TBB's Worst Ballpark Moments

As promised last week, to compliment the post discussing our greatest ballpark moments, we are bringing you our worst moments. Truthfully, this post will probably be infinitely more entertaining. Great moments are boring. Terrible moments are hilarious.

• The worst hot dog ever put into our mouths, unwashed children, and the infamous Mandanna.
• Short story: The Phillies and their wonderfully charming fanbase. The long story: kids threw ice cubes at us, one man screamed in our face, and our one brief moment of happiness where we made contact with the Phanatic was destroyed by a-holes. A-holes that promised to take our photo and only successfully photgraphed his furry green ass and Lisa clapping her hands and giving the stink eye. Basically Citizen's Bank Park was one giant worst moment. 
• Drunk three's company coupled with being showered by a spitting sunflower seed monster sitting behind us. 
• Nearly getting killed when a relief pitcher overthrew his warm up partner, sending the ball in the direction of our precious cabezas. 
• The waiter at McFadden's f*cked up Lisa's birthday dinner and by extension, making us so late that she missed the opportunity to meet TOWSNBN.
• The Ball Tip Steak Sandwich.
• The Invasion of the Twins Fans and Baby Jesus.
• The Screaming O's Fan.

This list should be a lot longer, but really the worst moments of all of our stadium tours involve our travels to the ballpark and our hotels, which really don't count as a ballpark moment. So, here we are. Enjoy re-reading all of our past adventures since we were clearly too lazy to summarize them for you. 

Bon Voyage!

Entering Week 5 of Operation Moustache Removal. The one who calls himself “Zito” has still not acknowledged our email, BUT our friends in the Bay Area have informed us that he was spotted canoodling in the Giants’ dugout sans moustache. We suspect that our letter had something to do with it. He may not have written us back, but it’s clear that he heard our call…he might actually not respond to us because we made him cry and he thinks we’re mean.

Before we get into the poll results, let’s talk about how NO ONE entered our Sweepstakes for TBB Super Hero of the Week. Do you understand what this means? It means that for entire week, you’ll be staring at the picture of the Mipi, Nicole’s doggie. For those of you unaware, Nicole is the Executive Director of Fred K’s Cancer, Inc. Since you’ve decided to be giant fails on this subject, we’d like you to donate to The Freds. Do it. Save balls and mouths across the world one dollar at a time.

Last week, there was a whole lot of hullabaloo about Jorge Posada being snatchy, so we decided to ask you what you thought his malfunction was. 3 of you felt that getting old makes you cranky. 2 of you think that it’s Jorge’s time of the month. Personally speaking, when WE’RE on the rag, we’re pretty cranky as well. Especially when we’re not fed. Therefore, it’s totally conceivable that Jorge’s in some serious need of Midol. 1 loan reed believes that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with him. It’s just that everyone needs a mental break once in awhile. 1 person thinks he’s constipated and no one voted for that Smelly Brian option and we’re not going to bother reiterating what the choice was because it’s not worth our time to retype nor is it worth your time to reread it.

So today’s the big day. No, we’re not leaving Blogger community (which we’re sure you’d be ecstatic to hear). We’re flying to Minneapolis and according to weather.com, we’re flying into shittastic weather. Regardless of the rain, we’ve got plans to canoe around Lake Calhoun in Minnesota. We strongly feel that we’ll be excellent canoers. Do not worry. We’ll back in time for your weekly TBB blog. It’ll even be a legitimate post as we’ll be discussing our visit to Target Field. Thrilled, aren’t you? Did we mention that we’re doing this entire trip out of a carry on bag in an effort to save money on obnoxious and bull sh*t luggage fees? Yes. The 2 worst packers ever to grace the United States is surviving on one pair of pumps and a carry on bag apiece. There is no room for error. No room for stains. No room for, “Awww this shirt makes me look fat.” Nope. Tough sh*t. We’re gonna have to look fat whether we like it or not. It’s go time, people.

To keep up to date with our traveling activities and commentary, be sure to follow us on Twatter. Twitter. Whatever. The little stupid blue bird that all the happening kids are using nowadays.

