June 1st, 1994 - "Get out of here, you pecker!"

June 1st, 1994 - Yankees host the White Sox
"Just give Kamienieki the ball every 5 days...he'd win 20, easy"

A Wednesday night in June, and we had quite the pitching duel coming in. Wilson Alvarez, who was 8-0 for the Palehose, facing off against Jimmy Key and his sterling 7-1 mark. Of course, as fates would have it, neither ended up being around to see the end of the game. At the end under "Win" I put "not Alvarez" and under "Loss" I put "not Key."

Even with Key on the mound our own elder George, big nose and all, was out there choosing to stroke off Scott Kamienieki, insisting if he was just given the ball every 5 days "he would win 20, easy." Um...security!

I wrote a "memory" on the top, so even then we were looking back in wonder at what had gone on around us. Even though he had nothing to do with this game, Jim Eisenreich was a topic of discussion. We were ruminating how he once moved from RF to LF in the middle of a game at the Stadium for absolutely no other reason outside of growing weary of, and not being able to handle, our insults. Those were the days when we could chase outfielders around pretty much around the field with our barbs, and keep Jose Canseco rooted at DH.

Poor Animal was actually escorted out during the National Anthem. No reason cited on here, but I do remember uniformed security ignoring the solemnity of the moment to usher him on out of there. We were able to keep his memory alive later in the game by chanting "Animals girlfriend!" at some drunk woman who kept standing up and waving her arms like a bird, sloshing beer over the sides of her cup, while talking gibberish like any good woman does. "What is she doing, bringing in planes?" someone asked as she made her genuflecting whirlybird gestures.

ESPN was on hand, I guess this was new for us as this appears to be quite the topic of conversation on the card. The yokels with the ESPN signs were catching a blitz of heat. George, making up for his ridiculous Kamienieki comment wryly remarked to one putz holding up a sign, "Good for you, now someone will know you when you go to a restaurant...they'll be like 'hey, you're the asshole I saw on TV.'"

Someone else sarcastically chided in, "ESPN will be like, Wow! l
Look at this guy, he has friends!" In some poetic justice an ESPN sign that someone had actually jimmied to the wire fence behind the bleachers fell while we happened to be shouting at the people standing next to it, and that got one of the louder ovations of the night. Maybe it was "pushed" by one of the Stadium ghosts. Because of ESPN the gametime was pushed back a half hour, and even though that gave us an extra 30 minutes of drinking cheap beer outside, we griped and groaned, cause thats what we did. What can I say, we didn't like change.

A Blue Jay fan must have got lost and wandered into our midst, as one of us caught sight of him in his Toronto cap and snapped, "get out of here, you pecker!" He had quite the set of balls on him, considering I remarked on here that Toronto had just been swept by the Jokeland A's and now had last place to themselves. A Wall Street type who smirked through it all was snapped out of his cloud of glee with a "hey, no ties allowed!"

It was one of those rare nights when the Mutts were also in town, playing Colorado out at that dump Shea. There was an intimate gathering of a crowd at Yankee Stadium once again despite the fact the Yankees were lighting it up, and that was attributed to the fact that "everyone is at the big Rockie-Met series." In actuality, the Yankees did manage to outdraw the Mutts, 26,131 to 17,099. So the Mets were in the midst of drawing 1993 Yankee crowds! On this same night, the Knicks and Pacers were squaring off in a Game 5....wonder if they outdrew the Mutts as well.

Ah, this hurts my heart. There is a neat "1940 Forever" mantra scrawled on here. Rangers suck!

I actually remarked that security caught someone in our section with their own cache of alcohol, and "swiped it." The bastards. They apparently did a better job with that then they did with an "old man" who ran onto the field....its recorded here that it took 10 security guards to rope him in, and get him out of there. Again, I must ask...what the fu*k was going on with people running on the field? Its all over these scorecards, its amazing that they managed to get the games in through all of these idiots running back and forth across the field.

