Athletics at Mets 6-22-11

Last week, we presented you with our Guide to Crashing Other People’s Stadiums and asked if you’d abide by the rules that we’d laid before you. A whopping 7 people voted that they totally would because they make complete sense. No one, we repeat, NO ONE voted for “No. You are literally the biggest a-holes I’ve ever come across.” We believe that this just might be progress in on the road to a beautiful relationship between you and us.

Naturally, being that we are the bringers of dark clouds and everything miserable in this world, on the day of our Mets game for the 2011 season, the heavens opened up and poured forth an ocean’s worth of rain. We actually got scared that we missed the memo about which port Noah’s Ark was leaving from. By 4:00 or so, the rain stopped, but what was left was a thick blanket of humidity and ominous-looking clouds overhead. Nevertheless, we headed to the game anyway.

Of course, as soon as we bought our burger platter, the rain started to fall again and the game headed into a rain delay. We found a clear spot on the floor near the Champions’ Club. Lisa ordered a bacon cheeseburger with a side of French fries and Serena got a BBQ bacon cheeseburger with a side of fries. Each meal cost under $20.

Initially, Serena was skeptical about the fries because usually crinkle fries are soggy and grodie, but they were surprisingly good. The burgers were amazing as well and apparently they were so yummy, we simply inhaled them without taking a photo for the blog. Hence, we present to you this:

While we hung around waiting for the rain delay to come to an end, several people came up to us to ask about Serena’s shirt. This shirt (as well as this one for Lisa) was sent to Serena by Darren of The 7 Line, a unique Mets-themed t-shirt line whose designs are all created by Darren himself. One drunk fellow chose to affectionately call Serena, “Miss Shea.” Ironic considering Lisa’s the Mets fan.

After about an hour, the game began and we headed back to our seats. Take a look at the amount of water that collected in the stadium during that time:

These seats cost us $6 each:

It was just a little after 8:00 when we reached our seats and the sun was just finally starting to set.

The pitching matchup was the Mets’ RA Dickey against the A’s Gio Gonzalez. RA Dickey comes to the mound and the plate to the Star Wars’ Imperial March. Not a Star Wars fan and therefore, you have no idea what we’re talking about? Check out this montage. Who the f gets pumped listening to Darth Vadar’s theme song? Well…the weird thing is that Serena actually had this song as her cell phone’s ringtone for a period of time…which might mean RA Dickey is another one of her hand twins. To further the strangeness is the fact that all of Serena’s hand twins are men. Hmm…Regardless, Serena feels strongly that you should keep your weirdness undercover and among your close friends and family instead of broadcasting it to the public like Dickey does.

We can’t tell you a whole lot about what actually happened during the game because it seems that the overwhelming amount of effort that had gone into the 2nd Annual Fred K’s Cancer Event these past weeks had finally gotten to us. We went stir crazy, laughing at absolutely nothing and not paying attention to anything of worth.

Next thing we knew, the game was tied in the 9th and we were hungry. We do know that the reason the game became tied was that the a$$ clown, K-ROD blew another save. We waited until the 10th before deciding to get ourselves 2nd Dinner. Of course, we went with our old reliable hot dogs!

As you can see, Serena topped hers with sautéed onions and jalapeño peppers while Lisa covered hers with relish, mustard, and sauerkraut.

The game remained tied until the bottom of the 13th. Former BFFer, Brad Ziegler had entered the game in 12th and got out of a bases loaded jam. In the 13th, he loaded the bases again. We so badly wanted this moment. Fellow redhead, Justin Turner stepped in the batter’s box. On the first pitch, Ziegler hit Turner in the left thigh, allowing the winning run to walk home. It was amazing. It was the Mets’ first walk off of the season.

We found this snippet of an interview with Ziegler on the Mets Official Website:
"My initial reaction was I thought he leaned into it, and to me, if he did lean into it ... that's kind of a cheap way to end the game," Ziegler said. "But I know the pitch was inside, so one way or another, I knew it got away from me, and [it's] just not how you want to end the game. If I'm going to lose it, I'd rather be beaten with a base hit."

Okay. That’s Ziegler’s “initial reaction.” Our initial reaction? He’s being a bitch. You hit the guy. The loss is your fault. Suck it up, cupcake. Sh*t happens.

This is the night’s final picture:

Us happy with the game’s outcome.

We’re going to close things out with non-baseball related news. Today, we held the 2nd Annual Fred K’s Cancer Event at Cantiague Park in Hicksville, New York. Thanks to all of our wonderful walkers and supporters, we’ve raised $3,400 for Fred K’s Cancer to date! Plus, we’ll be continuing to solicit donations through the end of July so there’s an excellent chance that we may hit $4,000!

