Mets Opening Day 2017

April 3, 2017

We experienced a ballet of emotions over the course of the last two weeks with our teams' opening days, but we'll focus on the Mets right now and discuss the Yankees later this week. We've experienced things never before experienced on an opening day. Before we get ahead of ourselves, let's just get right to it. Last Monday afternoon was a lovely one. Sunny with just a slight breeze in the air. Lisa packed travel wine cups. We packed Dr. L and snacks. We hit the road around 11:15 for a 1:10 game start time. We arrived at Citi Field at 11:45. Again. 1:10 start time. We cannot stress that enough. Police officers denied us immediate access and detoured us, which was fine. That's happened before and usually, we're simply detoured to the other side of the stadium so we weren't concerned.

Slight concern began to set in when the cops kept waving us on as we drove by the US Open. And then the Queens Museum. Even more so as we navigated passed the World's Fair. Full panic set in as we headed into territory we never saw before. Eventually, the cops deposited us in one of the parking lots of Fresh Meadows Park (which we didn't know existed). It took us approximately 15-20 minutes to arrive at this destination. At the entrance of the parking lot, Lisa got into an altercation with the senior citizen monitoring traffic. She called Lisa, "honey." This was a mistake.
Lisa: "How do I get back to the stadium?"
Old Person: "Honey. Ya not goin' to the stadium."
Lisa: "Yes, I am. I don't want to park here."
Old Person: "Ya gonna park (sounded like pahhhhk) here. Ya gonna to take the shuttle to the stadium and when you get back, ya gonna take the parkway (pahhhkway) home." (please note: the shuttle stop was a half mile away from our parking space)
Serena: "How does she know what parkway we need to get home?"

After Lisa begrudgingly pulled her car into the lot, another senior citizen demanded that we pay $25. They didn't even discount the parking rate for us. At parking time, it was 12:15 pm. We needed a little breather, so we tapped into our awesome wine sippy cups and a bag of chips. Look at our nails.

At 12:45, we headed to the shuttle. We walked through a geese sh*t filled field in order to get there. The shuttle transported us back towards Citi Field. Ten minutes. No big deal. But guess where they dropped us off? Not at Citi Field. Roughly four blocks from the subway station, not even the gate. We've now seen where the 7 Line is parked and where the MTA offices are. No one ever needs to see that. This is photo taken halfway to the subway. Not the stadium. The subway:

When we emerged from the subway station, this is the sight that greeted us:

Hell on earth.  Lines. Lines upon lines of people. We thought we were being clever by circling around the entire stadium, but we weren't. We were not clever at all. The lines wrapped around the stadium and god knows where else. Our gate was the bullpen gate and our line was so long that it encircled McFadden's, the stadium dumpsters, and began in the parking lot. It was so crowded that it was hard to determine which line led to McFadden's and which line led to the stadium itself.

Sidebar regarding McFadden's: Citi Field should not allow non-ticketed patrons to park in their parking lot during prime games such as opening day, popular rivalry games, or playoffs. It's not fair that non-ticketed McFadden's customers took parking spaces that could've been made available to customers who actually purchased opening day tickets. For too much money. Especially since Citi Field has limited parking. There is only one lot. Once it's full, fans are sh*t out of luck. Have you ever been to Flushing? Tom Glavine was a liar. No one should ever experience Queens or get stuck street parking. Trust us.

Now rumor has it that the reason some teams have nixed the idea of "print at home" tickets is that the tickets are able to be scanned more than once. We cannot speak to whether or not this is true. We don't know. We've never tried it. We're a-holes, but we're not d*ckheads. However, that being said, it's clear that SOME people think it's a trick that works because while we stood on line near McFadden's, Serena watched several people enter the stadium through the bar's entrance and then pass their printed tickets through the fence to their friends waiting outside. While they may not have gotten into the game with these tickets, these individuals definitely contributed to the crowd control issues surrounding the stadium's exterior.

Once inside, we noticed this little addition:

Lovely touch. We also found this wonderful M&M bench. Note our awesome free giveaway socks courtesy of Serena's work mom.

