Last week, Lou Piniella retired from baseball earlier than expected due to his mother’s deteriorating health. Because of this, we asked if your day to day was impacted by his departure. Of 8 total votes (much better than last week, by the way. Nice job, guys), 5 people voted for, “The Cubs still suck.” Wow. That’s amazing. Apparently our readers are as bitter as we are. Right on. 1 person voted for “When did he leave? How did I miss that one?” We don’t know how you missed this one. Are you unfamiliar with the concept of Sports Center? The remaining 2 votes went to “tragic stuff,” which brings us to our next question. How many of you noticed that we quoted the character, Lou from Major League II? Be truthful. Thankfully, no one voted for the choice, “Who?” We would’ve found you and shanked you had you voted for that.
We took the subway out of Forest Hills into the city in order to get to the Yankees game. We learned our lesson from last time and avoided using the LIRR, actually SAVING money. Excitingly,
we filmed seeing Yankees Stadium for the first time after emerging from the subway platform because we know how much you’d love it. Don’t pretend like you don’t. We know you better than you think.
Since we got to the stadium by 4:00, we decided to hit up the Hard Rock Café for a drink…or two.
We ended up getting seats beneath Elton John, which was ironically our TBB Super Hero of the Week. We thought it fitting. We also wanted our own Statue of Liberty crown. Where does one get one, do you suppose?
Lisa tried to order 2 bottles of Coors Light. Lou, our waiter, informed us that they didn’t have Coors Light. Serena tried Blue Moon. Nope. None of that. WTF? Do you HAVE beer? Is this a bar? What kind of non-alcoholic establishment is this place? Cos ‘ we don’t DO non-alcoholic. Lou assured us that beer was available. He suggested a variety of light beers as a Coors Light substitute and Shock Top as a Blue Moon alternative. Lisa went with Bud Light and Serena suspiciously agreed to try this so-called Shock Top.
Surprisingly, in case you’re wondering, Shock Top with orange really does taste like Blue Moon. So kudos to Lou for the recommendation. We ordered Spring Rolls with tasty homemade spicy salsa for $9.95. For those of you interested in checking the Hard Rock, the menu prices are not entirely unreasonable. Expect to pay the prices of an Outback-type restaurant.
At 5:00, the gates opened so we headed inside. When walking through the entrance, we noticed large familiar boxes awaiting us. We exchanged looks of shocked delight. How did we NOT know about a free giveaway? Then the death blow was dealt. The delectable blue limited edition Yankee Ty bears were only for that stupid 14 & under crowd! What the hell?! That’s ageist! Pissed off, we went down to field level to annoy the Athletics during batting practice.
In addition to trying to find Craig Breslow and Vin Mazzaro in a sea of green and gold, we experienced the
best seats of our life. So…this is how the rich live, we see.
We even to seem to look more attractive in these seats. That’s how spectacular they are.
After the A’s cleared the field and we were thrown out of the section by the Seat Nazi, we walked over to the food court in hopes of interviewing a few Yankees fans enjoying the delicious meals offered by the new-but no longer as new- Yankees Stadium.
Again, when interviewing, we had some audio issues. To be fair, it IS difficult to compete with the Yankees’ PA system when all you have is a flipcam at your disposal. To ease whatever difficulties you may have in hearing what’s being said or asked, the gist of our questions is basically as follows:
*Is this your first time at Yankees Stadium?
*(If yes) What is your favorite food here?
*What are you eating?
*Would you let me try some?
First up is Lisa’s interview with who we’ll refer to as
“The Family.” “The Family” consists of Rachel, Adam, and Steven.
Just a few tables over, we met
Tracy and Cathy. As you can see, Serena actually ate some of Cathy’s food while Lisa chickened out. Guess what? The French fries from the Johnny Rockets booth are awesome. Since the PA system seemed to be drowning out the conversations with each other, we figured it best not to continue to interview people, so we chose to go to our seats instead. Besides, it was nearly game time.
Our pitching matchup for the evening was Phil Hughes and that smokin’ hot Vin Mazzaro. We understand that he looks like a swollen version of Ernie from Sesame Street in this picture, but we assure you that in person, he is quite molestable.
Immediately following the lineups, the customary Star Spangled Banner was played. Lisa
filmed the peaceful homage. Side note: Phil Hughes threw his warm up pitches to Metallica’s “King Nothing.” Please, please, tell us that he picked this song himself because he climbed the ladder of respect in our book with that selection.
Down to business. Mazzaro had a few problems in the first inning. Okay, he had problems in most of the innings he pitched, but the first one was the worst. To lead things off, he put the first 3 batters on base, which could be kind of uncomfortable for A’s fans…or A’s defense, management, etc. At 7:27 pm precisely, Papa L. called Lisa and said, “You should go home now because the Yankees already have bases loaded. They’ll definitely win.”
