"I am not Red Foley!"
Ah, when I first pulled this one and saw the magic words DOUBLEHEADER I thought it was the infamous doubleheader where I stumbled into game ONE drunk, and ended up sleeping on the sidewalk outside between games. The look of horror on peoples faces when I needed help to get to my seat before the 1st pitch of what would end up being an 7-9 hour day was priceless.
But alas, that doubleheader is to come, in some later year. I did not have time to get drunk for this particular one...I actually was at work (keeping score at my desk as a warmup to the actual Stadium task) until the top of the 3rd came to a close, then I hopped the subway from 23rd to the Stadium until the top of the 6th.
This said, lets get it going. I should say I TRIED to keep score at work during my stint with the mannequin company - I got through the top of the 1st, but was on a client call with a firm called Orange Display for the entire bottom of such. I did make a note that a loud "asshole!" chant made its way over the radio airwaves, which I found as funny then as I do now. With Susan Waldman in the Yankee radio booth i always hope to hear it a lot, as maybe it will drown her out. Lets pick up the action upon my vaunted arrival, in the 6th...
I got inside at 6:13 and it was PACKED, much to my chagrin. The Yankees were in business and Mike Stanley cranked his second of 2 jacks in that 6th inning to push the Yankees ahead 7-5. At 6:28 I heard the first "Jump!" chant towards the upper deck. "Jump! I need a good laugh" someone cracked with glee.
Not much else for game 1 as I was too busy elbowing my way into a seat, a rarity at the time, and catching up on the scorecard. There was a tactful "take off your dress" command scrawled on here, and a mention that Jerry Garcia had died. More on that on tomorrows installment of Scorecard Memories.
Mariano Rivera, in his rookie campaign, started the first game and had a sluggish outing. He ended up going 5.2, giving up 5 runs (4 earned) on 7 hits and 3 walks. This is funny, though, someone actually had the foresight to have a "Mariano jersey" on, and it went over as I said then "very bad." Imagine! But the very bad in this game really came from John Wetteland, who coughed up a 4 run lead in the 9th and took the loss. After Bob Wickman got the Yankees initially in trouble Wetteland came in and finished the job. Considering Stanley went 3-4, hitting 3 homers and driving in 7, we ended up marking "Stanley should scalp Wetteland!" Someone did one better and wrote, "JOHN WETTELAND SHOULD KILL HIMSELF."
Aside from a notation that Manny Ramirez flipped us the bird from out in right, there was not much else to report off of this scorecard. I will wrap it up with your lineups on the day....for Cleveland game 1 saw CF Lofton (batting .323 coming in), SS Vizquel, 2B Baerga (batting .328 coming in), LF Belle, DH Murray, 3B Thome, RF Ramirez, 1B Sorrento, and C Alomar Jr. Chuck Nagy started and got the win and was battered, and Jim Poole swooped in to get the win in relief, with Jose Mesa closing it out for his 31st save on the season. The Yankees countered with 3B Boggs, CF Bernie, LF O'Neill, RF Sierra, 1B Mattingly, DH Strawberry, C Stanley, SS Fernandez, and 2B Kelly.
GAME 2!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Maybe I will find some jokes on here...by the time this game started the Yankees were now down 6 1/2 in the division, so we were sort of on the glum side. I was holding court between games, and making enough of a nuisance of myself that some fan behind me shouted, "sit down, John Kruk!" So yeah, I was tagged with that nickname for a day back in 95, being a fat guy with a scruffy face and all.
My friend from home in Deer Park, Tom, was on hand and he bought a particularly nasty looking hot dog from one of our vendor friends. One of those ones that are shriveled and veiny. It was promptly dubbed "a hot penis on a bun." It looked so bad that someone actually offered up, "hey, I will pay you NOT to eat that." He ended up eating the thing to a cacaphony of groans.
Our good friend Gang Bang Steve was sitting out from keeping score during game 2, due to apparent transgressions while holding the clipboard during the opener. He actually wrote, in explanation, "Steve will not be keeping score this game because of his mushness the game before." Even though Steve did not keep score he did get his hands on there at one point to write "John (whoever that is/was) calls me a fu*king homo" - Steve
At 9:24 in the bottom of the 4th Darryl Strawberry launched his first Yankee home run, a moonshot into the upper deck no less. That was duly noted, and a lot more fun to note than "John Wetteland has just blown a 4 run lead - 7:18."
I have it on record that our very own Justin sang the "doo da, doo da" song, choosing the "takes it in the mouth!" over the "takes it up the ass" version. Good job, Sir!
