Hip Hip Parade!

Before sharing our eyewitness account of the Yankees Ticker Tape Parade, let’s discuss last week’s poll results. The turn out was pretty abysmal with only 6 votes. We’ll give you a reprieve this week because you were probably too tired from staying up all night, watching the World Series to vote. You better make it up to us next week. We want at least 20 votes (one for each of our handmade cancer ribbons…which is another story entirely and one we won’t get into here. Please see our Facebook page for more details). 4 of you agreed with us and voted for New York, the city that never sleeps. No one voted for Philly, which doesn’t shock us. What DOES shock us is the fact that New York did not win unanimously. 1 of you voted for Oakland, who didn’t have a chance in hell in going to the post season back in April and 1 of you actually voted for Dublin, a city without a baseball team. Don’t get us wrong, Dublin is probably a rockin’ town, but it still doesn’t have a baseball team, much less a team in the World Series. Besides that fact, how many of you are taking the day off from work to fly to Ireland to witness this imaginary World Series parade?

Now for the moment you’ve all been reading for: The Traveling Baseball Babes reporting live (or rather, post-live) from the 2009 Yankees Ticker Tape Parade. Bright and early, we grabbed Dunkin Donuts coffee and the 6:59 train out of Bellmore into Penn Station. Once there, we met up with Tech Support Sean and his trusty sidekick, Steve. Tech Support Sean works in the financial district on Fulton Street, so he escorted us on the 2 train to Fulton and left us at a prime position against a police barricade on Liberty and Broadway (which situated us approximately in the middle of the parade route) before heading back to work for a meeting. It was 8:00. He said he would meet us once his meeting ended. Please note: the parade was not scheduled to start until 11:00. As you can see in the picture of us on the train below, in addition to our Yankees gear, we rocked our Oral and Testicular Cancer hats!

There was continuous stream of photographers and news cameras while we waited. Since one member of the TBB (who we shall not name specifically) was supposed to be in bed with “stomach issues,” it was imperative that she not get photographed. In an effort to avoid being recognized, this particular TBB disguised herself as Angelina Jolie. We think it worked well, though no one asked her for her autograph which was a little weird. Maybe we were surrounded by a lot of Team Anniston members?
Initially, the crowd wasn’t too bad. However, by 10:00, it became impossible to move. Our fingers toes were numb. As you can see in the picture below, we had become on intimate terms with our surrounding fans just because of proximity. We became worried that the crowd would become too dense for Tech Support Sean to get through to us.
Time passed extremely slowly. Thankfully, the people with us happened to be very funny. One guy in particular called out repeatedly, “Where’s Jimmy Rollins? Game 5! Jimmy Rollins!” A beach ball was tossed around to keep everyone’s spirits up in the cold.
Bank of America was on the corner that we were stationed at. Not only was the entire staff standing at the windows the entire time (and most likely not fielding your customer service calls), but they continued to dump huge balls of shredded paper out of the windows. This isn’t something that they should be criticized for. EVERYONE dumped paper from the window, but they were not even creative or smart enough to pull the ball apart. As a result, fans below were literally pelted with chunks of shredded paper. A bit awkward to say the least. Another bone that we had to pick with them was the fact they also threw whole pieces of paper out of the windows (which alone, wasn’t enough for us to criticize them for). A girl next to us grabbed one of the pieces and looked at it. Someone’s account and personal information was printed all over it. Um, hello? Confidential? Shouldn’t that be shredded? The guys with us began cheering for TD Bank, which made us laugh.
Fans picked up some of the ball clumps and tossed it around the crowd. As you can see, we got the brunt of one particular clump.
Finally, at about 11:30, the first signs of the parade began to show near us.
At this point, it became extremely difficult to maneuver. Even though we were practically in the front row, we were still forced to pass the camera back and forth to get optimal picture positions. EVERYONE wanted to get good pictures, therefore everyone tried to jockey for the best spot. We could only get one arm up at any given time. Thank God we had Steve. He was our buffer between us and most of the people behind us. Had it not been for him, we may have been steam rolled and crushed against the barricade.
MVP Matsui and the trophy were among the first of the floats to pass by:

As the parade continued, we saw other assorted people that we didn’t know in addition to the players and their families. Brett Gardner followed Matsui shortly after, photographing us photographing him:
Throughout the entire event, people continued to throw toilet paper and confetti from the windows of the surrounding office buildings, creating a blizzard effect.
AROD apparently traveling on Jay-Z’s float, but we didn’t see him (perhaps he is the man in the jazz man hat and sunglasses?):
AJ Burnett and Jose Molina shared a float (though we only got AJ in our picture):
Nick Swisher offered us the Swisher Salute (which we failed to get a picture of as well):
YES game commentator, John Flaherty stopped by in a pretty sweet ride with his kids:
CC Sabathia and Mark Teixeira were very enthusiastic and fun to greet as they drove by:
Derek Jeter got one of the bigger receptions by the crowd in our area, but that isn’t really a surprise:
We got a great shot of Andy Pettitte (if we do say so ourselves). Andy rode the float with Jorge Posada, who we were unable to snap a picture of. Both men were also a lot of fun to cheer on. They greeted both sides equally and had a lot of energy like CC and Tex.
Naturally, the man closing out the parade was none other than Mariano Rivera:
Before turning to leave (or try to leave), we took one last photo of the paper snow flakes filling the sky:
Shout out to Tech Support Sean who bought us lunch before sending us on our way to Penn Station. Steve was nice enough to escort us and wait until we boarded our train before returning to the Port Authority to grab his own bus back to New Jersey. We roll with such wonderful peeps in our entourage. We grabbed the 2:06 train back to Long Island. It was a relief to sit in the warmth after standing for four hours in the cold. The strangest parts of our bodies hurt! Our hamstrings and calf muscles were extremely stiff from being restricted for so long. Our knees were excruciating. Having played competitive sports her entire life, Serena had never experienced this kind of pain in her knees before. Our lower backs were crying too (presumably from standing). We finally pulled into the Bellmore train station around 3:00 completely exhausted, but ready to blog.
Last but not least, today’s baseball notes. Surprisingly, there’s a lot. A lot of nonsense. The Chicago Cubs are expected to bid for the 2014 All Star Game, which will coincide with the celebration of Wrigley’s 100th anniversary. Derek Jeter and Albert Pujols won the Hank Aaron Award for best offensive players in their leagues. Aaron himself presented Jeter with his award prior to Game 4 on Sunday. Pujols was unavailable as he was recovering from elbow surgery. We find this a bit perplexing. What does an elbow have to do with being able to stand on a baseball field and receive an award? Jeff Francoeur underwent surgery on a torn ligament in his left thumb on Monday. It is anticipated that he will be ready for spring training. In the bone head of the year move (Milton Bradley, you can now step down), the Philadelphia Inquirer has apologized for mistakenly running an ad in Monday’s edition congratulating the Phillies for winning back to back World Series titles. At the time, the Yankees led the series 3-1. Wow. That is embarrassing. In more Cubs related news, Ted Lily had athroscopic surgery to clean up debris (What IS that? Like scrap metal? How does one get debris within their shoulder?) and labrum fraying (which sounds extremely painful) in his left shoulder on Tuesday. He should be able to begin throwing again in four months. In true Plaxico Burress style, Vincente Padilla is recovering from a bullet wound in his leg after a target shooting instructor accidentally shot him on Wednesday. At blogging time, the YES Network announced that JJ Hardy was traded from the Milwaukee Brewers to the Twins for Carlos Gomez.

Billy Idol summarized the day best with his #1 hit, “It’s a nice day for a ticker tape parade!”