Yesterday morning, we had a very successful charity cardio kickboxing class at Lucille Roberts in Westbury, NY. We raised a total of $113! Much thanks to Kathy, gym manager, for allowing us to hold the class and to Sylvia Nasser for donating her time to teach the heart pumping, muscle tiring, and sweat-inducing class!

The One Who Shall Not Be Named is officially on the DL with a stress fracture in his lower back. He’s “not allowed to engage in any physical activities.” Well, Lisa’s sex life is going to have to be put on hold.

Happy Belated Birthday to Mamadukes, whose birthday was on Tuesday. Also, we hope that everyone showed their support to our military forces yesterday on Armed Forces Day! Regardless of your opinion of the war, these men and women sacrifice a lot and should be thanked and recognized!

Peace out!

The 2 TBB Wolfpack

Keeping with our policy of reporting to you the most excellent stadium tour summaries that we possibly can, we wanted to know how we could better these reports for our upcoming tours. Unfortunately, it appears that only 4 people want us to improve ourselves. Thanks a lot, people. You’re absolutely no help whatsoever. Just go ahead and let us rot with failure. Of the 4 of you who actually give a crap, the feedback was split between “Eat more food and report back because it’s clear that your stomachs are bottomless pits and it shouldn’t be a problem” and “More fan interaction because it’s great when you guys make complete a-holes out of yourselves.” This is somewhat encouraging because the other two options were a little mean: “More pictures of the stadium because I’m so tired of seeing your stupid faces” and “Just stop. Please stop. I cannot stand you two and I don’t even know why I check this site anymore.”

Before we get into today’s post, we’d like you to show some support our dear friend, Linda by voting for her in MLB’s Honorary Bat Girl contest. To read her story and vote, search “zizabella4915.” Linda is a warm, loving individual with a lot of spirit and fight. This is why she is our TBB Super Hero of the Week.

We’re blogging today from a waiting room at a Patient Service Center. Thankfully, neither of us are dead or dying (that we know of at least), but we are a bit frustrated. That is all we’re permitted to tell you about that at this time. Suffice it to say that we have a most excellent surprise for you, but we can’t tell you what it is yet. Very exciting. Don’t you just hate it when people do that? But now that we’ve got you hooked, we know that you’ll tune in next week to find out what the surprise is. We’re pretty smart like that.

Anyway, onward to the good sh*t. We bought our Brewers tickets this week for the bargain price of $114 (total with tax and service fees). This may sound a bit steep considering where we normally sit, but wait til’ you see the seats we actually scored. They’re located in an infield box on the third base side. We’d like to remind you that we’ll be seeing the Brewers play the Giants…and where does the away sit during the game? Oh, yes. The third base side. Don’t you worry your orange and black hats, boys, the TBB are gonna get you and bring you back to their cozy TBB beds. *Insert diabolical laugh*

We’ll be purchasing our airfare this weekend. Twins tickets go on sale on Saturday, March 26th, so we’re 95% of the way there. Of course, we still have to buy our airfare to Denver, but we’ve got plenty of time for that.

We’ve decided to open up a TBB Sweepstakes to keep our fans stimulated. What is the prize? Just going to Mets Opening Day with Lisa. For a chance to win, email us by April 1st with your name, email address, a contact number, and a paragraph about why you deserve to go with her. The winner’s entry will be posted to that week’s blog.

For some reason, the baseball notes we found this week were incredibly amusing to us. For starters, Carlos Beltran apparently approached manager Terry Collins about moving from center to right field because, “this is not about Carlos. This is about team.” Are you friggin’ sh*tting us? Since WHEN is this not about Carlos? Angel Pagan, who covered center in Beltran’s absence last year, will likely take over. If this is a completely selfless act on Beltran’s part, then Lisa is the Prime Minister of Greece and Serena will be replacing Elizabeth II on the throne any day now.

Just before the Yankees took on the Astros, Mark Teixeira announced that he’s parted ways with his long-time agent…none other than the devil himself, Scott Boras. According to Teixeira, “sometimes it’s time to make a little change.” Oh, it’s like justice has been delivered…sort of. It’d be poetry if every client he’s ever had up and left him in the gutter to be “murdered by crystal meth tweakers.”