At the top of the staircase, we stepped right into the supposed "standing room only" section. Mayhem. It looked like the scene from Independence Day just before the aliens attacked and the humans just stood around like jack wagons staring up at the sky. That's a sh*t ton of people just standing around in the walkways if you ask us. Let's call a spade a spade. Baseball stadiums should not offer standing room only tickets unless the venue also functions as a football stadium. Citi Field and Yankee Stadium cannot possibly accommodate a crowd size like Met Life Stadium can, for example. They're just not big enough. Most likely, a facility the size of Citi Field cannot provide the PARKING necessary to accommodate these extra bodies. That's right. That's another dig at the parking f*ck up.

This is a view of the crowd congregating around the food court as we used the escalator to get to our seats:

We reached our seats at 1:45. It was the top of the 3rd inning. Remember, we arrived at Citi Field at 11:45 in the morning. We sat at 1:45 in the afternoon. Perspective.

 

The wind was no joke up there.

The view from our overpriced seats was decent. And by overpriced, we mean that we spent $200 total for this view.

We received a visit from both Ginger Snaps and Old Man Ed. Neither of them bought us snacks, so we had to go get our own. Unfortunately, it was so crowded, that we couldn't deal with the concession lines, so we simply settled for the shortest line available to us. Which is why we ended up spending $13 on a boring, lukewarm cheeseburger/french fries platter. We ate it before we could take a picture of it, but we did take a picture of ourselves on the way to the concession stands, so we figured that would be a suitable substitute. Plus, you're not really missing much by NOT seeing our food because it wasn't that interesting and in this case, you get another photo of our kick ass socks.

After the game, we waited 15 minutes before being able to get onto the shuttle back to the car. Needless to say, we had a long day. On the upside, the Mets won 6-0.

 

Mets Opening Day 2015

April 13th 2015

So the plan was suppose to be for us to attend both Opening Days for the New York teams together. Unfortunately due to circumstances beyond the control of the ever powerful TBB this was not happening and Serena was no longer able to attend leaving me dateless. I was not dateless for long when my friend Laurie decided to join me for the game. Laurie is known on the blog as the Mets jinx. When she attends games they lose it's that simple and a known fact . So while I was excited to have her go with me a part of me knew this game could very well be a shit show. 

Tailgating is something that Laurie and I normally do when we attend games so we decided to go bright and early. I didn't want what happened to Serena and I last year when the stupid Cirque du so Lame crap took up half the Citi Field parking lot and we were unable to tailgate. It was a tragedy. Laurie said she would take on the food portion all I had to do was bring a bottle of wine and pack my amazing bucket grill that looks like nothing but I swear the food tastes delish on this rin tin tin . I picked Laurie up at 9:30 and when I bought the tickets I prepaid for parking to ensure I would definitely be in the lot. It is now $21 to park your car . What a rip off, but I promise I will save that rant for another time. We arrived at Citifield around 10 ish pulled into a spot and quickly started unloading my truck to start pregame festivities. Gotta give Laurie props I told her to bring it and she brought it. We had marinated skirt steaks, spicy chicken, hot dogs with all the fixings, chips , salsa, guacamole, onion dip, pickles, See our feast below.

                                                   

Everything seemed to fall into place perfectly until Laurie asked me to open up the wine. 

This is how the conversation went: 

Laurie: "Where's the wine opener?" 

Me: I don't know ? Which bag did you pack it in ?

Laurie: I didn't pack it. Why would I pack it you were bringing the wine?

Me: OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH Son of a b*tch 

Laurie: All you had was one job  !!!

As punishment I was sent off to troll around the parking lot looking for a wine opener. After a few rounds and weird looks I finally found someone with a wanna be Swiss army knife that had a cork screw contraption. It seemed we were going to have to Macgyver this bitch open. Thankfully the nice men next to us saw our struggles and gave a helping hand. In a matter of seconds and some overtime from the union workers our wine was open but there was a causality. It seems the wanna be Swiss army knife broke in the line of duty. Again to our rescue were our tailgate neighbors who fixed it just long enough for me to return it and scurry back before the people I borrowed it from realized it was  broken. If you are reading this and you are the one I borrowed it from I will gladly send you an autographed photo of the TBB  and a $1 that should compensate you for your broken thingy and troubles. As we sat eating and drinking a visitor arose form the sea of orange and blue tailgaters. It was Old Man Ed! He must of heard about our feast and part of me thinks he was comparing it to the  last supper he had attended back in the day. (cause that's how old he is)

