. After a double by Chicago's Tim Raines, someone took my pen and wrote "we should give him a strikeout instead - that would be peachy."
One interesting note of interest is that the soda guy apparently dropped his tray on this night. Unfortunately the number of sodas lost was not earmarked.
I am seeing a few "ww's" here (wasnt watching) and whole half innings that simply don't look complete...
The Yankees gave up 5 homers on this night, 2 by Raines, and one each by Frank Thomas, Joey Cora, and Ellis Burks. Sterling Hitchcock started (he had not yet made 10 major league starts at this point) and was cuffed around a bit, but the main offender on the Yankee hill was old favorite Richard Monteleone (1.1 innings, and 5 earned runs on 6 hits and a walk). Steve Howe ambled in to pitch the 9th, and promptly gave up the Burks homer. So, since Monteleone was taken deep by Raines and Cora in the 9th as well, that means THREE White Sox bombs in the final frame.
Wilson Alvarez went for the White Sox, and after Jose DeLeon came in to throw to one batter, Scott Radinsky finished up for the Sox. Radinsky is better known these days for fronting Cali punk band Pulley, who sound like Bad Religion/Green Day clones to me. I just nabbed one of thier CDs off Amazon used for $2, but have not given it enough spins yet to come up with anything further than that.
Other noteworthy names on hand for the Chisox were former Yankee Dan Pasqua (who came in as a defensive replacement at first late in the game) and Ivan Calderon, who is now dead.
On the Yankee front Mike Stanley had a homer, and Gallego went 2-4 and plated 2 runs.
37,511 were on hand, and your umpires on this putrid evening were Larry Barnett, Greg Kosc, Dan Morrison, and Al Clark.
Thanks for reading, yo!
Friday, August 13, 2010
August 14th, 1993 - Im the I in Reggie!
August 14th, 1993
Reggie Jackson Day!
Ah, Reggie Jackson Day at the Stadium. Need I say more? Probably not, but its me, so off I go.
Oh boy was I drunk again. The scoresheet is splattered with seas of blue, smudgy ink...more on that in a minute. I know a bunch of people were looking forward to this scorecard when I first started putting these together, but I may be of little help to them, as I was a bit intoxicated. This scorecard is actually more full of fan autographs than anything else.
The Orioles - long known as the Blow-rioles on these cards were our foes on the field. Jesus, there are no less than 5 fan autographs on here...do you see your name? There is a John Nettles (?) and a Bill Butler (?) and a Jeff "Stig" something or another, and a Garry something.....I am pretty sure these are some of the yokes who spelled out R E G G I E on their chests, needing me to pinch-pose, but more on that later...
It was Joe Pagano's 20th birthday. He's 37 here in 2010...wonder what became of the yoke, he seems to have signed these scorecards an awful lot. On the card, in the slot next to "date" I put "none" - so what else was new.
Anyone remember "hot dog girl?" They seemingly grabbed some trollop out of a club and made her sell hot dogs at Yankee Stadium back then. "Hot Dog Girl has nice buns!" someone hollered. Someone signed "Hot Dog Girl" on the scorecard, but I cant imagine she would demean herself and do that in her own hand the way everyone was carrying on over her. "Take it off, hot dog!" was a popular refrain that day, as was "can I dump some mustard on you?" Someone even wrote in the left margin "I love hot dog girl" with a cartoon heart and everything.
There was a fan on hand that looked like Rollie Fingers, and he got a couple of "sit down, Rolaids fireman of the year!"
Someone pointed out that Fat Daddy Chico was the "Abdullah Butcher of the bleachers." I am shocked that comparison did not come up before then, and I have not heard it since. Both were indeed roly poly dark-skinned men who frightened children with all their bombard. It was noted that Cowbell Man Ali had a new hat, so you can tell there was not much going on out there in the wit department, for us to relay such trifling news.
Not many Reggie notes on here, which is a bit of a shame. The most poignant is a Naked Gun reference, in "I...must...kill....the Queen" Its funny that over the years this game constantly comes up in bleacher musings, but not much of it is recorded for public consumption.
