May 16th, 1995! The All-Minority Game!

May 16th, 1995 - Yankees host the Indians
"If I'm not here, I'm somewhere else"

Take me out to the Ocean, reprise! My 4th game of the year, I missed a couple of scorecards as I had other things on my mind...I was on a "suspension vacation" from my job...told to go home and call back in a week to see if I still had a job. I waited it out, called back, still had a job, went back, and was fired for good soon after.

I actually have the semblance of a scorecard from a week earlier that I wont touch, 5/7/95 against the Brew Crew, cause I was so drunk it is veritably unreadable. I cant even tell you who won the game by looking at it although I made a go of scoring the whole thing my own self. And I actually did not have a printed scorecard for it, I wrote in the lines myself, on lined paper....considering how drunk I just admitted to being, you can imagine what this looked like...

But on to baseball! I dubbed this "The All Minority Game" cause by the end of things the Indians fielded a field full of all hispanic and black men, including pitcher Jose Mesa.

We still were mired in the midst of awful Yankee crowds, coming off the strike. While I described the crowd as "all ten of us" we were actually just a bit under 20,000. I mentioned a couple of us were drinking our own beers, smuggled in and hidden inside of ice cream bags. Its funny - we joke about how the Dominicans scampered in like roaches when Manny Ramirez was in town, well - no joke, on this night Crapman the heroic vendor was selling little Dominican flags out of his crapcart.

Queen Bee Tina was in a crabby mood again, hollering at someone who compared Don Mattingly to Michael Jordan. In her eyes, he superceded all that. She also fought a Howard Stern lookalike who had a few negative things to say about Dave Winfield, who was now DHing for the tribe. Tina did do something funny, though, shuffling about in what she called an imitation of "Baerga's fag walk"

Old Ali the cowbell King was also taking heat, as once again he was lethargic with the bell and actually did not clink and clank until the 6th after being harrassed all game. People would really get mad if there was no cowbell. I remember him simply being annoyed at the crowds many nights, and he despised being told when to ring the bell. Sadly, looking at the date here it was almost exactly a year later that he passed away.

Your regular inane discussions were rippling through Section 39. We had a discussion about major league players who were "killed" We chatted about our exuberant support of WWF superstar Bob Backlund's run for President of the United States, at least in principle. And while discussing who would play who in the bleacher movie, Marlon Brando got the nod for the Fat Daddy Chico role. And even back then central casting had Lucille Ball or Rosie Perez playing the crabby Tina.

There was a kid out there waving around a Domingo Jean poster which he must have pulled from Yankee magazine. Since bad pitchers were in the air, we even found time to kick up a "Start Ausanio" chant.

The Yankees were down early, when Mike Stanley blasted one to right to make it 3-1. "A nice solo homer to cheer things up" George muttered. A couple of innings later Pat Kelly sailed one into the sky and with it aloft George cracked "that ain't going nowhere" only to see it fly over the centerfield wall. There were no less than 6 home runs hit in this game, which saw the Yankees fall 10-6, dropping my 1995 mark to 2-2.

Funny how some things dont change. Manny Ramirez dropped a fly ball and got tacked with an error...with him right in front of us manning rightfield, we had a good time with him regarding that flub.

Jimmy Key, now in the Jim Abbott role as always being on the hill with me on hand now, started for the Yankees and was walloped again. If all I had to go by were some of these scorecards, I would have thought that Key sucked. Smacked on this Tuesday night for 11 hits in 5.1, and 7 runs. Yankee killers all Albert Belle, Ramirez, and Paul Sorrento went yard for Cleveland, with that danger to himself and others Belle scoring 4 times and driving in 2. All 9 Indian starters got a hit on the night, with your starting lineup featuring our good friend Kirby in CF, SS Vizquel, 2B Baerga, LF Belle, 1B HOF Eddie Murray, RF Ramirez, DH Winfield, 3B Espinoza, and C Tony "Penis" Pena. Yes, one pregame as Pena ambled around the outfield he was hooted with a "Tony Penis" chant, and he stopped, grabbed the family jewels, and said something to the effect of, "Ive got your penis right here!"

For the Yankees Mike Stanley, Bernie Williams and Pat Kelly went deep, with Stanley and Mattingly having 2 hit nights. The Yankees mustered 8 hits off starter Chuck Nagy, who was out after 5, that Texas cokehead Dennis Cook, Eric Plunk (who we said takes longer to warm up than an Eskimo) and Mesa. The Yankee lineup on this May evening was LF Polonia, SS Fernandez, 3B Boggs, C Stanley, 1B Mattingly, DH Tartabull, RF Dion James, CF BW, and 2B Kelly.

After Key got whomped, he was relieved by Scott Bankhead....yes, THE Scott Bankhead, and John Wetteland, who gave up 2 9th inning runs in the rare mopup role.

For the profile I got to go with Bankhead, even though he was a Yankee at the time and I usually take it around the league instead. Thing is, till I noticed his name on this card dredging around years later I had completely forgotten about his stint with the Yankees, and still don't remember it even though it happened and lasted a little bit.

He managed to throw in 20 games for the Yankees in 95, and that was a wrap for him and his major league career. He was released on my birthday of that year, July 25th,which made it even a happier one, after posting a 1-1 record with a 6.00 ERA. For the career itself he rang up a lifetime mark of 57-48 with a respectable 4.18 ERA in 267 games (110 in starts) from 1986-1995. I best remembered him from his stint with Seattle (87-91) but he also hurled for KC in his rookie campaign, the Cincy Reds (in 92, his best season, and only season in the NL) and the dreaded Red Sox preceding his Yankee stint. He struck out 614 and walked but 289 in 901 innings of work. Born in 1963 in Raleigh, NC, he was a product of the University of North Carolina, which also bought us the likes of Clyde King, Paul Shuey, and BJ Surhoff. How can you not have been proud to have seen this man ply his trade!

As for the 16th day of May, 1995, the Yankees fell in 3:00 in front of a scant showing of 18,246, and your umpires on hand were none other than Dan Morrison, Al Clark, Ted Barrett, and Gregory Kosc.

Thanks for reading!