I quickly noticed that is was 12:45 and we still had not even started to pack up . I told Laurie that we should start cleaning up because I did not want to miss the beginning of the game. My cries fell on deaf ears because Laurie continued to drink her wine and bask in the sun. So I apologize that I have no pictures of anything that happened before the game. You can send your hate mail to Laurie. I am disappointed that I missed it because I later found out that the Mets honored the families of the two NYPD officers that were killed on duty Wenjian Liu and Rafel Ramos. Liu's widow and Ramos' sons threw out the ceremonial first pitch and a moment of silence was held during the ceremony. There was a flyover  by the NYPD Aviation Unit helicopters and more then 150 officers rolled out a giant american flag. This is all compliments of Google because Laurie made me miss it . 

I got  cheap seats high so high I could high five Old man Ed's high school buddy Jesus if I wanted to. Despite being so far up  the view was pretty spectacular. 

The Stadium was packed . Rumor has it that the attendance was a whopping 43,947 which is the largest regular season crowd they have had since Citi Field has opened up. I probably should tell you something about the actual game. The  Mets were playing the Phillies and the pitching match up was Jacob deGrom and Aaron Harang. While watching the game I was scoping the crowd for a potential husband and I found this fan's homemade jersey pretty amusing so I figured I share it with you.

Around the 6th inning we decided to get ice cream . $6.50 for a freaking helmet cup which I proceeded to wash out with the intention to take home but I left it there. Does that really shock any of you reading this? Probably not.  It was a low scoring game, the Mets managed to scrape together two runs. Things did get hairy in the 7th but Kudos to TBB bestie Daniel Murphy for making a nice play . The Mets went on to win 2-0 and Laurie would like to redeem herself as not being the Mets black cat. It should be noted that she did attend the next night as well and they still managed to win. However since she has made two appearances to the games  we have been losing men left and right to the DL. Coincidence, I think NOT .  

Preparing for Glory

This is what is it's like outside, so we're blogging over the phone. Note that despite the asinine weather, we're still managing to blog. Also,we have no more furniture from IKEA to build, so we have no excuse.

We have some news. Albeit, not very exciting news.
1. Like last year, we'll be attending both Yankees' and Mets' Opening Days.
2. We're forming our own fantasy baseball league this year. We're done with this collusion business that's been plaguing our former league for years. We're moving on to bigger and better things. We're quietly amassing our league participants. Our goal is a 12-team league. We're seriously considering opening a few team slots to our followers, but we're concerned that you'll be annoying. Feel free to try and convince us that you won't be annoying.
3. We've decided to legitimately visit the Baseball Hall of Fame this year. We promise that this is the year. We will not fail you.
4. The New York media has inundated us with reports on Alex Rodriguez's progress during spring training. Unfortunately, there hasn't been a single interesting update. It would be more entertaining if they informed us how often he took a sh*t. No one cares that he's making friends. What a waste of a mobile alert (ahem, Sportscenter).
5. Tentative stadium tour 2015: Miami Marlins
6. We've started working out together on Sundays again. Watch out Instagram.

We intended to write an actual blog. Serena called Lisa. She logged into Blogger. The conversation turned to Mets' Opening Day (Old Man Ed is handling Yankees' Opening Day). It took Lisa twenty minutes to actually procure tickets. Fifteen of those minutes involved her selecting our seats. The final cost was follows:
Tickets: $39/each
Convenience Charge: $10.50
Parking: $21
Convenience charge: $1.00
Per order fee: $6.00
Grand Total: $116.50
Thank you, MLB, Mets, and Ticketmaster for continuing to bend us over a table. 

Somehow, during this transaction, we ended up discussing our fantasy league. Serena created our league. Then spent twenty minutes researching and creating various fantasy team names.Eventually, we invited two other people to join. The end.

