April 24th, 1994 - "Throw the baby, save yourself!"

April 24th, 1994
Yankees host the A's-holes - and a Jeff Reardon sighting!

Well, back at it again with the idiot A's. A fine Sunday afternoon I dubbed "the day after." As I remarked on the scorecard, "I crawled up the steps yesterday" so you know what I meant by that phraseology. I dubbed my condition the day before as a "pink elephant stampede."

Looks like I reverted to drinking water, too, so I must have been feeling it. I have a few notes of myself "spilling water" so I probably had the shakes too. I was in a griping mood, mentioning "I am seeing every cap out here but Yankee caps."

Lets see what we got on here. I noted that it was hot. I mentioned a recent Daily News piece on the bleacher denizens of Section 39. Already "media whore" cracks were being made, and a "to spank or not to spank" comment about people masturbating to the story was made. Keeping with the timely issues of the day, there was also an early John Bobbitt joke on here, you know - the one where he changed his name to "Les Johnson."

I have to laugh that even in 1994 we were ragging on Willie Randolph's tendency to get runners tossed out at the plate as third base coach. I mentioned the possibilties of a "Willie Randolph windmill pin" giveaway day. I was listening to Mike and the Mad Dog on WFAN around the time I dredged these cards up for initial blogging a decade later in the early 2000s, and some "Yankee fan" who claimed to be a diehard Randolph fan admitted to Mike and the Mad Dog he never heard the term "Windmill Willie" and Mike Francesa basically called him a fake fan if he never heard that and rushed him off the phone.

These were the days where not only cigars were being burned out there, all kinds of reefer madness was sprouting. The cigar smoke from guys like me sort of shielded the other stuff from those who so imbibed. The old "dont hide it, divide it" mantra made this card.

Celebrity sighting of the game was Mel the cook from Alice's Diner, from that old sitcom standard Alice. "Hey, Mel, find your seat, and kiss my grits!" was a bon mot hurled his way as he ascended the steps. "Raj from Whats Happenin'" was also there, and he was met with "Hey hey hey!" after "Hey hey hey!" Seeing him started a heated discussion over who would "win in a fight, Raj or JJ from Good Times." Speaking of fights, we then turned to a discussion of how much we would love to see fisticuffs between old Ali the Cowbell King and Fat Daddy Chico.

Remember the "Crapman vendor" that looked like old UHF television icon Uncle Floyd? Well, he was out there that day too. Not only did WE know he looked like Uncle Floyd, he did too, and that always made it funnier.

Remember this problem? People with general admission seats, trying to "find their seat." Handing off the ticket, asking one of us where their seat was. They usually managed to hand it off to Queen Bee Tina, who was never in the mood to see new faces anyway, so that always went over well, and she was more likely than not to point to the far reaches of the bleachers and snap, "your seats are over there."

Ali broke out a new trick, playing a riff on the bell "behind his back." The bell was having a hell of a day, it seems, as it was also dropped twice by people who felt the need to pick it up fondle it. George dropped it at 1:51, and a mere 7 minutes later someone we deemed "Paul Bunyon" dropped it too.

I made fun of my ragged drunken notes the night before, with "last nights quotes" connected by arrow to a series of strange curves and lines that looks like a childs drawing of ocean waves.

Some dork was being a bit "tender" with his hot dog, shall we say, and one of us cracked that "check it out, that weiner is actually getting bigger." I mean, this guy was tonguing the thing.

One of our early batting practice foes, Geronimo Berroa, was in the A's lineup, but someone thought his name was "Wamboa." I wonder if that was an early Angel appearance on the scorecard. (For the unitiated Angel, girlfriend of a regular out there at the time once peered at Cal Ripken Jr at short, with a black sweatshirt under his uni, and said in confused fashion, "I never knew Cal Ripken Jr was black")

A man peered over the loge, baby in hand, pointing at the animals in the zoo, if you will. "Throw the baby, save yourself!" was the hue and cry raised.

Lets see what was going on on the field....Jim Abbott was pitching for the Yankees. While I missed his no-hitter, I did get to see him pitch no-hit ball into the 7th on this day, before that idiot Berroa broke it up with a clean single to right. Abbott ended up pitching 8 strong innings of 3 hit, 1 run ball, as the Yankees cruised to a 6-1 win. Only 10 hits in the game total (6 by the Yankees) as Bob Welch took the loss for the A's.

We also got to see one John Briscoe hurl one of his 139 career innings on this day, and Dennis "Upper-Deckersley" came in to finish up for Oakland. This clod Briscoe was a wild one - he walked 129 and threw 22 career wild pitches in those 139 lifetime innings, and pitched to the tune of a 5.67 career ERA. His 1993 ERA in 24 innings was 8.03, so of course on this day he pitched a scoreless inning in front of us.

Wrapping it up for the Yankees - Jeff fu*king Reardon! Holy shit, what was going on with our pitching around then. Reardon, Ojeda, Mulholland, Howe, Pope Don Pall....

Reardon made it out of the 9th alive, but man was he spanked in his short Yankee tenure. In 9 innings of work he was torched for 9 runs on 17 hits, and 3 home runs. We had the pleasure of seeing him and his beard released on May 4th, and his career was toast.

Don Mattingly went deep for the good guys, and the only A's run came on a poke from old friend Mike Aldrete, in the 9th off who else but Jeff Reardon. Pat Kelly and Luis Polonia each had 2 of the Yankees 6 hits, and we got to see Polonia and Oaklands Scott Brosious both caught stealing. Whoo-a!

There were 30,877 on hand, a bit of a sluggish Sunday gathering. Your umpires were once again Derryl Cousins, Rick Reed, Gary Cederstrom, and Jim Evans, and the game was played in 2 hours and 35 minutes.

Thanks for reading!