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!