Old Man Ed Better Pull Through...Or Else

We have some news to share with you. We think you might be excited. You might even wet your panties over it. We are going to Opening Day together. It'll just be the two of us for the Mets on March 31st, but for the Yankees' game on April 7th, we will have an old man with us. The tickets to the Mets are officially purchased, but we are not currently in possession of Yankees tickets. Old Man Ed assures us that he'll be getting them. This seems awfully familiar. Like the time Joel said that he'd be running in the Spartan Sprint and then never registered. He also never sent us a training program like he promised. Fail, fail, fail. If Old Man Ed fails to acquire tickets, we're blaming this on Derek Jeter. That selfish prick just HAD to announce his retirement. It's all about him. What an ass. He's just jealous of all the presents Mariano Rivera got last year. Our back up plan is that we will spend the game at Billy's. Lisa will rub up against guidos and Old Man Ed will pay for our drinks because he made promises that he couldn't keep. Either way, you will be getting an Opening Day blog post. Yet, another New Year's resolution checked off. It's only the beginning of March and we've already accomplished so much. No more Kitty and now Opening Day. Boom. Encouragement.

In other good news, St. Patrick's Day is just around the corner. Now that we have Instagram, you're in for a world full of hurt. Because we're going to make you laugh so hard, you'll piss yourselves. Of course, you'll also get an epic blog post.

Mets Opening Day

April 1st, 2013

After a long off season that dealt us with hurricanes and snowstorms of epic proportions. Spring has finally sprung and Baseball is back. Every year I look forward to attending Mets Opening day mainly because we leave the past behind us and any anger we have we try not to bring going into the new season. This feeling of forgiveness and acceptance usually only lasts about the first inning but we get an E for effort that day for trying. I usually go with super Mets jinx Laurie but she was a sell out this year and decided to spend the week lounging in the sun in another country. Fellow TBB Serena was not an option since the Mets and Yankees decided to be life ruiners and set the games for the same exact time making it impossible for us to attend both Opening Day festivities. Someone really needs to work on this teleportation sh*t. I decide to bring with me my dear old man. Pops joins us for Opening day and so my story begins.

We leave for Citi Field at 11:00 am for the 1:10 game against the San Diego Padres. I usually get to Citi Field around 10 am on Opening day and spend hours chugging beer and grilling in the parking lot but I knew tailgating with Pops was not an option. On the way to Citi Field disgruntle Mets fan that my father is starts with his disapproval of the Dickey trade. I try to change the subject and say “How many homeruns do you think we will see today Dad?” Dad says:” A lot from San Diego” Way to be optimistic I see where I get my sarcastic attitude from.

When I get off the exit to the stadium there are many officers of the law directing traffic. Pops decides to flag one over from doing his job to flash the officer a distant family members PBA card thinking that this will allow him to park in “Special Parking” FAIL! This is embarrassing moment number one folks. Embarrassing moment number two is not far behind. At the entrance into the ballpark while getting padded down by security Pops makes an inappropriate joke that I can not share but it did make the security guard laugh so no harm done. Our free giveaway is a magnetic schedule that I was not impressed with. In fact last year when the Mets emailed me a survey about the free giveaways I rated this giveaway a one. On a scale of one being the worst. Clearly my opinion means nothing. We stop on the main level to take this sweet father/daughter photo under the scoreboard and made sure to get the All Star Game sign it , cause that’s not advertised in every nook and granny of the stadium.( Insert your  awwwwwwwww! for the photo)

This is our view from our overpriced seats. They were not a bad view at all I just know that during the season these seats are $12 as opposed to the $64 you were charging them for Opening Day.

On the field before the game started they honored 500 first responders that tended to Hurricane Sandy victims. They included members of the Military, Police and Fired department.  In center field volunteers from Habitat for Humanity formed a house shape arrangement. There was also a moment of silence for both Hurricane Sandy and Newton Town victims .

They proceed to announce TOWSNBN and the 2013 Mets.

 Actress Emma Rossum from the television show Shameless sang the National Anthem. She did an amazing job. I was unaware she had such a beautiful voice. Some people have all the luck she gets to be hot AND talented oh and let’s face it she is on a hit show so she has money too! I’m so jelly as those annoying teenagers would say.

