"I dont work security anymore, so i can legally beat your ass!"
Dont remember doing a Texas Rangers game through all of these "scorecard memory" posts, but here they are now, the bastards. This will be a quick and easy one - I was drinking heavily on this day and there is not much that can be salvaged.
A Sunday game. I would normally arrive at the Stadium before 10AM and start drinking my own stash either up against the Stadium wall where I would hold court, or across the street at the Yankee Eatery, then owned by Greek Steve. Sometimes I would even crack a beer or 3 on the D train subway ride up from lower Manhattan.
"Go to Mickey Mantle's - just don't get the liver!" was the crack scrolled across the top of the scorecard. The main topic of discussion though was some impending rain, and wether or not we would "beat it." I guess we did...this scorecard is stained with splotched black ink all over, burying some old jokes forever, but I dont see any squishy water marks. Although there was no rain, there is a couple of mentions of lightning, noted as early as the top of the 5th, and as late as the 8th. Must have been a real nice day.
Jerk McDowell was on the mound, coming off of his recent finger job to the crowd. He was hooted and hollered during his 6 innings of sluggish work (4 earned runs) but he got out of there with a win, and did happen to be 8-6 through it all at the end of the day. In honor of his appearance, I sketched a nice cartoon of a hand flipping the bird. Ever the artiste.
Old cowbell King Ali was looking way dapper. I described his getup as a "flamenco outfit." At one point someone hollered, "hey, Ali, take off that polyester shirt and do the bell!" I am noticing that I am mentioning Ali's wardrobe on seemingly all these Sunday scorecards, so these outlandish getups must have been his church duds.
We had a "former" Yankee Stadium security guard in our midst enjoying the game as a fan, and he even signed my scorecard. I have a wealth of these worthless fan signatures accumulated over the years. He had been fired at some point, and took some joy in riling up his old cronies out there. I remember once he and I almost came to blows over something or another, and he went on a long speech about how "I am not working security anymore, so I can legally beat your ass." I think it was Howard the Anti-Comic who retorted, "um, you cant LEGALLY beat anyones ass" and he would know, as he was a drunken lawyer.
It was the one year anniversary of Don Mattingly's 2000th hit, which took place on 7/23/1994, and that was aptly noted. Our rapper friend Melle Mel was in attendance, doing his Stevie Wonder impersonation and regaling us with stories about his crony Bow Wow, whoever the Hell that was.
Slacker Jeff was ambling about, and at one point he kicked over someones beer and that raised a few hackles. He was one of those guys who would shrug something like that off and not offer to buy the guy another one. I know this cause he did it to me more than once.
Was this hat day? It may have been, as there is a notation on here about "hats all over the field." I wonder if these were the Shop Rite ones. Yeah, Yankee cap giveaways with the Shop Rite supermarket logo on the back being bigger than the NY on the front. For years after that infamous cap day I would run into people around the city wearing a nifty Yankee hat, and then they would turn around and the back would be dotted with a really stupid and garish looking Shop Rite logo. Gang Bang Steve became quite adept during cap days as using some sort of sharp instrument to methodically slice off the offending sponsors logo while the game unfolded.
Some old guy walked up with a scraggly beard and unkempt white hair, causing someone to ask "where do you get a hairdo like that?" Someone else answered, "fall asleep for two years and you wake up with it."
One of the all-time funniest PA announcements was made over the course of this game. Around the 4th inning Bob Sheppard came on and recited a lisence plate and then pleaded, "would you please report to the parking lot...your motor is still running."
We were having our own brand of fun in the bleachers, and we even got Ugly Otis Nixon to turn around from his perch in center and give us the ole Blackjack, otherwise known as "the middle finger."
In one of the few shockers that we have seen out there in our time, Luis Polonia reached the rightfield bleachers on a home run poke to lead off the Yankee first. Who would have thought he had it in him? Rooting around on here I see that Gang Bang Steve (or as he was known then, Steve) was a "guest scorekeeper." It was not too long where that tag was dropped, and he simply became one of the permanent keepers of the card.
Your lookalikes on the afternoon were a faux Al Goldstein, who was the man behind Screw Magazine and the popular Midnight Blue public access offering which gave anyone with a tv and an antenna in NYC nude women dancing around, and WWF wrestler Mabel.
The Yankees rolled in this one, with a cool 11-4 victory, with Polonia, Stanley and Mattingly all going deep. Stanley, Paul O'Neill, and Bernie all had 3 of the Yankees' 18 hits. I mean, holy fu*k. Mattingly ended up scoring 3 times. The guys getting rapped on the Rangers mound were the inimitable Roger Pavlik, one Terry Burrows, and that circus clown Roger McDowell.
Your Yankee lineup looked like this - LF Polonia, 3B Boggs, DH James (a fixture by now in the 3 hole), RF O'Neill, 1B Mattingly, CF Bernie, C Stanley, SS Fernandez, and 2B Pat Kelly. James and Kelly were the only Yankee starters to not muster a hit.
As for Tex-ass, they offered up a lineup of CF Nixon, 2B McLemore, 1B Will Clark, DH Juan Gone, RF Mickey Tettleton (lol), C Pudge, LF Rusty Greer, 3B our old friend Mike Pagliarulo, and SS Benji Gil. Gil actually went 3-4 with 3 runs plated for Texas, the only note of mild interest. McDowell was the Yankee starter facing them from the hill, with backup on the afternoon from Bob Wickman and Joltin' Joe Ausanio.
For the profile why not go for Terry Burrows. He had a tough time of it, in his 4 years of active duty. Working for Texas, the Brew Crew and the Padres, he left the game with an ERA of a sickly 6.42 in 68 innings of work (50 games, 3 in starts). He was racked around for a whopping 85 hits in that time, walking more than he K'd at a 38-35 ratio. Nothing good came out of this. In this year of 1995 he was just pushed around, posting a 6.45 ERA in 44 innings of work. He managed to bribe his way into 28 games before being released before the start of the 96 season.
In an interesting sidenote after starting 96 with the Brewers and being released, he was scooped up by the New York Yankees. He finished 96 in their system, but they released him too. Born in my birth year of 1968, he was a 7th round draft pick by the Rangers in the 1990 draft. He was a product of McNeese State University, which bought 7 players to the major leagues including Ray Fontenot, Bobby Howry, and the infamous BJ Waszgis. Mr. Burrows' page on baseballreference.com has had all of 8,823 hits as of 10/21/2010, which I believe is the lowest I have seen for someone with multiple years of service. This said, I am very happy I got to see this man ply his trade.
The game pulled a crowd of 32,765 on a threatening Sunday afternoon, and they saw a game played in 3:19. Your umpires on the field were none other than Jim Evans, Larry McCoy, Rick Reed, and John Hirschbeck.
Hey, thanks for reading!
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