August 5th, 1993 "Fists Amidst A Colorful Melange"

August 5th, 1993 - Yankees host Toronto
KIDDY DAY - "A COLORFUL MELANGE"

Time to put a wrap on this frenetic Yankee/Blue Jay series from the summer of 1993. This was around the time as someone newly settled into Section 39, Yankee Stadium Bleachers, that I had to wonder, "what the Hell did I get myself into? I cant wait to come back tomorrow!"

With a win the night before, the Yankees pulled within 2 of the frontrunning Jays. It was still an ugly scene out there, with the Canadian Anthem becoming public enemy #1, and fisticuffs flaring out in the bleachers, the likes of which as I had not seen to that point, and really never saw again.

Ah yes, this was a day game. Getaway day...a number of us to this day look back at these days and cards and are not sure why we were there and not at work...the heading is "Kiddy Day" with a nod to the colors of the various groups, "a colorful melange." The kids had no idea what their camp counselers got them into. As early as 12:18 a "Boston sucks!" chant echoed loudly through the bleachers.

Next to date on the card I scrawled, "what date?" and next to played at I used our new bleacher mantra, "the Animal House that Ruth built" .

The surly fans booed the Canadian anthem again, even though all the media and the baseball universe were pretty much begging us not to. I chided us on the scorecard, admitting "we're bad...we booed anthem again. We have no class."

On the way in an "Officer Bernstein" kicked me out of the line. Thinking back, I have no idea of the transgression, but if I must guess I got caught cutting, and he sent me to the back. That happened here and there. The cops outside and the security inside were taking things quite seriously, as one guard inside yelled at a patch of kids to "sit down" and one of them broke into tears. Duly, and gleefully, noted on the scorecard.

I nailed a Fat Daddy Chico autograph on the card, taking up fully 20% of it, too. "Big Fat Daddy Chico 8/5/93" is there for all the glory. I can pawn this thing on Ebay now. Inexplicably I wrote "(chico)" next to this as an identifier to explain to someone reading who signed it, even though the signature is perfectly legible.

Amazingly enough, there was no Queen Bee Tina at the game. I found that noteworthy enough to mark this. "Animal" Dave was a no-show as well. Geez, I hope one day over my bleacher stint someone once remarked on a scorecard that I no-showed a game. On the other side of the spectrum I remarked that "Devil fan Billy" made his arrival in the top of the 6th inning, which was meant with universal apathy.

"Your whistle blows, how about you!" we screamed at someone with a whistle...a cop? A camp counseler? Some of this stuff is just vague. According to my top 40 song countdown scawl, we did not sing "Horses Ass" one time. A big zero....I wonder if we were banned from such on this day with all the camp kids about, although that sure didnt stop the fighting. We did belt out "Joe Carter Is A Horse's Ass" 5 times, though. And Ali played his cadence on the cowbell FOURTEEN times! Thats a lot of "hoooooos!"

Beer was being thrown. I see that noted a couple of times actually. There was a major altercation in the bleachers in the bottom of the 6th, when a guy in a Rutgers sweatshirt "fucked 2 guys up." Rutgers guy ended up losing his ring during the fight, no note here that it was eventually found. Sucks to be him.

And that was not the only fight that day. In the top of the 2nd there was a "hat disturbance" which was a nice way of saying someone got their hat ripped off and thrown around. Punches eventually flew. There also appears to have been a fight due to a "beer drop" early in the game. So either someone got wet from it and aggravated, or someone dropped beer, was laughed at, and went after someone. Its noted that an entire group left in the 2nd inning, reasons unclear. A Blow Jays fan also got the boot at some point, serenaded with the old "hey, hey, hey, goodbye" as he was escorted off the premises, pleading his hapless case to security.

At some point somone yelled "you drunken fool!!" seemingly right in my ear and when I looked up they said "not you, you're ok."

I was drunk, though. You can tell by my writing and the number of curse words on the card. My verbiage was more blue when drinks were imbibed.

I noted the Ventura/Ryan battle from the night before, in a place of honor on the scorecard. The crosstown NY Mutts were a point of entertainment over the course of the day, watching the out of town scoreboard....they had a 9-1 lead at one point, which over the course of the afternoon morphed into 9-9 .....checking retrosheet now, 11 years later as i first outlined this in 2004, I sadly see the Mutts ended up winning the damn game 12-9, in 13 innings.

Some of the kids out there endeared themselves to us forever, starting a "Mets suck!" chant. A girl had the gall to wear a Mets shirt, and she was hammered relentlessly. This may have been where security had told these rowdy kids to sit down. Not much else seems to be on here, besides the fact that a few of us spent an entire inning talking in "Bob Sheppard" voices.

On the field the Yankees won another key game, 5-4. Pops must have been in attendance, cause his favorite Jimmy Key was on the hill and beer was being sold, and he went the full 9, giving up the 4 runs on 6 hits and just 1 walk. He struck out 6. Juan Guzman was the starter for the Jays, and current Yankee / MLB broadcaster Al Leiter (in relief) picked up the loss with a shaky 7th, breaking a 4-4 deadlock. Pitching a scoreless 8th for the Blue Jays was none other than Woody Williams, who was torched last night in Game 1 of the World Series, the dick. This was his rookie campaign...though none are noted, I am sure we had a few laughs at the name "Woody."

Dion James went 3-4 and scored twice, and Don Mattingly (3 RBIs on the day) and Paul O'Neill homered for the Yankees. As O'Neill's home run was in flight, a beer guy was in the middle of yelling "last call beer!" so there was some perfect symmetry there.

A whopping 52,493 were on hand (with a few dozen of them ejected from the bleachers over the course of the day) and your umpires were once again Tim McClelland, Joe Brinkman, Derryl Cousins, and Rick Reed.

The win bought the Yankees to one game behind the Jays in the fight for the division crown.

Thanks for reading!