 

It is at this time that I should tell you that I bought myself a cool new camera with outstanding zoom. I like to think TOWSNBN just realized this. Look at his reaction of frustration to the news.

It’s about that time where my stomach decides that it needs food now otherwise there is no telling what will happen. I tell Dad that I’ll be right back that I am getting foods. Dad pulls $20 out of his wallet and says “Get me a hamburger and whatever else you want” My heart melts he has no clue what a wildebeest his daughter is furthermore he clearly does not realize just how much food is at the stadium. While I am away I am told that Rusty Staub threw the first pitch.

I get back to the seats to find my father not in our original seats and chewing some lady’s ear off about the Dickey trade yet again. She seems to agree with him. My father informs me that he moved so a family could all sit together. I got my dad his hamburger and I got a cheeseburger and a beer in an All Star Game collector’s cup (I should tell you that at the beer stand I see ASG Budweiser coming soon. I think to myself “Oooh a new beer!!” It takes me until Friday nights game that I realize ASG stands for All Star Game.) Dad asks for change. I don’t have the heart to tell him that I actually had to put $6 in. After I confess Dad reminisces about when he would go to Shea Stadium and how hot dogs outside the stadium were 10 cents and hot dogs in the stadium were 50 cents. Well at least there is consistency in the rapping of wallets over the decades. Pops and I are not impressed with the burgers at all! They were burnt and small. I got the burgers at one of the concession stands by our section that’s what I get for being lazy and not making the trip down to the Shake Shack.

It’s finally game time and the pitching match up was Johnathon Niese for the Mets and Edinson Volquez for the Padres. At Daniel Murphy’s first at bat “Happy Birthday “was song to him. It was orchestrated by The 7 Line and his army. Well played!! I tried to video tape it unfortunately the two drunk boys in the back round over power my efforts but I definitely heard it faintly from my seats.

The Mets scored the first run on Ruben Tejada’s RBI double in the 2^nd and John Buck scores making it 1-0. Niese singles bringing Tejada home and the score is now 2-0. My father and I look at each other in amazement.

In the top of the 3^RD San Diego gets on the board when Carlos Quentin singles on a ground ball sending Chris Denorfia home. It’s now 2-1.

In the bottom of the 3^RD Myrlon Byrd Singles and TOWSNBN scores it is now 3-1

Lot’s of hitting is going on I am getting so confused I look around to make sure I was at Citi Field watching the Mets. John Buck then singles and Byrd scored making the score 4-1. We continue to scratch our heads and rub our eyes all while enjoying this strange feeling of winning. I decide I am still hungry and send dad on a run to get me more beer and a hot dog. He looks at me and shakes his head as he says to me “This is why your not married you’ll eat the poor guy out of house and hold”

In the bottom of the 4^th more hitting is had for the Mets. Murphy singles on a line drive Collin Cowgill goes to 3rd and Niese scores it is now 5-1. TOWSNBN grounds out and Cowgill comes home 6-1. Byrd singles to left field and now the birthday boy scores. Score stands at 7-1. I am speechless at this point. I have no words. The lady my dad was chatting it up with insists my father is good luck. I contemplate leaving him in section 531 and forwarding his mail to flushing.

It is now the top of the 5^th inning and my father would like to leave the game. He is cold and complaining about the wind. In his defense he was just getting over bronchitis and he has this thing with traffic he kind of hates it.  I buy my time by making ridiculous bets with him. I tell him if Lucas Duda hits a homerun we can leave. I know this is not happening so I am safe for now. Look at what “A DUD “did in the game at this point. (For those who don’t know my pops says Lucas Duda is A DUD and that’s what his name is spelled backwards) Ike Davis is not getting off the hook so easy. Look at what both clowns contributed so far.

In the top of the 6^th Yonder Alonso of the Padres tacks on another run by hitting a homerun it is now 7-2 and I decide to cave in to my father’s demand after the 6^th inning is over. We walk back to the car blast the heat because being so close to god in those seats we need to defrost. As we defrost and pull out of the stadium we hear uproar. My dad assumes the Mets bullpen has f’ed it up and it is now a tie game which would make sense. I turn the radio to the game and find that Collin Cowgill had just hit a grand slam. I turn to Dad and snarl at him. He says “Just think it’s going to look so much better when you see it tonight on the replay “

THE END!

