July 12th, 1995! "OJ was set up"

July 12th, 1995 - Yankees host the Royals
"There's an asshole in every corner, and there's one right there"

A Wednesday evening in the Bronx. Yankees came in floundering in 4th place, 7.5 games off the mark, looking up at the 1st place Bosux, the Tigers, and the Orioles. My good friend Ian was out there. Or it may have been my ex-roomate, Ian. There was AN Ian there, all over the scorecard, keeping score and telling jokes but I am not sure which one from my past it was. They are both Met fans, so the note "Ians favorite player ever - Keith Hernandez" is not a valid clue. The comment "Ian would trade Patrick Ewing for the future" however, leads towards the jolly Ian a bunch of Bleacher Creatures came to know in time. Also, the drunken scrawls on here are also more likely to have come from him, and not my staid carrot juice drinking roomie at the time Ian.

How is this for a zany comment - on the subject of O.J. Simpson Queen Bee Tina swore "they set him up. Its all a set up." I wonder what she thinks now, 15 years down the line. Whatever the case, this caused my friend Ian to snap, "she's nothing but an OJ lover"

Tina was on this evening - at one point she pointed at a guy having too much of a good time and observed, "there's an asshole in every corner, and there's one right there."

Danny Tartabull was really hearing it from the hometown faithful. After striking out in the 2nd he slunk back to the dugout with a tremendous serenade of "DDAAAARRRYYYLLLL" ringing in his ears. He heard it all night, so it was a good thing he was DH'ing and not manning rightfield.

Going by the notes on here it appears someone representing ESPN came out there to visit, and cut to us during the game....I have a note that "we were on ESPN" attached to the 6th inning, and another note that the "NFL guy gives us free beer - never seen that before" - I dont know who the NFL guy is, but I do remember Rich Eisen being out there when he was there, although that was a few years later and he certainly did not buy us any beers when he was.

I was doing well on the free beers...by the 4th inning I had been given 3. From exactly who, I dont know. But God bless them. Peering around this scorecard it seems an old gimmick was bought back, the fan autograph. Some guy named Chris, looking at his looping sig, signed and attached "the guy known as Bill" so Walkman John in later years inexplicably being known as "Chris" by Statman is not the first case of mistaken identity out there in the bleachers.

Whichever Ian it was made an observation that "Roy White looks somewhat Chinese." Speaking of Roy White, I remember one game where Sandy, who "knew" Roy White, called him from out in the section and ended up passing me the phone. I said something like, "hello, Mr. White. It was a pleasure to watch you play." and he said, "why, thank you very much." and that was that. Exciting stuff!

There was a bit of a ruckus in the box seats to our left caused by the presence of a Mutt fan. He was spotted and duly disposed of by the chanting from our section - when he started hamming it up and making muscle poses and the like security rushed the scene and that was the end of the evening for our Met fan friend. I have no idea if this was a "sock night" but I did mention on the card that I was indeed "hit by a flying sock" in the 9th inning. I hope it was sock night, the idea of someone taking off their shoe just to peel off a sock to throw at me unnerves me.

I also mentioned I was live on the air on 102.7 WNEW "again" that morning - a few days earlier I had won a contest which had me come in to the studio during the Pat St. John morning show to scratch off $100 of instant scratch-off lottery tickets on the air. I remember getting up there and figuring they were going to stick me in a side studio and cut to me a couple of times during the show, but after talking to Mr. St John (who still mans a mic for 101.1 WCBS to this day) and producer Mr. Marty for a little while before 6AM they decided to have me seated in studio with an open mic, free to talk whenever (but they did give me the shhhh sign during serious parts of Donna Fiducia's news reports, like grisly death)

I ended up winning around $140, which is not all that impressive considering I had 100 tickets to scratch through. I was having a good time in the studio, making fun of people stuck in traffic and just carrying on my own brand of stimulating conversation. Well, earlier on this day, as promised on the air during my first appearance, I came back with "breakfast" for the morning crew, which consisted of egg sandwiches and a case of Heinekin. It was a pain in the ass lugging that case of bottles from my apartment, too, at 5:30 in the morning. I remember Jim Monaghan, the sports guy running the board, cracking one open and enjoying that course of the meal. I became quite the morning show celebrity on that station over the next few years, between these appearances and my regular call-in stint to the Steve Mason morning show, but more on that in due time.

Anyhoo...the only other things of note on here is a nod to Russ Davis' "384 foot home run" in the 2nd inning, a few "what the fuc*k happened there?" remarks attached to mystery outs, a mention that Ian was stepping on seats and getting heat for it, and a ridiculous key and symbol system as to who was keeping score during what inning. Considering it was only myself and Ian that evening doing the scorecard, I dont understand the purpose for a new mention in the margins every time one of us kept a different innning, but no matter.

As for the game, it was another easy Yankee win. This was getting to be quite the habit around then, at least the last 3 games I scored. Yankees sailed to a 9-1 victory, behind solid pitching by Andy Pettitte who gave up 1 run on 6 hits and a walk in 8 innings before Scott Bankhead, who was certainly a busy man out of the bullpen in 95 even though a bunch of us had no idea of it in later years, finished it up.

Bernie Williams, back to leading off, went 3-3 and scored twice, and Jim Leyritz drove in 4 runs from the 2 hole. Davis had the only Yankee home run, and the Yankees mustered 11 hits on the night. KC managed but 6, with no player having more than one. The starter and loser was Chris Haney, who was out by the 3rd, having surrendered 6 runs. He was followed up by ex-Mariner and now at the end of the line Dave Fleming, Dilson Torres (lol!), Mike Magnante, and Hipolito Pichardo.

Your lineups looked like this - for the Royals you had CF Coleman, 1B Joyner, DH Chris James, 3B Gaetti, RF Phil Hiatt, SS Edgar Caceres, 2B Chris Stynes, CF David Howard, and C Pat Borders. Holy fu*k, how did the Royals ever win a game??? The Yankees offered up CF BW, C Leyritz, RF O'Neill, DH Tartabull, LF G Williams, 1B Mattingly, SS Fernandez, 3B Davis, and 2B Pat Kelly.

As for the profile, what the Hell, lets go with young Mr. Torres. He was another "one and done" - 1995 was the body of his major league work. On this night in June he pitched 2 scoreless innings, but he was tattered throughout his short tenure. He wrapped it up with a 6.09 ERA in 24 games (2 starts), getting clocked for 56 hits and walking 17 in only 44 innings of work. He struck out 27, but gave up a sickly 6 home runs. He also hit a batter (I hope the batter charged the mound) and hurled a wild pitch. His record in the major league encyclopedia will always read 1-2, with no saves to his credit. Born in 1970, he was an undrafted free agent out of Venezuela, but he was no Rich Garces. He did, however, make $109,000 in 1995. His Baseball-Reference page had been viewed 8,779 times through 10/15/2010 (8,770 times by people with the last name Torres, 8 times by people with the last name Torrez, and once by me) - I am happy to have seen him, and hope you take a moment to remember him today.

This was one of the quicker games I seemed to attend, played in 2:26, in front of a boisterous crowd of 23,252. Your umpires on hand were no less than Rich Garcia, Dale Ford, Larry Young, Mike Reilly.

Hey, thanks for reading!