July 17th, 1995 - Tom visits the box seats!

July 17th, 1995 - Yankees vs. The White Sox
"Yankees rule - White Sox drool!"

Well, not so much a BLEACHER memory...this happened to be only one of two games I remember where I sat outside of the bleachers from the timespan of 1992-2000 and beyond. I was on the third base line with my friend Ian and his crew. I am surprised I have ANY memory of this game, it was an 8PM nationally televised game, and apparently we were at Down the Hatch earlier in the day. When it came time to leave to head to the Stadium I was found sleeping in the bathroom. The girl whose leg I had been surreptitiously touching under the table that I was later told actually liked it had given up waiting for my return and left. Quite the long day as noted on here. I must have either been on work suspension again, or fired, as this was a Monday night game and beforehand I was pounding beers at the Hatch and not at work.

I made a few historical notes on here. First off, I was going to go see Type O Negative the next night. Saw them a couple of times, cant peg where this particular show was. Sadly we lost frontman Peter Steele earlier in 2010, as I prep to post this. There is a "this day in baseball" note that I must have stolen off the scoreboard, stating that on this date in 1990 the Twins recorded 2 triple plays in the same game against the Bosucks. Sucks to be them. And, in a final mention, Jason Isringhausen made his major league debut against the Cubs at Wrigley on this same night, pitching 7 strong innings but not garnering a decision. At the same time Jeff Suppan was debuting for Boston, and taking a loss at the hands of the KC Royals at Fenway. A historical day indeed!

The bleachers did make the scorecard, though, as I mentioned that you could certainly hear old Ali's bell "loud and clear." I also mentioned that I spent a lot of the game gazing wistfully at the bleachers, and imagining the capers going on out there from my pricey third base seats.

There was a kid learning the game out there around us...early on he hollered, "Frank Thomas, you stink!" That got some chuckles. Later on that same kid upgraded things to "Frank Thomas, you SUCK!" - that one actually got cheers from the crowd. Someone, and I actually HOPE it was the kid and not a drunken adult, came up with the remark, "Yankees rule - White Sox DROOL!" Thats a keeper, huh?

Another interesting note is a heated exchange between two beer vendors out there in the seats - looks like the old "territory encroachment" issue. I saw that once going on between two pretzel vendors outside the Stadium on the sidewalk, and the two of them actually started shoving and shuffling about in a grip before it was broken up much to our chagrin. We dubbed that incident "Pretzlemania!"

For everyone that is still to this day crowing about Don Mattingly for the Hall of Fame, I felt it necessary to mention on this evening that Mattingly had, to this point, a whopping 20 runs batted in in 212 at bats. He actually finished with 49 in 458....thats sort of sickly, and its sad what his balky back did to career that certainly was tracking towards the Hall.

At one point we were getting on that showboat, and current Chisox skip Ozzie Guillen, and he started in with the Mr. America muscle poses while standing in the infield, getting a guffaw and a nice hand from the crowd for his efforts.

Holy fu*k, this game must have ended early due to rain. The scorecard just stops in the 7th, and checking retrosheet it was indeed a 7 inning affair, with Wilson Alvarez getting the better of rookie Andy Pettitte, as the Sox carried the day 4-1. The anemic Yankee attack mustered only 2 hits, one of them being a Mike Stanley solo homer. The Sox managed 9.

Pettitte was up to his pickin' off ways, nailing Ray Durham who led off the game with a single to left, and then catching a sleeping Ron Karkovice in the 2nd. Karkovice should never have been on base in the first place, as Bernie showed some of that lack of hustle he exhibited here and there, meandering at his own pace on a catchable bloop. Its funny I was already bitching about it in 1995.

The Yankee lineup looked like this - CF Bernie, SS Fernandez, DH Leyritz, C Stanley, RF G Williams, 1B Mattingly, LF Velarde, 3B Davis, and 2B Pat Kelly. LOL @ Velarde in the outfield again, and Fernandez and Leyritz in the 2 and 3 holes. The Sox countered with 2B Durham, CF Johnson, 1B Thomas, RF Devereaux, DH John Kruk (lol), 3B Grebeck, LF Norberto Martin, C Karkovice (known to be the ugliest guy in baseball) and SS Guillen. If you stuck around long enough you got to see the illustrious Dave Martinez come in for Martin.

Hey, we are actually going to do a profile with a player some of you would remember! How about Craig Grebeck, that bastard. Had a career that stretched from 1990-2001, although he never managed over 301 at bats in a single campaign. For his career he snuck into 752 games, batting 1998 times. Managed 19 homers and 187 RBIs, posted to a .261 average. Played second, short, and third, and even took a shot at DH here and there. A pesky sort, fun to boo. Logged time with the Chisox (90-95), Florida (96), the Angels (97), Toronto (98-2000) and Boston (23 games in 2001) - the fu*ker was all over the place. In his career he had a nice ration in walk and K, walking 228 times and fanning 274. His page on baseball-reference actually gets some action, with 37,647 hits through 10/18/2010, so God bless him!

At 5'7 and 148 pounds, he was born in 1964 and signed as an amateur free agent in the year I graduated high school, 1986. He enrolled at California State University, which bought us a whopping 5 major league alum, including the world famous De Wayne Buice! Happy to have seen him, for sure.

The actual game itself was played in 2:16, I have no rain data although I now see a mention of "rain in the 6th" scrawled on the left margin, so that must have been what did us in. Seeing I did not keep much score on here, I may have went back to sleep following that grueling Down the Hatch showing. Only 22,707 were on hand for a nationally televised game, and your umpires on the evening were Dan Morrison, Al Clark, Larry Barnett, and Gregory Kosc.

Thanks for reading! We have a doozy lined up for tomorrow, and it is one that contains the first mention I have of the current bleacher legend known as "Pops."