What’s Your Fantasy?

Last week, Team Transformers rocked the house at the Workout for St. Jude’s charity event. To celebrate our success, we asked you who your favorite Transformer was. Apparently no one who reads this blog watched or cared about the Transformers because only two people voted. 1 person voted for Bumblebee (who happens to be Serena’s favorite) and the other person voted for Sideswipe. No one voted for Optimus (which we find a little bizarre considering he’s the Autobots’ head honcho) or Gears.

As spring training comes to a close, the news becomes less exciting. It’s no longer about who the up and coming fresh faces are or which veterans are looking for one more (or two more) good season(s). It’s now about who will start the season on the DL, who Opening Day pitchers are (CC Sabathia, duh. Like we needed an entire spring training to figure that one out), what teams’ finalized lineups look like, and who you drafted for your fantasy baseball team. Which brings us to today’s nonsense. Yes, another blog post in which we discuss Tigers Love Pepper. You know you love it. The good news, folks, is that Lisa took a puff off the pipe too. She’s now a fantasy-addicted a-hole. Her team name is The Asstastic Bunch (Couple’s Retreat, anyone?). Even better is that in our league’s first round, Tigers Love Pepper (team image is Alan,Stu, and Phil standing in the elevator after waking up following a night ofdebauchery. Alan is carrying Carlos) is playing The Asstastic Bunch (no team image as of yet). So far, we’re still friends. Would you like to hear our lineups? And pitching rotations? You’re getting it whether you say yes or no, so you might as well mentally prepare yourself with “yes.” Keep in mind this was an auto-draft. Meaning that we went to sleep Monday night after inhaling wings and woke up with a populated lineup on Tuesday morning.

The Asstastic Bunch’s Lineup:

JP Arencibia
Miguel Cabrera
Michael Cuddyer
Evan Longoria
Erick Aybar
Jacoby Ellsbury
Giancarlo Stanton
Desmond Jennings
Brett Lawrie
Eric Hosmer
David Ortiz
Lucas Duda
Ian Desmond
Matt Joyce

Lisa is on the fence about David Ortiz. For starters, she (like everyone else in New York unless you’re a moron who doesn’t know anything about baseball) hates him. Second of all, how much playing time is he really going to get? Third of all, can he still hit? Fourth of all, he’s fat. Fifth of all, he bedazzles everything and it’s just really hard to respect a man who owns a Bedazzler.

Tigers Love Pepper’s Lineup:

Joe Mauer
Ike Davis
Dustin Ackley
Alex Rodriguez
Jimmy Rollins
Shane Victorino
Melky Cabrera
Austin Jackson
Justin Morneau
Brennan Boesch
Jemile Weeks
Logan Morrison
Yadier Molina
Edwin Encarnacion

Serena will admit that she did not auto-draft Justin Morneau. She initially had Carl Crawford. While she realizes that she’s taking a risk with Morneau because he’s coming off back and head injuries, he’s been swinging the bat well lately and Crawford’s starting the season on the DL. She’d rather have a player give her the chance to get numbers than have a player who can’t do anything for her. If Morneau does well, it’s a win. If he doesn’t, she’ll drop him for someone else. No big loss.

TAB Pitching:

Felix Hernandez
Ian Kennedy
JJ Putz
Chris Sale
Yu Darvish
Gio Gonzalez
Shaun Marcum
Anibal Sanchez
Clay Buchholz

TLP Pitching:

Justin Verlander
Brandon McCarthy
Andrew Bailey
Jason Motte
CC Sabathia
Madison Baumgarner
Chris Perez
James Shields
Matt Cain

Mamadukes’ friend, Roberta (owner of Riverdale Rebels…also no team image) managed to draft the entire New York State, including Billy Joel. Something’s up here. We think she bribed Serena’s cousin, Joel, the league commish. Mamdukes drafted Timmy, which is deeply and profoundly upsetting to us because he is an Honorary Traveling Baseball Babe. One of us should’ve gotten him. Mamadukes claims she wanted Verlander and that she’d give up Timmy for Verlander, but that’s just ridiculous. Silly, Mamadukes. Everyone knows that Serena and Verlander are Taco Bell soulmates. They’re MFEO (Made For Each Other).