But, if you were there, I am sure you would remember me starring as the "I" in REGGIE. I doffed my shirt, painted a big I on it (people could have taken shade under the curly-Q's at the ends of my I) and pranced around for all to see. There IS a picture of said incident, which is available for public viewing for a small donation to get more beer.
What happened was this....this group of drunkards came to the game, shirtless and spelling out REGGIE on their chests. They were thin, in pretty much all cases muscular, and very tan. For some reason "I" took a powder. It is not recorded if he was booted, cold, embarrassed, or what....I guess that is one of the bleachers many unsolved mysteries.
So they started asking around for someone to fill the prized "I" slot. Of course I hopped up, I was ever the ham, even with my shirt on. In the course of painting an "I" on my buddha belly, I made a mess with the ink. It is all over the scorecard for eternity, and I got it all over my jeans (and continued to wear them for the rest of the season, blue ink and all)
And there I was. From a distance it looked like a haystack in the middle of a series of fenceposts. The only pic, sad to say, is a closeup of me having too much fun....I believe I had a beer in one hand and a cigar in the other....if not, I know I was drinking and smoking cigars all game. Hell, we all were.
"Hit the beach Tom!" was a common bellow.
As for the game....when the first game note was "we're getting one of those fucked up lineups today" that is an ominous note. But the Yankees ended up notching a 4-2 win, with Paul ASSenmacher getting the W and Steve Farr actually notching a save, much to the amazement of the crowd on hand. We thought so little of Farr those days that I actually wrote an "afterthought" on the card...(I did this from time to time. I would pick up the scorecard later, either on the train home, in a bar, or from my apartment, and make a note) - well, this one was written at 1:57AM (what I was doing up at that time thinking of Steve Farr is a sad thought) and I wrote "we thought this game was FARR from over."
Seems like we were barring it up after the game, someone said the line, and being drunk I thought it was much funnier than it actually was, and NEEDED to write it down for posterity. 17 years later, aren't you happy I did?
I have to give us credit...even with the lack of jokes on here, there are NO MYSTERY OUTS. The keeper of the card did not miss one play! And the card was passed around for sure. Actually, the game log is the neatest thing on the scorecard.
Arthur Rhodes started for Baltimore, and only pitched into the 5th, when he was relieved by a man only identified as "Mystery Man????" - years later playing on baseballreference.com I can see we had the honor and the privelage of seeing Mark Williamson take the hill. Whoever wrote "mystery man" should be ashamed of themself, as this was Williamson's 6th year in the league.
Another interesting reliever came sauntering in for Baltimore that day, one John O'Donaghue. Now THAT sounds like a bleacher creature name. Anyway, we had met Mr. O'Donaghue sometime that weekend, over the outfield fence during BP. We were dropping the banter back and forth with one Ben McDonald (who is one of my favorite baseball players of all time, by the way - I have an autographed 8 X 10 framed on my baseball wall around the computer) and we see this no-name neophyte shagging some flies.
"Hey, Ben!" we say. "Who the fuck is that?" He tells us he is this new kid named O'Donaghue, and he rolls his eyes a bit as if to say "see him now, cause you'll never see him again." We ask Mr. McDonald to go grab the kid and bring him over so we can roast him on the proverbial spit. So he does, he goes on over, puts his arm around the kid, and brings him into the lions den. So we were able to give Mr. O'Donaghue a bit of baseball experience I would hazard to say he still has in his treasure trove of baseball memories.
He did go one and done in 1993 - his only year in the majors. In 11 games (one start) he threw 19 innings, giving up 10 earned runs on 22 hits and 10 walks. He did strike out 16. Of course that day he pitched a scoreless inning and a third against the Yankees. I am happy to check out this card again, I remembered bandying with this guy, but I did not realize I had actually seen him pitch!
Speaking of nondescript, Domingo Jean started for the Yankees, and only went 5 innings himself. The only home run of the game was from Mike Devereux, in Jean's final inning. After the O's took a 2-0 lead in that frame, the Yankees stormed back for 2 of their own, then notched 2 the very next inning and locked it down, to send us home with a 4-2 win to celebrate.