There was a Doogie Howser lookalike on security...where they got these guys we will never know. By 10:37 we were singing "Horses Ass" at HIM. Apparently during this game "Tom gets really pissed drunk" so even though this was not the day where I totally sleepwalked through an entire doubleheader, I was apparently as hard to deal with as usual. I keep forgetting beer was still being sold, so you could actually track my downward progression on these scorecards as games went on.
At one point there was a touching Mickey Mantle package played on the scoreboard, causing one of us to ruminate, "Keep Mickey Mantle in your hearts, even though he killed someone for that liver." Even though he was the Mick, it did not go unnoticed that he hopped to the front of the liver line.
Being drunk, I was quick to complain about things that sucked, and proclaim them as such on the card. On this one I see "Telemundo sucks" and "pig latin sucks." Another interesting observation that was made was the claim that some guy out there was "as gay as a $3 bill."
From the things we dont usually see department there was an intentional walk IN THE TOP OF THE FIRST INNING. Sterling Hitchcock got himself into trouble again, and with 2 on and 2 out he intentionally walked Manny Ramirez. The strategy actually worked as Jim Thome came up with the bags juiced and whiffed to end the inning.
I mentioned a couple of games ago that I had a propensity to wear batting helmets at this time. Well, the brown strap inside was loose, and we ended up pulling it out. Now, SOMEONE MUST REMEMBER THIS GIMMICK. This may have been the WORST gimmick of all time out there. I would allow whoever wanted to take a shot to whip me in the back with this strap. One time before a game I bent over and someone wacked me about 10 times with this strap. I found it funny and actually based it on what was going on in ECW wrestling at the time. Others didnt see the humor, nor watch ECW wrestling. There was a girl that used to sit out there named Jessica, a lot younger than us, who came up to me one game and said, "you should stop that. It looks terrible, and we dont want you hurt." Her father ended up adding that I was "better than that" during a quiet moment on the bleacher line outside one Saturday morning. Talk about a joke going over badly!
Sometime during this game someone borrowed the scorecard and pointed out something that was scored wrong. Drunk off my ass by this time I sort of snapped at him, "who am I, Red Foley?" Everyone kept the peace, but it stuck in my craw and elsewhere on the card I wrote "I am NOT Red Foley" for all to see. Speaking of Red Foley and the scorekeepers, in the Indian first they called an error on a shot off the bat of Baerga, but I refused to call it an error cause "I thought it was a hit." So on my scorecard it was.
The Yankees lost this one too, putting a real damper on the day. 5-2 Indian victory, with Chad Ogea of all people getting the win. Both Kenny Lofton and Herbert Perry (lol) had 3 hits for Cleveland, with Perry scoring 3 times. 5 different tribesmen drove in a run. Hitchcock took the loss for the Yankees, with help from Dave Eiland, Steve Howe, and Joltin' Joe Ausanio. Outside of Strawberry's homer, there was no juice from the Yankee lumber.
Your game 2 lineups looked like this - CF Lofton, SS Vizquel, 2B Baerga, LF Belle, RF Ramirez, 3B Thome, DH Winfield, 1B Perry, and C Tony Pena. The Yankees countered with 3B Boggs, CF Bernie, LF O'Neill, RF Sierra, 1B Mattingly, DH Strawberry, C Leyritz, SS Fernandez, and 2B Velarde. Mesa closed out another one for Cleveland (save 32) and was set up nicely by Paul Assenmacher.
Keeping tradition, I will knock out a quick profile. Why not Chad Ogea? Pitched from 94-99, and escaped with a win-loss record in the black at 37-35. An unsightly 4.88 ERA though. In 1995 he actually went 8-3, and 10-6 in 1996. In 632 lifetime innings hurled, he gave up 672 hits, walked 214, and only struck out 369. He had 94 starts in 129 games, mostly with Cleveland. He spent one year elsewhere, with Philly in 99 where he went 6-12 with an ERA of 5.62 (following up a 5.61 campaign in 9 and that was the end of the road for him.
Born in 1970, he was a 3rd round draft pick in 1991 and a product of Louisiana State University, which also bought us Albert Belle, Paul Byrd, Randy Keisler, Ben McDonald, Clay Parker, and Ed Yarnall. His page on baseball reference has had 34,350hits as of 10/28/2010. Happy to have seen him!
As for the day of the doubledip, the Yankees had an attendance 48,115 - by far the largest I have recorded in a while. Game 1 was played in 2:58 and game 2 was completed in 3:09. Your umpires on hand were Ken Kaiser, Derryl Cousins, Tim Welke, and Joe Brinkman.
Thanks for sifting through all of this!
HEY OGEA!
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