Rain Out

So Serena found Guido-Fest 2012 near Yankees Stadium last week and asked if you thought Lisa would ditch the May 19^th Yankees game to spend the rest of her days rubbing up against guidos. Only 2 of you bothered to reply and both of you agreed that Lisa will not be leaving Guido Mecca ever. This means that Serena will be attending the Yankees game alone…which is kind of sad and pathetic. Is there anyone out there that would be willing to sit for a full 9 innings with Serena and eat hot dogs? Maybe drink a little beer? No one seems to think that Lisa will be so overwhelmed by the onslaught of fist pumping that she’ll literally combust and need to be escorted from the bar.

Allow us to share with you our Sunday evening. There is no baseball. It’s pouring out, so we can’t even walk to the bar like we’d planned. Though technically, Serena has more booze in her fridge than food, so we’re not sure why we’d even need to bother going to a bar. We’ve just wasted several hours being sucked into the Real Housewives of New Jersey marathon instead of blogging. Serena turned off the television when the Real Housewives of Atlanta’s Reunion special came on in an effort to promote a more efficient work environment. Now all we hear is the pitter patter of the rain on the roof and Lisa’s complaints that Serena took away her only happiness by turning off the television.  Even as Serena types this, Lisa is still muttering about the Real Housewives and how she’s definitely going to watch “Don’t Be Tardy for the Wedding.” This has turned into an all too depressing affair of hoodie sweatshirts and listening to sad, poetic music like “Sometime After Midnight.” There is one funny factoid about tonight’s rainout that makes us laugh and that is the fact that since Roberta’s entire fantasy lineup is made up of the New York Mets and Yankees, she had no one to start today and Lisa’s “The Asstastic Bunch” finished Week 3 out by demolishing the Riverdale Rebels. Insert evil, victorious laugh.

Now we’re drinking hot tea, which is less sexy than sucking down a cold one at The Main Event and perhaps chowing down a tasty burger. Such a lame Sunday.

For just two minutes, let’s talk about Barry Zito. We’re flabbergasted. Where in the hell does he get off pitching like a jack wagon for all these years and then suddenly pull out of his ass a complete game shut out? What’s even more confusing is that the performance was apparently not a fluke! He’s continuing to perform up to his contract…so far. He pitched a solid 7 innings in his second start and 5 innings in his last start against the Mets on Friday night. He has an ERA of 1.71 in 21 innings pitched with 10 strikeouts. What is happening here? What in the hell did he do in this offseason that is so different from past offseasons that he’s now able to pitch again? We know he got married and we know that at this wedding, he sported a comb-over. Is married life really treating him this well? What is his wife made of? Beer and hot wings?? Oh, wait, no. That’s what OUR husbands are going to taste like…she probably tastes like sugar and spice and everything nice.

This weekend was the celebration of Fenway Park’s 100^th birthday. How did the Red Sox commemorate this occasion? By sucking the fat one. And we mean fat. How do you blow a 9-run lead in the 7^th inning? How? That’s worse than anything we’ve ever done and let us tell you, we’ve done some pretty stupid sh*t. Well…you know. You’ve read all about it on this blog. In conjunction with its birthday celebration, we’ve been seeing a lot of brouhaha on television and in the paper about why Fenway is so great. Its nostalgia, history, blah, blah, blah. And it’s all true. It is a great piece of history. However, if you’ve read our post about our visit to Fenway, you’ll know that we think that the stadium needs a face lift. Particularly in regards to seating and comfort. It seems that we’re not the only ones with this attitude toward Fenway. Rays’ designated hitter, Luke Scott described the stadium as a “dump,” which is way more terrible than anything that we ever said about the place. Scott meant it in regards to a facility to work at as a ball player, but nevertheless, the comment ruffled a few feathers. We’ll take it one step further. Fenway is an unattractive ballpark and we’re sorry, but it’s not the best old-time stadium. Wrigley Field is. It has retained its historic, nostalgic feel, while updating certain amenities for the comfort of their fans, AND it’s a cute mother f*cking stadium! It’s flippin’ adorable! It’s like being transported to another planet! Another planet called Wrigleyville! Going to Fenway is like being transported to a green warehouse where you may or may not become the victim of a mafia hit.

In addition to the Red Sox’s anal raping that took place yesterday, Phil Humber threw the 21^st perfect game in MLB history against the Mariners in the White Sox 4-0 victory. He managed to do this while only throwing 96 pitches.