The oddball Yankee lineup that was cited early in the day had Gallego leading off, followed by Randy Velarde. Then Mattingly, Tartabull, Stanley, BW, Leyritz, Spike Owen, and Patrick Kelly. Paul O'Neill did not start, he actually came in for Leyritz, who was in right. The Oriole lineup contained standouts such as Mark McLemore, who spent many more years annoying the fuck out of Yankee fans, and luminaries such as Chris Hoiles and Jeff Tackett, who was behind the dish. Jack Voight actually pinch-hit for Tackett, and walked. Leading off for Baltimore was "Brady's a Lady" Anderson, that dick. We got to see Harold Baines and Cal Ripken Jr on that day, along with baseball sage Harold Reynolds, playing second during his only season with the O's.
There were a whopping and whooping 52,598 on hand, and your umpires for the day were John Shulock, Tim Tschida, Jim Joyce, and Donald Denkinger.
Thanks for reading, tell a friend!
PS - I know there are no pregame festivity notations on here. I guess we were still outside drinking at that time!
Reggie Jackson Day!
Ah, Reggie Jackson Day at the Stadium. Need I say more? Probably not, but its me, so off I go.
Oh boy was I drunk again. The scoresheet is splattered with seas of blue, smudgy ink...more on that in a minute. I know a bunch of people were looking forward to this scorecard when I first started putting these together, but I may be of little help to them, as I was a bit intoxicated. This scorecard is actually more full of fan autographs than anything else.
The Orioles - long known as the Blow-rioles on these cards were our foes on the field. Jesus, there are no less than 5 fan autographs on here...do you see your name? There is a John Nettles (?) and a Bill Butler (?) and a Jeff "Stig" something or another, and a Garry something.....I am pretty sure these are some of the yokes who spelled out R E G G I E on their chests, needing me to pinch-pose, but more on that later...
It was Joe Pagano's 20th birthday. He's 37 here in 2010...wonder what became of the yoke, he seems to have signed these scorecards an awful lot. On the card, in the slot next to "date" I put "none" - so what else was new.
Anyone remember "hot dog girl?" They seemingly grabbed some trollop out of a club and made her sell hot dogs at Yankee Stadium back then. "Hot Dog Girl has nice buns!" someone hollered. Someone signed "Hot Dog Girl" on the scorecard, but I cant imagine she would demean herself and do that in her own hand the way everyone was carrying on over her. "Take it off, hot dog!" was a popular refrain that day, as was "can I dump some mustard on you?" Someone even wrote in the left margin "I love hot dog girl" with a cartoon heart and everything.
There was a fan on hand that looked like Rollie Fingers, and he got a couple of "sit down, Rolaids fireman of the year!"
Someone pointed out that Fat Daddy Chico was the "Abdullah Butcher of the bleachers." I am shocked that comparison did not come up before then, and I have not heard it since. Both were indeed roly poly dark-skinned men who frightened children with all their bombard. It was noted that Cowbell Man Ali had a new hat, so you can tell there was not much going on out there in the wit department, for us to relay such trifling news.
Not many Reggie notes on here, which is a bit of a shame. The most poignant is a Naked Gun reference, in "I...must...kill....the Queen" Its funny that over the years this game constantly comes up in bleacher musings, but not much of it is recorded for public consumption.
But, if you were there, I am sure you would remember me starring as the "I" in REGGIE. I doffed my shirt, painted a big I on it (people could have taken shade under the curly-Q's at the ends of my I) and pranced around for all to see. There IS a picture of said incident, which is available for public viewing for a small donation to get more beer.
What happened was this....this group of drunkards came to the game, shirtless and spelling out REGGIE on their chests. They were thin, in pretty much all cases muscular, and very tan. For some reason "I" took a powder. It is not recorded if he was booted, cold, embarrassed, or what....I guess that is one of the bleachers many unsolved mysteries.
So they started asking around for someone to fill the prized "I" slot. Of course I hopped up, I was ever the ham, even with my shirt on. In the course of painting an "I" on my buddha belly, I made a mess with the ink. It is all over the scorecard for eternity, and I got it all over my jeans (and continued to wear them for the rest of the season, blue ink and all)
And there I was. From a distance it looked like a haystack in the middle of a series of fenceposts. The only pic, sad to say, is a closeup of me having too much fun....I believe I had a beer in one hand and a cigar in the other....if not, I know I was drinking and smoking cigars all game. Hell, we all were.