So long for today, suckers. “What do the TBB dream of when they take a little TBB snooze? Do they dream of mauling Beltran or looking hot in a Catwoman suit? Don’t you worry your little worried heads, we’re gonna get you back to the stadiums and the yummy baseball foods. And then you’re not gonna find your ex-BFFER, Brad and you’re certainly not gonna give him a best friend hug. Brad. Oh, Brad. Oh, Brad (this is not us moaning, by the way). But if he’s been murdered by crystal meth tweakers, well then the A’s are sh*t out of luck.”

PS- In case you couldn’t tell, we watched The Hangover this weekend…a few times.

2011 Should Keep Us Occupied, Most Occupied Indeed

Last week, we derailed slightly on the poll and asked your opinion on the fierceness of pirates and ninjas. 4 of you felt that pirates are more lethal because they have booty, a parrot, and quite often, a peg leg. 5 of you believe that ninjas are more lethal because they are stealth, can morph into the shadows, kill with their hands or ninja stars, and wear black pajamas. Serena supports the 5 of you true warriors. Hiyah!
 
We understand that this blog is entitled Traveling Baseball Babes and that its mission statement specifies that we’d report on our upcoming travels. We also understand that we’ve been terribly noncompliant in this aspect so far this year. So today we’ve decided to bring you up to speed, especially being that Brewers’ single-game tickets go on sale on Saturday. We’ve got big plans this year and we might have bit off more than we can chew, but we’ll see if we can pull it off. We shall start with Opening Day 2011. Every year, Lisa has presented her account of Mets Opening Day and this year will most likely be no exception. What will be new for the blog is that Serena will be attending the Yankees’ Opening Day and able to share her account with you as well. Our Yankees game will come earlier than usual this season barring any cancellations due to inclement weather. We purchased our tickets to the April 4th Yankees/Twins game off of Stub Hub for a total of $25! Talk about a bargain! Serena was so proud of the monetary savings that she immediately bought a dress off of Etsy that she didn’t need (Stupid, stupid). Hopefully, we get a free giveaway as well because that will be the icing on the cake.

After enjoying the local flair, we head off to Minneapolis to watch the Twins take on the Mariners at Target Field during the last week of May. We plan on spending roughly 3 days in Minneapolis before flying to Milwaukee where we’ll see the Brewers take on the Giants at Brewer Field. Again, we only plan on staying in Milwaukee for about 3 days. Both hotels have already been booked and once we buy the tickets to the games (or at least the Brewers tickets because we have a few weeks before the Twins go on sale), we’ll book airfare. Before we progress further, we want you to focus on the importance of what we just said. The Twins (Justin Morneau and Joe Mauer) and the Brewers will be playing the Giants (Tim Lincecum, Barry Zito, and Buster Posey). It looks like we’ll be married by the end of the year, folks. Furthermore, note “Miller” Park. As in Miller Brewery. Yup. This is happening.

June signals our “planned” annual excursion to Citi Field to see the Mets take on the A’s (Craig Breslow. Want to touch the smarty pants hiney). We say “planned” because it is possible that we may choose to go to a Mets game earlier or later in the season and we’ve yet to purchase tickets. We’ll keep you posted either way. Even more exciting about the month of June is that we’ll be holding our 2nd Annual Fred K’s Cancer Walk at Cantiague Park! We hope that any of you who are local to the event shows their support by registering to participate in it. If you’re unable to attend, you can support the cause by pledging a donation. You can find out how to do either by visiting the Fred K’s Cancer website.

Which brings us to July…4th of July weekend to be exact. We’re tapping the Rockies, visiting Coors Field to watch the Rockies take on the Royals and most likely an exciting fireworks display, more breweries, and did you know that the country’s best dinosaur museum is in Colorado? Also noteworthy is the fact that the Rockies’ mascot is a purple mother f’n dinosaur. Glory shall be ours.

We know. We’ve completely overwhelmed you with the amount of awesomely amazing crap that we’ve got planned this year, but you know what’s crazy? There’s more! We’re hoping to squeeze a fourth stadium into the mix! Four, you exclaim incredulously? Can it be done? We’re certainly going to try, sports fans. Depending on where we are in our finances, we’re going to aim for a weekend in Toronto (probably much later in the season) with Jess, Uncle Pat, and his daughter, Lauren. The series we’re thinking about is against the Orioles in September. Again, we’ll keep you posted on that front. We’ll probably have a better idea after Colorado, so you’ll not have to wait too long for us to make a decision.

