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!