Robinson Cano hit into a double play, but at least Brett Gardner scored. We’d like to point out that Gardner, like Jeff Francouer, came to the plate to some horrendous sounding music. Brett, look at Jeff now. Have you learned nothing from his example? ANYWAY, back to the game. Jeter scored on an error to the second baseman hit by Nick Swisher. Mark Ellis fielded it cleanly, but lost the ball in the transfer from his glove to his throwing hand. Jorge Posada hit a triple that scored Swisher, however Jeff Larish’s throw from left field beat Posada to third by a mile. The third baseman dropped the ball when applying the tag. The official scoring was ruled an RBI triple, but we feel that it should’ve been an E-5. The inning ended with a 3-0 score.
In the bottom of the 3rd, Swisher hit a 2-run homerun just over the right field wall.
Perplexingly enough, Michael Kay’s dumb face appears on one of the side scoreboards when someone hits a home run. Why? What purpose does he serve? He didn’t hit the home run and he’s not attractive. So what the flying f? Serena was incensed when she took this picture. She likes going to the games because she doesn’t have to see or hear that fool.
In the bottom of the 4th, it became clear that we were present for the next edition of the Home Run Derby. Curtis led off the inning with a solo home run.
Mark Texeira hit a 2-run home run shortly after, making the score 9-2.
FINALLY, Mazzaro was mercifully removed from the game in favor of Boof Bonser.
Phil Hughes was relieved by Chad Gaudin in the bottom of the 5th and we were relieved by Premio sausage sandwiches. Oh, how we longed for the goodness of their taste (FYI: they’re now up to $8)
We decided to eat at one of the little bars that line the concourses so that we could continue to watch the game and not have to carry our packages back to our seats.
Returning to the seats was a bit miserable. There was very little relief to the humidity and sweat pooling between our breasts and beneath our arm pits. Thank god our deodorants smell nice. As you can see in this picture, our makeup had started to melt off by this point.
Thankfully, the rest of the innings went rather quickly and soon, we had the pleasure of seeing Mariano Rivera close out the game.
The final score was 9-3. Here are the winners congratulating themselves on a well-executed offensive slaughter:
Here are the losers taking the walk of shame from the bullpen:
We made sure to take our final picture with the field behind us before leaving:
The air conditioned subway ride home was way easier than leaving a crowded parking garage at the end of a long, hot, tiring evening at the stadium. We recommend it to anyone who can get to a subway train easily. Plus, the $2.50/trip fare is vastly cheaper than $5.50/toll ($11 roundtrip), plus $19 in parking. Just sayin’. Don’t we look happy to be out of the heat?
Baseball notes: The Chicago White Sox claimed Manny Ramirez off a waiver on Monday. The Dodgers are receiving nothing in return, but let’s be real here. The White Sox obviously did the Dodgers a favor because all Ramirez does is take up space in the outfield where a legitimate player could be and actually add defensive value to the team. It is expected that Ramirez will act as a DH for the White Sox, who’ll also be acquiring the rest of his salary, which comes to approximately $4.3 million. The fact that he’s monetarily worth that amount makes our asses twitch.
In Sunday night’s 5-3 win over the Red Sox, Carl Crawford hit his 100th home run in front of a home crowd. This homerun allowed him to move ahead of Fred McGriff into third on the Rays’ all-time homerun list. He has also become just the 8th player in MLB history to reach 100 homeruns, 100 triples, and 400 stolen bases. However, Crawford doesn’t want to be classified as a power hitter. “Speed is always going to be connected to me…every now and then, I can sneak in one of those (home runs) in,” he’s quoted as saying. We think it’ll be a mistake if the Rays choose to let him go at the end of his contract. His all around athletic prowess qualify him for TBB Super Hero of the Week.
Just when you think that Mets couldn’t be any dumber, on Tuesday, they dealt Jeff Francouer and his terrible music to the Rangers in exchange for infielder Joaquin Arias. Okay, so they had an overabundance of outfielders, but we know of one outfielder on the Mets that would have been great to dump on his ass. Not mentioning any names, but it sounds like Barlos Celtran.
Johan Santana’s injury situation is a bit perplexing. Santana referred to it as a strained left pectoral muscle while pointing to the area where his chest meets his shoulder. However, Jerry Manuel pointed to his bicep when discussing it. Strange. When a team spokesman called it a pectoral strain (as per Santana, mind you), Manuel joked that he’d never been good at anatomy. Oh, boy. Regardless of the confusion, Santana is classified as day-to-day and will travel with the team to Chicago.
Before signing off, we’d like to thank our interviewees for taking time out of their feeding to agree to speak with us and allow us to post them to our blog. They were wonderful sports about it. Especially Cathy, who allowed Serena to eat her fries.
"The TBB on fire. The Yankees on fire.We both feeling hot, hot, hot. Yankees fans all around us feeling hot, hot, hot. What to do on a night like this? We are sweating. We can't resist. We need a nice cold drink. So we go rum bum, bum, bum. Yeah, we go rum, bum, bum, bum. Feeling hot, hot, hot."
No comments:
Post a Comment