July 30th, 1993 - Look, a Brewers hat!

July 30th, 1993
Yankees battle The Brew Crew

Lets sail back to July 30th, 1993. Our foes on that day were the Brewers. I know a heap of the old-schoolers remember way back when we used to sit out there and recall seeing every opposing team cap make an appearance out there, but never a Brewers cap. They just never found their way to Section 39. I remember the day we first saw a Brewer cap out there, so many years later. We could not even boo or heckle the guy, we were too busy slapping 5's for finally seeing a hat from the Brew Crew.

A Yankee win - 8-5, behind the efforts of one Scott Kamienieki, who had the lame nickname of "Kamelot" on the scorecard. I dont know whats worse, someone out there came up with it or I subsequently wrote it down. Steve Howe actually put down the pipe and pitched a scoreless 2 1/3 to close it out. But I get ahead of myself.

Anyone remember Jeff? Ended up working with the Stadium or some photographers that covered the place in some capacity. Back then he was just a shifty looking guy. Actually, after he got his job he was still a shifty looking guy. He wished me a Happy Birthday on the card, a mere 5 days late. Someone named "H.G Thomas" also autographed the card, and identified themselves as "Bleacher Buddha Belly" - holy Hell, can that name fit about two dozen of us now.

We started the game but 1 game out, behind the Blow Jays. In those days, this was a big accomplishment, worthy of noting on the scorecard. As was noting "even Mike Gallego is batting .299" At the same time the Brewers were "the worst team in the AL" with a 41-60 record. That days starter, the venerable Cal Eldred had 11 of those wins (and by the end of this day 11 of those losses)

The legendary Ali Ramirez was all over the cowbell that day, with 3 seperate cadences in the 7th inning alone, apparently (and the Yankees did not score 1 run for all his efforts) By this time I had developed a coding system to mark on the card where exactly we did the "Horses Ass" song and the " -insert RF here - takes it up the ass, doo da, doo da" songs, as we did them multiple times a game at this point. I coded "Horses Ass" by making a little dot in the box for the batter up at the time, and used a cross for the "takes it up the ass song" - sorry, Lord!

At some point in the game someone yelled "sit down bitch!" at someone and Teena corrected that with "thats not a bitch, its a dude."

There was a guy with one of those old-school Guldens Mustard Yankee visors on. Someone else scored scorecard credit for walking up the steps with no less than 4 beers in hand. I have seen that many times since (actually, with soda replacing the beers from 97 for the next decade plus due to the bleacher beer ban) but considering how much money beer was, that is a risky thing to do, sort of like performing on a trapeze while on a unicycle.

Noted that someone named Joseph broke their seat...not sure if it was on purpose during a Yankee win, or if he was fat. Something else annoying I was doing back then was marking arrival times. I guess I thought some of these people were famous enough to warrent it (appearance marks were made for Captain Bob, Cousin Brewski, and Dave "Animal) - fact that I was marking this also showed they were arriving late...maybe that is where I learned this in my later years. Damn, I hope someone is marking my arrival times on scorecards somewhere. Oftentimes i come in so late I would walk by the people leaving early.

Speaking of old school flavor, Billy the Devil fan called a home run, which was noted. Billy, for the unitiated, was the dope that once said that the Twins Marty Cordova was on his way to becoming one of the "best leftfielders in the history of the game." The homer he predicted moments before it sailed was off the bat of Mike Stanley, a 3 run shot. Enough people call home runs, or get them wrong, where this sort of thing would never be added to the scorecard today. Its just hooey. I missed the same home run as I was "lighting my cigar" at the time. And, get this, I missed someone in the bleachers throwing back a Brewer home run by Darryl Hamilton as at the time I was "burning a hole in Joseph's scorecard" with that same cigar.

Ah, seems we had an appearance by the loon who used to light his own hair on fire. Well, he was thrown out of this game doing just that in the 8th inning. He got the old heave-ho. Apparently he went to the well one too many times, as he got away with it in the 6th. In recent years many sordid stories have come about regarding whatever happened to him. They sounded like a fate one would not doubt from someone who enjoyed lighting his hair on fire for fun.

Ali came up with a real zinger that I have used to this day, in regards to Fat Daddy Chico. He asked, "if Chico went to the zoo and saw the elephants, who would throw peanuts at who?"

There is a frantic "uh, oh, wave!" warning on here. The wave was running rampant all the way through the top of the 7th, and that is probably why Ali was going bezerk with his bell, trying to stop the damn thing. At some point in the game (2nd inning, I bet) the scoreboard actually read "2 0 2 2 2 2 2 "

For the record there is only ONE "MO" - mystery out - on the scorecard. Considering the way they appeared 5-15 times in later years, that is something. I seem to have kept score the entire game myself, so my days of whoring the thing out were not the norm yet.

As for the game itself, after Eldred had a routinely shaky outing we got to see that slob Mike Fetters, and the old even then Jesse Orosco finish up. The Brewer lineup featured such luminaries as John freaking Jaha, and Tom Brunansky, who looked stupid not dressed in Twins regalia.

For the Yankees we saw home runs from Danny Tartabull, the aforementioned Mike Stanley and Neon Dion James. Bernie Williams had a nice time of it, reaching base 4 times with a pair of hits, and a pair of walks. He also swiped a bag.

The attendance on this Friday night was a scant 23,385 (and I mentioned on the card there was a LONG row of nothing but blue seats to our right) and your arbiters were Rich Garcia, Dale Ford, Larry Young, and Chuck Meriwether.

Thanks for reading!