Briefly, our baseball notes for this week:

On Monday, Justine Siegal became the first woman to pitch batting practice in a major league spring training camp when she threw to the Indians (and then did so again at the A’s training camp on Wednesday). Siegal was also the first woman to coach first base in men’s professional baseball (the Brockton Rox) in 2009 and she spent 3 years (2007-2010) as the only female college baseball coach in the country, when she was an assistant coach at Springfield College. Breaking down gender barriers earns Siegal the title of TBB Super Hero of the Week.

Cardinals’ GM, John Mozeliak announced yesterday that Adam Wainright will have to undergo season-ending Tommy John surgery on his right elbow. No date has been set for the surgery as of yet.

In honor of our upcoming Milwaukee trip, we’ll end things with our rendition of the Laverne and Shirley theme song: “One, two, three, four, four stadium tours. Sclemeel, Schlemazel, TBB incorporated. We’re gonna do it! Give us any food, we’ll take it. Give us any rule, we’ll break it. We’re gonna make our dreams come true our way.”

Rays @ Yankees 9-21-10

Well…at least WE got to see the Yankees play well this week. That’s a bonus, we suppose. Rules are rules though. Before we can even talk about the amazing food we ate on Tuesday (oh…and the baseball game), we must relay the results of last week’s poll. Andy Pettitte returned to the Yankees’ rotation in fantastic form on Sunday, which prompted us to ask the question: would Andy Pettitte help the Yankees? A mere 6 people seemed to have an opinion on this subject. 2 people felt that their mother would be of assistance to the Yankees at this rate. 3 people firmly believed that he would, citing that they had heard “his crotch was feeling much better.” We just hate it when there are issues with the crotch area. 1 lone reed didn’t think he’d make any difference. However, we’re proud to report that no one voted for “ooooh, Andy Pettitte’s hot.” We’re sorry, but sometimes your decisions worry us and with each new poll that we post, we can never tell what direction you’re going to go in. It’s troublesome.

Every time we think that the subway is the easiest way to get around town, we’re brought back to reality by something as simple, yet inevitable like rush hour. The E and D trains that we took to get to Yankees Stadium were so congested that we’re confident that sardines have it better. We also had to listen to a man on the D insisting that the train was not stopping at Yankees Stadium. The more he rattled on, the more panicked the tourists on the subway became. To make matters worse, he spoke so loudly that we couldn’t hear anything the conductor announced over the PA system. We were forced to peer out the windows through the armpits of our surrounding passengers in order to see the signs on the subway platforms.

Thankfully, we arrived at Yankees Stadium relatively unscathed and on time to receive our free giveaways: a Metlife Snoopy doll!

Our first goal of the day was to go to Monument Park in order to see the new Steinbrenner monument. Unfortunately, this is what we found when we got there:

We apparently missed Monument Park by ten stupid minutes. We’re going to blame the subway ride on this one. Just because. However, all was not lost. We were at least able to take a picture of the wall of retired numbers outside of Monument Park.

We even made sure to take a picture of Don Mattingly for Mamadukes:

In the same area, we found a small souvenir store that we’d never noticed before so naturally, we HAD to check it out. God forbid we miss a chance to try anything on and behave like a-holes.

Long before that night’s game, we decided that we needed to branch out in terms of food intake at Citi Field and Yankees Stadium. We can’t keep buying the same items, no matter how much we love them. It’s not fair to you that we keep reporting on the same hot dog and sausage sandwich. It’s obvious by now that we think they’re yummy. Therefore, we went in search of a new food item to sample. We found a Holy Guacamole stand just outside the right field bleacher section and went to town. For $8.50, we got this delightful plate of sweet goodness: nachos covered in cheese, tasty spicy beef, salsa, and guacamole on the side. We purchased two Bud Lights for $9/each at another small stand in the area.