Next Sunday, we'll be in Denver so there will be no post for that week. We'll post our review on Coors Field when we return.

DAMN! Serena’s Got a Small Foot

Hello, a-holes. You’ll be pleased to hear that 9 of 12 people voted that Serena should send that a-hole letter to Barry Zito about his moustache because “someone needs to tell him that porn-staches are unacceptable and will not be tolerated.” For some strange reason you people thought that SERENA should be that special someone. Did it ever occur to you that maybe, just MAYBE someone close to Barry Zito (like say, a friend, family member, lover?) should be the person to break this kind of news to him? “Hey, Barry, I love you, man so don’t take this the wrong way, but that moustache makes you look like an a-hole. A creepy level 5, even. Dude, from one bro to another. Shave that sh*t.” No. Instead some creepy jack-a-loon blogger had to be the one to send him a letter. Well…you got your goddamn wishes. Behold. Evidence of your stupid and personally damaging encouragement:

Only 3 individuals had any sort of sense and voted for, “No. Are you freakin’ kidding? It’s bad enough you post this crap to your blog.” We’re guessing that this was probably Mamadukes, Roberta (Fred K’s Cancer Secretary of State), and someone else who probably just hates us. Like Uncle Pat.

We should point out at this stage that Lisa arrived at Serena’s house to blog at 2:30 this afternoon. Did we blog? No. We watched Tron: Legacy instead. The movie was okay, but more importantly Garrett Hedlund is delicious. The only problem is the fact that Disney kept ruining every opportunity for us to view his delectable body by doing something like cover him up! What the hell? If you’re going to put a man that attractive in a glow in the dark leotard accenting his “assets,” then let us get a glimpse of him nakie! But, no. It would not be so. *Sigh* So we Googled and found this:

And that, folks, is what being a TBB Super Hero is all about. Discovering Garrett Hedlund prompted us to come up with yet another asinine contest...only this time it will be real. There will be an actual attainable prize. Your picture on our blog viewed by Serena’s entire family (because Lisa’s parents do not read the blog…they don’t know how to use their internet machine). Don’t scoff as if this is some bull sh*t prize. Serena’s clan is enormous. They won’t quit reproducing.

So, what’s the contest? Submit to us your photo along with a paragraph or so as to why to you should be TBB Super Hero of the Week. Best/most creative entry or best looking man will become TBB Super Hero of the Week. The deadline for submission will be Saturday, May 21st and the winner will be announced on Sunday, May 22nd before we take off for Minneapolis. The winner’s picture will remain posted from May 22nd until blogging time on May 29th.

In brief Fred K’s Cancer news, Brad Ziegler of the Oakland A’s donated his game-used cleats for us to raffle off. Since Serena has midget feet (literally, she does) and Ziegler is over six feet tall, Lisa just HAD to compare his feet to Serena’s. Lisa found the comparison so hilarious that she took a picture of it:

Brother went one step further and made this measurement:

Now that Brother has visited, we’ve gotten even further distracted by talking about the Indiana Jones saga and why Dipsy Doodles are not sold in bigger bags. It’s 6:53 pm.

This week’s baseball note:
Justin Morneau returned to the lineup against the Indians on Saturday after missing the previous 5 games with the flu. It seems that Twins’ clubhouse is quite sickly these days what with Joe Mauer also having some sort of viral infection that’s caused bilateral leg weakness.

Finally, we wish everyone a Happy Easter and Happy Passover…and Happy Greek Easter.

7:39 pm.

Serena, Did a Leaf Just Fall into Your Cleavage?

Yes. A leaf did fall into Serena’s cleavage. Just one of many cons that come with mobile blogging.

Last week we asked if other teams should adopt the Dodgers’ policy of offering fans a hotline number for them to tattle on the a-hole fans sitting in their section. Of 5 votes, 3 of you actually felt that a-hole fans are just part of the charm of being at a sporting event. Charm? Really? You do realize that we were being sarcastic when we wrote that, don’t you? Apparently you like smelly people, unclassy individuals smacking Erin in the back of the head with a bag of water/soda bottles, and children running amuck or kicking you in the vag*na (granted, this happened at Sea World, not a Dodger Stadium, but we feel strongly that this “Report an A-hole” hotline policy should be implemented nationwide). A mere 2 souls agree with us that this genius plan of the Dodgers is flippin’ genius. We shall all join forces and report half the people in our sections. Together, we will unite under one banner and single-handedly wipe out the a-holes and vag*na kickers from the face of the planet.

Pardon this post of randomness. We just couldn’t help ourselves this week. We’re mentally fried. We know what you’re thinking right now: “Yeah, like you two are some sort of Albert Einstein’s or something.” Easy, tiger(s). We promise you that Fred K’s Cancer has eaten a ton of brain cells these past few days and that we’re going to strive to be “even better (like a professional)” after the event is over.

