NO MYSTERY OUTS!!!
Ah, a new month. Yankees were now enconsed in 2nd place, 4 1/2 behind Boston with an albeit sluggish record of 43-42. This was my 16th game of 1995, and I had seen the Yankees play to a 10-5 clip. An important night in Yankee history, as this evening Ruben Sierra made his Yankee Stadium debut in the pinstripes after coming over in a trade (along with the long lost Jason Beverlin) for Danny Tartabull on July 28th. It was nice to see the much maligned Tartabull gone, and interesting to have an old foe like Sierra on board. We had been carrying along a running feud with him for years out there in the bleachers.
My freshly married female friend Jamie did things backwards and had a "last girls night out" AFTER her wedding, and bought along 4 girls that night on their way somewhere else afterwards. I wrote on the top of the card "There are 5 lovely women here - all whom would sleep with me" - in actuality, not one of them even entertained a thought of such. As Jamie worked at West Point and these girls were transplanted wives of cadets, they were from backwoods states like Mississippi and Kentucky. They signed the scorecard with things like "it was better than what I expected" and "You're ugly and your mother dresses you funny." I am glad they had such a good time.
One of Jamies friends, a drunkard named Mary, had a handmade sign that was confiscated. What was on that sign is lost to history. Not much on here cept a lot of mentions of drunks dotting the crowd and I am not even talking about our section. Not only did a bunch of hopped up drunks try and start the "Gang Bang" song before being shouted down, at one point they started ripping into old cowbell King Ali, with a virulent "Fu*k The Bell!" chant. They figured if they could not have any fun, no one could.
Ali ended up putting down the bell for a while, and started waving around a "Mets Suck" sign. I suppose that was Mary's sign, looking back on it. It seems to be a running gimmick back then of people drowning Nardi Contreras, the Yankees otherwise nondescript pitching coach, with adulation. He could not make an appearance on the field without getting a loud ovation from the bleacher denizens. When pressed, people gave reasons like "he's Spanish" and "he's funny looking" as to why.
The game on the field was loony, with some references to wacky home runs and plays on the field dotting the scorecard. The old "put a tent over this circus!" refrain was hollered towards the field on more than one occassion. The "throw it back!" chants on opposing home runs were by now the norm, but after a Greg Vaughn blast to center leading off the 4th I took the occasion to scrawl, "no one could throw it back...he hit it so Goddamned far." And ring the bell! We saw an inside the park fu*king home run! Whoo hoo! Problem was it was off a Brewer bat, David Hulse's. With a LOT OF HELP from Randy Velarde, who either played matador or dancing partner with the ball as it bounced down the leftfield line. Fantastic! I took time to note that it was indeed the first inside the park home run I had ever seen live.
And I think it may be the only one...a couple of years later the Yankees had one, but I was downstairs in the beer line. That same week I missed a triple play while, you guessed it, standing on the beer line.
Howard the anti-comic was at the height of his "popularity" around this time. Seems that every game a snide remark like, "oh, no, here comes the anti-comic!" dots the scorecard. At one point Howard was walking around asking "who has a phone?" He wanted to place a bet. A few people had one, but no one fessed up to it. He then started looking for change to use the phone downstairs, and, you guessed it - a few people had some, but no one fessed up to it.
While all this was going on a lucky Brewer fan actually had his shirt thrown over the wall. From what I remember, he was taking enough abuse to where he took off the shirt and draped it over his shoulder, hoping to qeull the rising tide of malice. Someone simply swooped it off with a flourish, and chucked it over the fence with a bigger one.
One of our more clever ditties was being sung with fervor, dedicated to Brewer RF Matt Mieske. Sung to the "Mickey Mouse" song, it goes "M I E....S K E....Mieske sucks some di*k!" At times, we changed it up and the chorus finished with a more palatable "...what a piece of shit!"
Honestly nothing else here - hey, it was a Tuesday night, those were always sleepy. Gang Bang Steve was on hand, however, pitching a hand with the scorecard. And between the two of us, for the FIRST TIME IN DOCUMENTED HISTORY there were ZERO MYSTERY OUTS! Holy shit, I did not know this holy grail of the scorecards was actually out there. (editors note - there is one of these, and it is a bit above, right here in the 1995 chronicles) And it was a wacky game too, a 7-5 Yankee win. There is, however, a crossout in the 4th inning that took place at the time, right after Vaughn's home run. A Matt Mieske walk. I dont know if the play was originally missed or what, but it was caught at the time and the card is flawless outside of that. Hooray us!
As for the game, Mariano Rivera notched the W after he came in in the 5th inning for Andy Pettitte. He was rapped around though, giving up 3 earned runs on 3 hits and 2 walks in his two innings of work, but it was enough. PS - lol @ the idea of Mariano coming in in the 5th. After Pettitte's and Rivera's shacky body of work, Wickman and Wetteland wrapped it up for the Yankees, with Wetteland notching his 19th save.
As for the bats, Bernie went 3-5 from the leadoff spot, scoring twice. Tony Fernandez, Russ Davis, and Pat Kelly batting 7-9 all had 2 hits, with Fernandez driving in a deuce. Your Yankee lineup read CF Bernie, LF Velarde, 1B Leyritz, DH Sierra (in his first home Yankee at-bats - he ended up going 0-3 with a sac fly) C Stanley, RF G Williams, SS Fernandez, 3B Davis, and 2B Kelly.
The esteemable Brian Givens started for Milwaukee and went 6 ho-hum innings before Angel Miranda shuffled in and got lit up for the loss. Jeff Bronkey (lol) finished up on the Brewer hill. On the offensive side of things, the Brewers tagged 3 home runs off the Yankee pitching, with the Vaughn bomb, the Hulse inside the parker, and a shot by Jeff Cirillo. They managed 7 hits off Yankee pitching on the night. The Brewer lineup looked like this - SS Listach, 2B Cirillo, 3B Seitzer, LF Nilsson, DH Vaughn, RF Mieske, 1B John Jaha (lol), CF Hulse, and C Matt Matheny, young in his career.
Between those vaunted 3 Brewer pitchers, it was hard to come up with who to profile, but lets go with Mr. Givens (although Mr Bronkey is interesting in that he was born in Kabul, Afghanistan)
Givens plied his trade in the majors for the Brewers for only two seasons (95 and 96) after being a 10th round draft pick in 1984 by the New York Mutts. He got out of the game with a 6-10 record in 23 starts, getting torched for 148 hits in 121 innings, to a tune of a 5.86 lifetime ERA. He walked 61 and fanned 83, not the best of ratios. He was pounded for 14 home runs. This night in 1995 was one of 19 starts he made on the year, and he worked 6 innings, giving up 4 runs but escaping without an L. Born in 1965, he was once traded for Mario Diaz. His page on baseballreference has all of 9.383 hits as of 10/22/2010 and you can sponsor it for $5! I am very proud to be able to say I saw this guy ply his trade.
27,106 came out on the 1st to see the game, and it was played in 3:04 and arbited by Jim Evans, Brian O'Nora, John Hirschbeck, and Rick Reed.
Thanks for reading!
HELLO JEFF BRONKEY!!!
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