This is when things got interesting for us. We plopped down at a nearby bar table to eat the nachos, but were asked to leave because the seats were “reserved.” Okay. Fine. We DID happen to notice the “Reserved” sign resting on the table and had chosen to ignore it. So we moved on. We found another empty bar table without a sign and sat down. Not one nacho made it into our mouths before we were asked to leave AGAIN. Apparently, those seats were “reserved as well.” After being dismissed from two other tables, we finally found an empty table in the middle of the Yankees Stadium Food Court.

It turned out that we’d end up spending a lot of time in this section as the game wore on, but we’ll get into that a bit later. As we polished off our nachos, we noticed that the food court was decorated with blown up black and white photos of different people from the Yankees organization either eating or drinking. Our favorite was this one of Ron Guidry. He’s icing his arm and chowing down on a rib with his other hand like a mother f’n champion:

After disposing of our garbage, we climbed to the very top of Yankees Stadium where our seats were located.

If you think we’re joking about our seats being at the very top of the stadium, we assure you that we’re not. This is the view of outside the stadium from our seats:

We were literally able to communicate with God from up here. He said that he’s concerned about the Yankees bullpen holding up during the playoffs. We agreed. The pitching matchup was between Phil Hughes (again…Phil just seems to adore us) and James Shields.

The game started off rocky for Shields. Nick Swisher got things started with a solo homerun. Then Jorge Posada hit an RBI single that brought Mark Teixeira home.

As if the 2-run deficit wasn’t bad enough, Shields continued to put men on base and Lance Berkman made it hurt. His 2-run double made the score 4-0 and allowed the scoreboard to greet us with this priceless gem:

But wait. There’s more! Curtis Granderson hit a single that scored Berkman, making it 5-0. In the top of the 2nd, the Rays managed to scratch 1 run across with a Matt Joyce homerun. Around this time, we recalled a delightful little bakery that lived in the field level section near home plate at the “Old” Yankees Stadium. We remembered that during a Yankees/Rays game, similar to the one we were currently at, we purchased a Derek Jeter cookie and that it had been delicious. You might be asking yourself, what is a Derek Jeter cookie? Our friends, it is a cookie with Derek Jeter’s FACE on it. One could say that we ate Derek Jeter’s face…and enjoyed it. Surely something as innovative as a Yankees’ bakery HAD to have followed the team across the street to their new home. We wondered where it might be…

…then Phil Hughes gave up a two out RBI single to Evan Longoria in the top of the 3rd. We booed, but our hearts weren’t in it. All we could think about was when our next meal was and where the magical bakery could be. After a brief coaching visit to the mound, Hughes was able to coax Ben Zobrist to ground out to Teixeira at first. After the Yankees were retired in the bottom of the inning, we went in search of the closest hot dog stand. It had come to our realization that we hadn’t eaten a hot dog at the new stadium yet. The grilled foot long was $6.25. The stand offered sauerkraut and red onions, but the vendor loaded up the hot dog for you. Serena ordered onions in red sauce while Lisa got sauerkraut. At the nearby condiments table, Serena added spicy mustard and Lisa added ketchup and mustard. The dogs were quite the mouthful and much better than the dogs at the stadium’s predecessor. No jokes, please.

By the time we finished the hot dogs, it was the bottom of the 6th. We know this sounds ridiculous. It took us two whole innings to find a hot dog stand and eat. The good thing about the layout of the new stadium is that we were still able to watch the game while standing on line at the stand and eating the hot dogs at a nearby “unreserved” table.

With the Derek Jeter cookie still on our brains, we asked every single employee that we bumped into about the whereabouts of a bakery. Each person told us that there was no bakery. We refused to believe this. Why the hell wouldn’t they transport this bakery with them to the new stadium? It’s completely ludicrous to think that beneath the rubble of the old stadium lays a Derek Jeter cookie that will never be eaten! What is this world coming to? Undaunted, we decided to comb the stadium ourselves. We never found the bakery, but we DID find a Fried Dough stand in the food court that didn’t just sell your ordinary funnel cake. No. They sold something infinitely better than just funnel cake. Fried Twinkies and Oreos. Oh, yes. It will be done. Since both options were $6 and brilliant, the master plan was for Serena to buy the Oreos while Lisa bought the Twinkie (sadly, you only get one Twinkie, but we can admit that that’s probably best for your heart). We knew we were in for something special because the line was 30 people long. Figuring that fried food was always worth it, we jumped on the end of the line.