We gave a nod and a tip of the cap to our own "All-Star" Paul O'Neill, who was the 2nd runner-up in the All-Star balloting write-in category, says here so it must be true. O'Neill also won some sort of "Stroke of Brilliance Award" and had to come out and collect it before the game...was that given out by a roll-on deodorant sponsor or something? Its funny, as O'Neill collected his chintzy award someone grumbled, "and Gallego gets screwed again."

We were having our fun, breaking out the old bleacher wave (I cant believe that goes back to at least 1994) where we would rise in rythmic fashion, middle fingers extended into the air, and chuckling while Queen Bee Tina (remarkably recovered from her appendicitis when Toronto was in town) berated someone out there we had dubbed Pee-Wee. One of the greatest segues in bleacher history flowed out there as "The Chicken Dance" began blaring out of the Stadium speakers just as Syphillis Joe finished singing a rousing version of, well, "Syphillis" and was in the midst of taking his bow.

This guy Dennis was bitching that with the game on the line the Yankees, in Paul O'Neill "we have the best arm in baseball, and he is on the bench!" And why? Gerald Williams came in for defensive purposes to spell Tartabull, while O'Neill was on the bench. Ah, memories of gripes gone by.

Ah, sad to say we must head to the field sometime. I earmarked this evening as a "bullpen disaster." Yeah, the bullpen choked it up. I fu*king hated that sort of thing and saw it way too often back then. Yankees were holding a 4-2 lead in the 9th when the funny business started. Thanks Bob Wickman! Wickman had thrown 2 scoreless innings after picking up for Key in the 7th, but his luck ran out and he was torched for 3 runs in the 9th, with a little help from Steve Howe. Roberto Hernandez then sauntered out to lock and load it for Chicago, and that was it for the Yankees, dipping my record in attendi during 1994 to 12-5.

In that 9th inning the Yankees not only went down 1-2-3 but it was the good old racist inning - K K K. Polonia (batting for G Williams), O'Neill (batting for Leyritz), and Darryl friggin' Boston (batting for Mike Stanley...why??) all pinch-hit in the 9th, and they all struck out.

On the Yankee side of things Danny Tartabull had a nice evening, going 2-4 with 3 RBIs and a 2-run jack. Randy Velarde led off and went 2-5 with a RBI and a run. The Yankee lineup looked like this - Velarde, Boggs, Mattingly, Tartabull, Leyritz, Stanley, BW, Gallego, and Patrick Kelly. The White Sox served up leadoff hitter Tim "Rock" Raines, 2B Norberto Martin, 1B Frank Thomas, DH Julio Franco, 3B Robin Ventura, RF Darrin Jackson, CF Lance Johnson, C Ron Karkovice (one of the ugliest baseball players ever, looked like his face was carved from stone) and SS Ozzie "The Manager" Guillen. Working the hill for the Sox behind Alvarez were one Dane Johnson (in his rookie campaign!), followed by that Texas cokehead Dennis Cook (who actually stole the win) and the aforementioned Mr. Hernandez.

We had a nice laugh at the expense of Mr. Lance Johnson, who managed to get picked off with no one out after he led off the 2nd with a walk from Key. Key uncharacteristically walked 5 in his 6 innings of work, prompting his hasty retreat. He also managed to make an error, throwing away a pickoff attempt with the lumbering Frank Thomas on base as if he was going anywhere, capping off a Hell of a night.

Time for the educational portion of this offering - another player we saw and may have forgotten about...probably by choice. How about 2B Norberto Martin? Career epitaph -1993-1999-. Never played more than 79 games in a season, and escaped with a nifty .278 lifetime batting average. In 880 lifetime at-bats he hit a paltry 7 jacks, and drove in 89. Stole 23 bases too. Yet another product of the "baseball factory" known as San Pedro De Macarais, in the Dominican Republic. A lifetime White Sox, in 1994 he made $112,000 with the team. Toast one to his memory!

The umpires who had the pleasure to work this game were Derryl Cousins, Rick Reed, Ted Barrett, and Jim Evans, and this tough loss took 3:20 to play.