AJ Burnett…remember him? Our ex? Well, that douchenozzle left us and the Yankees to perform like he’s Iron Man for the Pirates!! Today, he tossed 7 scoreless innings, allowing 3 hits, and recording 7 strikeouts. Thank you, Mr. Burnett, for being absolutely useless to us in New York. We really appreciate it. Best wishes on your future endeavors, you a$$hat. Burnett became the first Pirates pitcher since 1907 to pitch at least 7 scoreless innings and record 7 strikeouts. Either the Pirates are really that god awful to have such a pitiful history or Burnett is now a legit super hero with super powers. Or it’s a combination of both. Time will only tell. Stay tuned for further rantings on this subject.

In the highly intelligent words of Melissa Gorga, “The Red Sox are on display, on display each and every day, every day. Bobby V. is waiting for them to win, but they keep on crawling, and people keep hating on them, hating on them.”

Yankees Opening Day 2012

April 13, 2012 

I have to start this post with a quasi-related, but not-really-related statement. When Lisa and I go to the Yankees game on May 19^th, I need to take her to Billy’s Bar. I’m pretty sure that I’ve discovered a guido dumping ground. Dark spiked haired, olive-skinned fist pumpers galore. It’s like a buffet of all of Lisa’s favorite things. It was a little scary. I am running the risk of losing her forever if I bring her here. She may get sucked into the black hole of tanned skin, Italian-themed tattoos, gold chains, and open-collared shirts and then I’ll be stuck walking over to Yankees Stadium and watching The Boys take on the Reds by myself. Anyone willing to travel into the Bronx with us on the very real chance that I may have an extra ticket? Let me know.

Back to the whole purpose of this post. Baseball. Opening Day. All good stuff. Mamadukes bought our tickets for Opening Day as my birthday gift, but the actual purchase was done by me. As in, “go onto StubHub and find tickets. I’ll give you the money.” I picked two tickets that felt like a happy medium in terms of cost and location, but I didn’t really have any idea as to where they were being that they were in a section I’d never sat in before. We drove into the game and parked at a nearby mall. “Event Parking” cost us $30, but for some reason, it felt less like a raping than paying $35 at the other lot. Getting to Yankees Stadium from this mall, however, proved to be a bit of a challenge for us. Initially, we followed these two guys wearing Jeter and Mantle jerseys toward the entrance we had just driven through, but then we realized that they were going to have to hop a wall in order to get to the sidewalk and that just seemed to be more trouble than it was worth. We decided to find another way. This would be a mistake. I don’t know what we were thinking. We should’ve just stuck to following Jeter and Mantle. They’d always been reliable in the past. Why did we think they were going to let us down this time? We ended up walking a sidewalk that ran somewhat parallel to the Major Deagan Expressway. That is some hot stuff right there. Eventually we did manage to reach the stadium and this random, off-the-beaten-path route actually had us approach the stadium from a direction we’d never taken before, offering me the opportunity to take this photo of the entire stadium in all its sexiness.

The walkway leading up to the stadium past the little league baseball field is paved with sporadic markers indicating historical moments in franchise history, like this:

This:

This:

And this:

We tried finding a marker celebrating Don Mattingly’s retirement, but apparently, nothing of importance happened for the Yankees between 1987 and 1996, which I found a little strange.

As usual, I needed to be fed immediately upon walking through the doors of Yankees Stadium. I need to eat regularly or else I become a whiny, unaccommodating toddler. We headed up to our section and bought a hot Italian sausage for me (Seriously. This is not a metaphor for a really attractive male of the Italian persuasion. It was called a hot Italian sausage and it cost $8.50.) and a hot dog for Mamadukes. Laden with our glorious, deliciously fragrant meat products, we went in search of this mysterious section 314W. It’s the “W” that kept throwing me off when I searched the stadium’s seating chart online. The chart clearly showed me section 314, but what was the deal with this “W?” Well, ladies and gentlemen, we found out that it apparently stands for “wheelchair.”  Yes. That’s correct. This Yankees fan half of the TBB duo is a giant a-hole who unknowingly purchased tickets to the handicapped section. As if I can’t look any more insensitive than I already do. The seats were padded folding chairs, which were pretty cool, but man, did we feel a touch guilty about occupying these seats. The guilt didn’t last long because my stomach got the better of me. I pretty much inhaled my sausage in three bites (okay, WHY does everything I say about sausages sound incredibly dirty?).

Look who ran into us at the stadium! Ed! Lisa’s favorite of Serena’s colleagues. Ed had seats 3 sections over from us.