While we patiently waited and listened to a man behind us talking about how he runs every morning in order to make up for his terrible eating habits (oh, is that the key to not gaining weight? Huh. We’ve been going about this all wrong…), the Rays scored another run, making it 5-3. When we finally reached the counter of glory, Lisa was notified that they had run out of Twinkies. Devastation does not fully communicate the insurmountable feeling of despair that encompassed our bodies. The Runner behind us went buck wild when he heard the news. It was a bit frightening as he stormed off, muttering to himself. We couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like for the other passengers on his subway ride that night. At least we still had the fried Oreos.

It was glorious. It was everything we’ve ever dreamed of and more. It was proof that God loves us. It was probably a good thing that we didn’t get a Twinkie because we most likely would’ve barfed. Being as lazy as we are, we chose not to return to our seats and opted to watch the rest of the game from the field level main corridor instead.

We asked an employee to take our picture with the field behind us and were denied. We were a bit confused, but he explained that they were no longer allowed to take anyone’s picture because someone had dropped a camera and was sued. Wow. That is pathetic. People really need to find better things to do if they have the time to bring some poor usher to court over a broken camera. A fan standing close by took our picture instead.

The Yankees would go on to win 8-3. As we left to catch the subway, we snapped a few last minutes photos. Babe Ruth Plaza (which we’d never seen since the subway deposits you at the corner near the Gate 4 entrance):

...and of course, Yankees Stadium itself:

Baseball Notes: On Tuesday, the Twins became the first team to clinch a division title this season. Their 6-4 victory over the Indians combined with the White Sox 7-2 loss to the A’s means that there’ll be no need for an extra tie-breaker game for the AL Central like last year (though we doubted that the White Sox were going to stage some miracle comeback to prompt a tie-breaker anyway). While this is super awesome for the Twins and M&M boys, we feel slightly wistful as we recall that nail-biter game against the Tigers last season. Surrounded by all around lackluster Division Series where most of the winning teams swept their opponents, that 164th game was pure excitement.

After a lot of back and forth B.S., Joe Torre finally confirmed that he would NOT be managing the Mets next year. He even went so far as to apologize to Jerry Manuel for fanning the fire of those rumors. Torre has become so full of himself, that we find it hard to believe that he’s genuine about anything these days. As you may recall, late last week, the Dodgers announced that Don Mattingly would be assuming the helm of the SS Think Blue for 2011 (Mamadukes must be so proud!), leaving Torre unemployed. Torre claims to not anticipate managing another team in the future, but his vague word selections and recent arrogant behavior makes us skeptical. Of course, only time will tell if this is a true retirement or Brett Farve-inspired. Mattingly’s well-deserved opportunity to shine gets him TBB Super Hero of the Week status. It’s about time, Donnie!

In further Mets’ news, Tuesday night’s 5-2 loss to the Marlins “officially” eliminated them from playoff contention. Shocker.

Lastly, with the Yankees pitching staff behaving like a pack of NTAC’s last night, the Rays were able to pull within a ½ game of first in the AL East again. Nice job, guys. We can tell you’re REALLY trying to firmly grasp the division here.

Before we leave you with lines of moving and heartfelt poetry, we’ve got some fun stuff in store for you next week’s blog posting. Tomorrow afternoon, we and Papa L. will be at Citi Field for a guided tour of the stadium. This option is something new that the Mets introduced to fans this season, following the footsteps of many other stadiums around the league, including the Yankees (Serena did this tour last season. You can read her post regarding the trip here). Tours were not even offered at Shea Stadium, so this should be pretty cool. We’ll make sure to post as many pictures as possible for you. Another heads up regarding next week is that the blog will be posted sometime Thursday afternoon as opposed to Friday. The reason for this is that we’ll be on an overnight flight to Paris Thursday night and unable to blog during our usual Friday lunch break time. We’re sure that you can understand.

“Eating time. Open up your wallets and enjoy the stadium meals. Eating time. Dump that really good beef all over the nachos we want to eat. Eating time. One last call for alcohol so we will finish our beer before the 7th. Eating time. We have to go home now cos’ we can’t afford any more meals. We know what we want to eat next time. Oh, we know what we want to eat next time.”