One of Lisa’s co-workers recently made a road trip to Baltimore and bought Lisa a midget version of The Bird. Lisa has grandiose ideas about replacing our current The Bird with this midget version for the rest of our stadium trips. Do you feel like this is being a traitor to our mascots? Be honest. We trust you…sometimes.

In his second MLB outing, Stephen Strasburg continued to shine, limited the Indians’ to just 2 hits, the first one being a leadoff home run to Travis Hafner (who apparently got a major piece of Strasburg’s 100 mph fast ball). He struck out 8 and walked 5 before exiting the game in the 6th. The Nationals won 9-4, ending the Indians’ 4-game winning streak.

Keeping with the tradition of pitching perfection this year, Ted Lily carried a no-hitter all the way into the 9th on Sunday night when PH Juan Pierre ruined it by leading off the inning with a single. The Cubs hung on regardless and defeated the White Sox 1-0. Prior to first pitch, the Chicago Blackhawks gathered on the mound, holding the Stanley Cup and were cheered by Cubs and White Sox fans alike. Yeah, well, we still say that “We’re All Islanders…”

During the Jays/Padres game on Monday night, play momentarily stopped in the 8th inning when Petco Park swayed during a 5.7 rated earthquake that was centered just outside Ocotillo in Imperial City, which is approximately 85 miles east of San Diego. The right field foul pole and TV’s in the press box swayed a bit and manager Cito Gaston said he felt the dugout move, but some players claim to have not felt anything! We’re pretty sure that if this happened while we were there, we would’ve fled the stadium screaming as if the Apocalypse just hit…of course, after taking proper photo documentation and video of the event so that we could upload it to the blog…and ransacking the BBQ stand for all of the pulled pork sandwiches (What? If it’s the end of the world as we know it, we’re going to need food in order to survive!).

Bobby Valentine confirmed on Monday’s “Michael Kay Show” that he’s met with the Orioles regarding the open manager position. We are terrified on behalf of the Baltimore community and Erin, but we’re super happy to have missed THAT radio show. Wow. Talk about getting two lame personalities together in the same room.

Speaking of the Orioles, Tim Lincecum struck out 10 O’s batters during Wednesday night’s game before taking a line drive hit by Miguel Tejada off of his right shoulder in the 6th. He was removed from the game, but manager Bruce Boaty assures us that, “Timmy is fine.”

At the ripe young age of 47, Jamie Moyer became the oldest pitcher to beat the Yankees on Wednesday night. We suspect that he’s going to be breaking these kinds of records a lot over the remainder of his career.

Bud Selig announced that the All Star Game will be played at Kauffman Stadium (Royals’ home turf, for those of you who are not stadium connoisseurs like us) in 2012. Please do not misunderstand this next rant. We have nothing against the All Star Game being in Kansas City. Everyone should get an opportunity to host the All Star Game (with the exception of the Oakland Athletics because Dallas Braden doesn’t know how to play nice in the sandbox). However, what exactly are the criteria for determining who hosts the All Star Game? Before the 2009 season came to a close, Selig already announced that Citi Field would host the 2011 game. We haven’t even reached the 2010 break and he’s telling us that the 2012 game will be in Kansas City. Why is he jumping the gun like this? He’s a surprise ruiner! He doesn’t even allow us the chance to be excited about the upcoming All Star Game before announcing the locations for the rest of the decade’s games.

Finally, Sunday’s the big day…no, not the Subway Series at Yankees Stadium. We’ve got more important matters to take care of. The day we’ve been babbling about has finally arrived. FRED K’S CANCER! Hooray! At blogging time, we’ve raised $1,500! We’re only short of our fundraising goal by $500! Not bad, considering it’s our first event! For those of you who haven’t donated yet *coughahemcoughbrad-zieglercoughahemcough*, we’ll continue accepting donations until July 1st. Since she’s been over-the-top helpful regarding this event, we’re dubbing Vita Zorbo, owner of the West Hempstead Lady of America Fitness Center, TBB Super Hero of the Week!

Before signing off, we’d like to wish Papadukes and Papa L. a Happy Father’s Day!

Yankees Opening Day 2010

It's been a busy week for the TBB. We "watched" the Yankees home opener on Tuesday, we saw Rock of Ages last night, and Sister has finally gone into labor! We know. You're practically breathless from the excitement, but easy, tigers. It's time for our poll results. Serena has asked who you'd throw for Opening Day and 8 folks voiced their opinion. The winner with 3 votes is "Tiny" Tim Lincecum and who could really blame you for choosing him? Second place is a tie going to Roy Halladay and Andy Pettite, each earning 2 votes. Only 1 sad individual voted for Johan Santana, which is a bit perplexing to us. Really? Only 1 person felt he was qualified to pitch Opening Day? No one voted for Zack Greinke (but we're thinking this might be because he plays for the Royals, a low media-exposed team), Kevin Costner (You really don't think his performance in For the Love of the Game is enough experience?), or Brother (we'll have you know that Brother is VERY athletic, thank you!).