"Hit the beach Tom!" was a common bellow.
As for the game....when the first game note was "we're getting one of those fucked up lineups today" that is an ominous note. But the Yankees ended up notching a 4-2 win, with Paul ASSenmacher getting the W and Steve Farr actually notching a save, much to the amazement of the crowd on hand. We thought so little of Farr those days that I actually wrote an "afterthought" on the card...(I did this from time to time. I would pick up the scorecard later, either on the train home, in a bar, or from my apartment, and make a note) - well, this one was written at 1:57AM (what I was doing up at that time thinking of Steve Farr is a sad thought) and I wrote "we thought this game was FARR from over."
Seems like we were barring it up after the game, someone said the line, and being drunk I thought it was much funnier than it actually was, and NEEDED to write it down for posterity. 17 years later, aren't you happy I did?
I have to give us credit...even with the lack of jokes on here, there are NO MYSTERY OUTS. The keeper of the card did not miss one play! And the card was passed around for sure. Actually, the game log is the neatest thing on the scorecard.
Arthur Rhodes started for Baltimore, and only pitched into the 5th, when he was relieved by a man only identified as "Mystery Man????" - years later playing on baseballreference.com I can see we had the honor and the privelage of seeing Mark Williamson take the hill. Whoever wrote "mystery man" should be ashamed of themself, as this was Williamson's 6th year in the league.
Another interesting reliever came sauntering in for Baltimore that day, one John O'Donaghue. Now THAT sounds like a bleacher creature name. Anyway, we had met Mr. O'Donaghue sometime that weekend, over the outfield fence during BP. We were dropping the banter back and forth with one Ben McDonald (who is one of my favorite baseball players of all time, by the way - I have an autographed 8 X 10 framed on my baseball wall around the computer) and we see this no-name neophyte shagging some flies.
"Hey, Ben!" we say. "Who the fuck is that?" He tells us he is this new kid named O'Donaghue, and he rolls his eyes a bit as if to say "see him now, cause you'll never see him again." We ask Mr. McDonald to go grab the kid and bring him over so we can roast him on the proverbial spit. So he does, he goes on over, puts his arm around the kid, and brings him into the lions den. So we were able to give Mr. O'Donaghue a bit of baseball experience I would hazard to say he still has in his treasure trove of baseball memories.
He did go one and done in 1993 - his only year in the majors. In 11 games (one start) he threw 19 innings, giving up 10 earned runs on 22 hits and 10 walks. He did strike out 16. Of course that day he pitched a scoreless inning and a third against the Yankees. I am happy to check out this card again, I remembered bandying with this guy, but I did not realize I had actually seen him pitch!
Speaking of nondescript, Domingo Jean started for the Yankees, and only went 5 innings himself. The only home run of the game was from Mike Devereux, in Jean's final inning. After the O's took a 2-0 lead in that frame, the Yankees stormed back for 2 of their own, then notched 2 the very next inning and locked it down, to send us home with a 4-2 win to celebrate.
The oddball Yankee lineup that was cited early in the day had Gallego leading off, followed by Randy Velarde. Then Mattingly, Tartabull, Stanley, BW, Leyritz, Spike Owen, and Patrick Kelly. Paul O'Neill did not start, he actually came in for Leyritz, who was in right. The Oriole lineup contained standouts such as Mark McLemore, who spent many more years annoying the fuck out of Yankee fans, and luminaries such as Chris Hoiles and Jeff Tackett, who was behind the dish. Jack Voight actually pinch-hit for Tackett, and walked. Leading off for Baltimore was "Brady's a Lady" Anderson, that dick. We got to see Harold Baines and Cal Ripken Jr on that day, along with baseball sage Harold Reynolds, playing second during his only season with the O's.
There were a whopping and whooping 52,598 on hand, and your umpires for the day were John Shulock, Tim Tschida, Jim Joyce, and Donald Denkinger.
Thanks for reading, tell a friend!
PS - I know there are no pregame festivity notations on here. I guess we were still outside drinking at that time!
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