For the next two weeks, instead of a joint blog, you’ll be getting solo posts. Next week, you’ll have the privilege of reading about Lisa’s Mets Opening Day experience and the following week, you’ll get Serena’s Yankees Opening Day experience. Hope you don’t miss our joint buffoonery too much.

2012 Stadium Tour Planning

With the added Wild Card round going into effect this season, we asked if the new round would be good for baseball. 4 of you actually think that yes, it will be because “it’ll give the Pirates a chance to finally make the playoffs.” We disagree with you, which doesn’t really shock us. It seems that we’re never on the same page as you. And are you kidding us right now? The Pirates have an idiot for a starting pitcher who bunted his eye out. There’s no way they’re winning anything this year. 2 of you agree that “it’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of.”

Our 2012 stadium tour trips are officially booked with the exception of a few slight details. Tickets have been purchased for the May 26^th Braves/Nationals game at Turner Field, July 27^th Blue Jays/Tigers game at Rogers Centre, and August 31^st Nationals/Cardinals game at Nationals Ballpark. Airfare has been booked for Toronto, but not Atlanta and at this time, we have no place to stay while in Toronto. Which might be awkward, but hopefully this problem is solved shortly. When we head down south to see the Braves, we’ll be staying with Lisa’s family and when we drive down to DC, we’ll be stealing Chris #1’s mustang convertible and re-enacting Aerosmith’s Crazy video. Can you guess which one of us is Liv Tyler and which one of us is Alicia Silverstone? Go on. Guess.

On the local front, Serena will be attending Yankees Opening Day courtesy of Mamadukes as part of her birthday celebration and Lisa will be attending Mets Opening Day with Bad Luck Laurie. Just like in past years, we’ll be reporting on these games separately in addition to our joint weekly blog. Lastly, while we haven’t picked which Mets game we’ll be going to (most likely with Auntiedukes as we promised her a visit to Citi Field), we’ll be attending the May 19^th Yankees game against the Reds. You might be wondering why we chose the Reds game. Usually, we pick the Twins (Justin Morneau and Joe Mauer), the A’s (to make fun of certain players), or the Red Sox (when we’re in the mood to be miserable). Trust us when we say that there was a method to the madness with this one. It started off with Serena checking the promotional schedule. May 19^th is Cap Day. Serena also noticed on her calendar that May 19^th is Armed Forces Day. This naturally got her thinking. They’ll be sexy men in uniform at this game. Even better, the caps will probably be army-themed. She always wanted a Yankees army-camo hat. This highly intelligent way of strategizing was all she needed to convince Lisa to join her on her quest. Lisa had no idea who the opponent was. The fact that Joey Votto is the Reds’ first baseman is just a bonus for her.

Additional news about the 2012 season is that Tigers Love Pepper is back in action. You’re thrilled, we can tell. Lisa is that’s for sure. Another season of Serena sending Lisa random, panicked texts about needing her to login to Serena’s Yahoo account to update her pitching staff while she’s at work...or at Target. Another season of Serena complaining about pitchers not going deep into games and batters not putting up quality offensive stats…none of these players actually playing for the Yankees. Another season of Serena dominating entire conversations discussing a team that doesn’t actually exist…kind of like The Avengers or The Justice League. Yup. Lisa’s thrilled.

Sorry that there are no baseball notes to report on this week. There was literally nothing that we found interesting. However, what may interest you is the fact that we’ll be going to Atlantic City for two nights this week with Jess to celebrate Serena’s birthday. There’ll be suits, cigars, scotch, other assorted booze-related items, gambling, and hopefully, lots of guido fist pumping. The guido fist pumping is more for Lisa. Serena’s hoping that they find a laser tag place that’s open late so that we can play drunk and suited-up laser tag, truly channeling the great Barney Stinson. This compels us to remind you (and most importantly, us) of the few tidbits we learned during our first visit to Foxwoods because as we all know, Lisa is bound to gamble our gas money away on a Village People slot machine.

“On the road again. We can’t wait to get on the road again. The life we love is traveling to baseball stadiums with each other.