Neither of us had tickets to the Yankees home opener, so we were forced to watch the game from our desks via ESPN Gamecast:

The pitching matchup was Andy Pettitte/Ervin Santana. Pettitte was kick ass, throwing 100 pitches over 6 innings, giving up 5 hits, 0 runs, 3 walks, and striking out 6. Santana did not have the same success. He threw 113 innings over 5.2 innings, allowing 8 hits, 5 walks, and two home runs (1 solo shot by Nick Johnson in the first and another solo shot by Derek Jeter in the 4th). He did manage to strike out 7, but also had the misfortune of being the victim of 5 errors committed by his defense! Good grief.

Thankfully, the YES Network broadcasted an "encore performance" of the game, so that Serena was able to rush home from the gym to watch the pre-game ceremonies. *sigh* She got home just in time for Hideki Matsui, wearing his Angels uniform, to receive his World Series ring. The crowd gave him a standing ovation. After receiving his ring, his former teammates converged around him, embracing him in an adorable and writhing puppy pile! He seemed shock by the love displayed for him.

Another former Yankees to receive a warm welcome was Bobby Abreu during the starting lineups, but nowhere to the extent of Matsui. Serena was in heaven when her man, Bernie Williams, came out to throw the first pitch. Yeah. She teared up a little. She's a loser.

In typical Yankees fashion, the buulpen chose to give us a heart attack. With a 7-1 lead in the top of the 9th (should be a guaranteed W, dontcha think?), Dave Robertson loaded the bases for Abreu. Abreu teed off, hitting a grand slam and making the score 7-5. Seriously, kid?! You had a 6 run lead in the damn 9th inning! Are you an a-hole? Girardi would have to call on Mariano Rivera to close out the game, which is absolutely ludicrous.

We mentioned earlier that we saw Rock of Ages at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre on West 47th Street last night. If you're ever in the New York area and have a taste for tacky 80's glam rock, then you MUST see this play. It's fantastic. The narrator, Lonny, with his magical mullet and "Hooray for Boobies" and "Camel Toe" t-shirts is Serena's best friend, even though she hasn't met him yet. The stars are aligned and it's only a matter of time before they can be together (heaven isn't too far away, closer to it everyday...). In the meantime, we shall have to settle for making him the TBB Super Hero of the Week.

This week's baseball notes: On Monday, the Twins christened their brand new stadium, Target Field, by defeating the Red Sox! Carl Pavano got the stadiums first win (will wonders never cease to amaze us?) and Jon Lester took the loss. Lester struggled a bit. Of 107 pitches, only 59 were strikes. He gave up 4 runs on 9 hits and 3 walks. Jason Kubel will go down in the books as the first to homer at Target Field. On Tuesday night against the Mariners, A's pitcher Brad Ziegler showed another side to himself. In the 7th, he entered the game in relief for Brett Anderson, who had pitched a gem, striking out 6 in 6 scoreless innings. From the beginning, it was clear the Ziegler was suffering from command issues. Thanks to an amazing defensive play by catcher, Kurt Suzuki, he was able to exit the inning unscathed. He would not be so lucky in the 8th when he gave up a 3-run homer to the struggling Milton Bradley to break the 0-0 tie. Perhaps Ziegler was distracted by something and unable to focus on the game? Hmmm...On the flip side, the Mariners' Doug Fister lasted 8 innings, striking out 4 and allowing only 4 hits. 21-year old Matthew Clemmens of Cherry Hill, New Jersey, is facing charges for intentionally vomitting on an 11-year old girl and her father during Wednesday night's Phillies-Nationals game. How disgusting is that? Ugh! Police say that Clemmens made himself puke by putting his finger down his throat after his companion was kicked out for unruly behavior. Where do people come up with this crap?! Revolting! Mr. Clemmens, you will never get laid with that kind of personality! In injury news, Jimmy Rollins is expected to be out 2-4 weeks with a mild-moderate strained right calf. Jacoby Ellsbury bruised his left ribs in a collision with thirdbaseman Adrian Beltre on Sunday in Kansas City and is still reporting soreness and some trouble breathing. Ouch! On Wednesday, Terry Francona announced that Ellsbury probably wouldn't return to the lineup until Friday. We shall see how Ellsbury's holding up once game time rolls around tonight, won't we?

Be sure to check out our post regarding the Fathead Sweepstakes for the month of April!

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!”