There was one really amazing upside about sitting in these seats though. I got to hang out with this little buddy the entire game:

How amazing is he? He’s adorable and fat. I wanted to dognap him. The downside to this bootyful baseball fan was that his owner was a jerk Mets fan that kept rooting against the Yankees. Dude, go be miserable at your own Opening Day. Don’t make my Opening Day experience miserable because you hate my team.

Soon after, the opening ceremonies commenced.

Jorge Posada threw out the first pitch to Papa Posada.

The pitching matchup was Hiroki Kuroda and Ervin Santana. I’ll admit that this did not inspire confidence in me after watching the nightmare of a game that took place in Tampa Bay in the week prior. However, we got out of the first inning fairly unscathed, so I calmed down a bit. In the bottom of the 1^st, Santana led things off by striking out both Jeter and Granderson. Allow me to describe the mental illness that currently resides in this brain of mine. Instead of being overly pissed off at this, I got excited because Roberta’s ridiculous New York-focused fantasy team wouldn’t get any offensive points. Insert evil laugh. See? I’m truly a disturbed individual. With two outs, Alex Rodriguez (the one Yankees player that I managed to pry out of Roberta’s greedy fingers) singled. Hooray for fantasy points for Tigers Love Pepper! THEN he stole second. More fantasy points! It’s just an explosion of fantasy points for me.

When Mark Teixeira stepped into the batter’s box, our neighbors to Mamadukes’ right had some negative comments to say about him. She got very upset and defensive about “her man” (the fantasy baseball illness seems to be hereditary). I had to remind her that Tex was no longer her fantasy first baseman. Roberta owned him now. It was time to let go. With Rodriguez, Cano, and Tex on base, Swisher drilled a double over the center fielder’s head, scoring three runs. All fantasy points for Roberta. It’s just becoming tedious now.

Rodriguez would go onto hit a bomb of a home run to dead center field in the bottom of the 3^rd and another single in the bottom of the 5^th following a Granderson home run. While his sudden surge of offense pleases me both from the Yankees fan perspective and the perspective of being the manager for the future 2012 championship fantasy team, I feel it necessary to point out something that he did in the bottom of the 7^th that really pissed me off. I have always defended Rodriguez. Despite the fact that he’s got a personality that’s equivalent to a brown paper bag and the whole steroids fiasco, I do believe him to be a hard-working and gifted athlete. When he fails, it’s never from a lack of trying. Yes, he’s totally overpaid and yes, he tends to collapse when the Yankees really need him, but I will accept a player who fails to succeed if he puts forth genuine effort. In the 7^th, with Jeter on second, Rodriguez hit a weak dribbler to Ryan Isringhausen on the mound, which typically would’ve been an easy out, but Isringhausen bobbled the ball, giving Rodriguez the chance to safely reach first AND advancing Jeter to third. Instead of actually running hard down the line, Rodriguez did the f*cking Hustle! Naturally, this gave Isringhausen enough time to recover and throw Rodriguez out. I was enraged. If I recall the moment correctly, after a string of curse words, I shouted, “Did you have an asthma attack on the way to first, you a-hole?” Apparently the surrounding fans found this amusing. What the hell? I defend this man all the damn time for his work ethic and he repays me by acting like Carlos Beltran?? Trust me, I’ve played sports. I get that there was a chance that Rodriguez still may have been thrown out even if he ran hard. I totally understand that. The point is that he also might’ve been safe, giving the Yankees another chance to score. Crap like that makes me crazy.This better have been a brain fart on his part because if this is a sign of behavior to come, I’m going to convince Lisa to allow me to write another asstastic letter for this blog. And I’m very convincing. You have no idea how much stupid
sh*t I’ve convinced Lisa to participate in with me.

Just prior to the 9^th inning, we asked the nice men sitting next to us to take our picture. I’m actually surprised that Mamadukes allowed this considering how much she hates taking pictures. I think the fact that this man gave her his Cracker Jack prize softened her a little.

We were pleasantly surprised when Kuroda came out to pitch the 9^th having already thrown 103 pitches. He allowed Bobby Abreu on base with a weak a$$ crap hit and Joe Girardi pulled him out in favor of David Robertson. Kuroda exited to a standing ovation. A vast improvement from his first start. Now if only CC Sabathia would follow suit. Robertson closed out the game, coaxing Albert Pujols into a double play and then striking out Kendry Morales. Final score 5-0 Yankees.

By the way, exiting the mall’s parking garage was a nightmare. Do not park here. Make the extra $5 investment and park in a proper lot.

-Serena