Sunday, August 20, 2006

of mr. met, 1986 and the upper deck

We got to Shea at the ungodly hour of 9:30am and made our way to the Diamond Club entrance. Today was the day: Breakfast with Mr. Met!

I saw this activity announced at Workout Day, and was fairly tiresome about it for a while. Even though TBF insists that he wasn’t putting it off, it wasn’t until I posted on here about it (or rather, until he read about it on here, because he didn’t know about this blog for a long time) that the phone call was made and the reservation set. As he would insist to friends, “*She’s* having breakfast with Mr. Met. I’m going to check out the Mets Hall of Fame and the World Series Trophies.”

Riiiight.

When we arrived, the waitress walked over with a toy - an edible cookie featuring Mr. Met that you can color with edible markers - “I’ll just leave this here,” she said, once she realized there were no children present. It wasn’t until we arrived and were seated that we realized that this was an activity aimed at families and children.

Oops.

That aside, the breakfast buffet was outstanding. And you definitely get your money’s worth from Mr. Met. He arrives about half an hour into breakfast, sits at tables, visits each group individually, definitely accomodates as many photos as you like. For the kids, he signed postcards. Once he’s done that, people finish eating, and he comes back one more time, this time with one of the mets.com Fan Photo photographers.  They hand out t-shirts (the crappy t-shirt launch ones), and you also get to have your name on the scoreboard! The staff treated everyone warmly and with good attention.

I don’t know what it cost, since it was a treat, but TBF repeatedly assured me it was worth the money (and not just because I had a grin from ear to ear the entire time).

After breakfast, we had time to check out the World Series trophies. I noticed this last night: it’s a lot bigger than I thought it would be. I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting, but it’s certainly more impressive in person.

Today was our first game on our recently-acquired Sunday plan (having missed the first one because we were in Seattle).  Since the object of this purchase was entirely post-season rights, we went for the cheapest option, which was upper deck boxes. We’re a little closer to home plate than we are on my tickets, but it’s a fine view and the stadium was not full so we had room to spread out.  We got today’s rain last night, with the result that it was pretty hot upstairs today, to the point where we had to head up to get some shade at about the 6th inning. The lemon ice guys were not coming around enough, that’s for damn sure.

Thoughts on the game:

• I have always been an El Duque advocate (okay. ‘always’ being a relative term here.), but I enjoyed his performance today. I would be happier seeing him third in the lineup in the post season than Trachsel.
• The 86 uniforms: I have always kinda dug these aesthetically, in a retro way, and was pleased to see blank ones in the Clubhouse Shop - only to find out that there’s no way it was going to be attractive to anyone who might have hips and curves. 
• Seeing the 2006 Mets in those uniforms was a little odd. It didn’t seem strange on TV last night, but in person, the piping on the side (that Keith went on and on and on about last night) just seemed stupid.

Much of the beauty and the detail of today’s game was lost to me in the heat. Things I saw and thought, “Oh!” have faded away.  Either we bring too much water, or not enough.

Finally, the news about Mr. Glavine is, well, unfortunate.

Wait, let me try that again:

When I walked out of the shower this morning and was greeted with this news, my first response was along the lines of “OH $#@!. We’re toast. That’s it. Poor Tommy.”
“No, we’re not toast.”
“Who is our starting rotation in the post-season?”
“Pedro--”
“Right, Pedro.” (We had a discussion with some random guy Friday night who avowed that we should just activate Pedro after the All-Star break. I’m seeing a lot of sense in that thesis.)
“Assume he’s healthy.”
“Again, right, Pedro.”
“Pedro, El Duque, Trachsel, we go to bullpen by committee.”
“We’re toast.”

I am worried. TBF is stoically insisting that we’ll be fine.

CONTEST WINNER

Kota Nozawa was the first one in with a correct response today.  Congratulations and thank you for calling.

(The answer to the actual trivia question in that bunch , which obviously came from TBF: Randy Niemann and Ed Hearn.)

-----

1986: blast from the past

Truth: I have this detached fascination with the 1986 Mets - but no more than that. As part of my learning last summer I read Amazin’, and I tried to slog through The Bad Guys Won (good stories, terrible writing). I wasn’t a baseball fan then - quite the opposite - and I have some vague memories of people standing outside bars during the playoffs, but that’s about it.  I absolutely salute the history, and what it means to the team, and what it means to other fans, but - well, I care about the 2006 Mets.  I’m sure you’ll all lambast me now for - well, whatever - but I don’t care. I think it would be worse for me to come in as some kind of pretender and feign deep abiding emotion for 1986.  It’s not like I’m completely uninterested - I certainly wanted to watch the introductions tonight (probably more than TBF, even), and obviously the emotion on the field and in the stands was undeniable.

Speaking of which…

METS GRRL 1986 DVD GIVEAWAY CONTEST

For some reason, people seem to think that enough of you read this blog that they’re willing to give me merchandise to give away. So, courtesy A&E Home Video/MLB Productions and with the collaboration of TBF, I have one box set to give away to the first reader who emails metsgrrl at gmail dot com with the answers to the following three trivia questions:

1. Who sang the National Anthem at the first game of the 1986 World Series?
2. Name one celebrity - who isn’t Joe Piscopo or Ed Koch - that appears in the “Let’s Go Mets Go” video.
3. Who were the only player(s) on the World Series roster who did not play in any World Series games?

I will post the name and answers tomorrow evening post-game.

-----

Friday, August 18, 2006

THIS IS NEW YORK NOT BOSTON*

It was a truly bucolic evening out at Shea tonight. I got out of work in time to meet TBF and travel to Shea in a leisurely fashion, the weather was perfect, and the Mets played a solid game that resulted in a victory. Steve Trachsel was decidedly peppy (well, for Steve Trachsel, anyway). D.Wright’s slump seems to be winding down and Our Endy delivered yet again.

We were fading into that 8th inning, “we’re probably going to win at this point so we’re going to relax” glow, when Diamondvision trumpted and the PA announced:

“It’s the XM Sing-A-Long! Stand up and sing along with...”

Just when I’m thinking that this could be cool, the bomb is dropped:

“‘Sweet Caroline’ by Neil Diamond.”

WHAT THE FUCK?

I’m sorry, I know I usually censor myself here. But this situation calls for drastic language.

I assumed that everyone else would share my outrage. I mean, this is not our tradition, this is BOSTON’s tradition. And while I’ll buy into the whole “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” thing to some point, this has nothing to do with it.

TBF exploded similarly. Or rather, identically. “NOOOO! This is NOT our song. This is THEIR song!” One of the things that irks him the most is when people at Shea can’t leave other ballparks’ traditions at those ballparks, especially Yankee traditions.

To our horror, people stood up. People sang. Lots of people sang.

To our continued horror, it wasn’t bad enough that they JUST played the song, but they cut it off AT THE EXACT SAME POINTS THEY CUT IT OFF IN BOSTON FOR AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION. Bad enough already that they were playing it in the 8th inning, which is (as you know), EXACTLY WHEN THEY PLAY IT AT FENWAY!

Is the Mets front office so devoid of creativity and imagination they can’t think of anything else to do except blatantly ripoff another ballpark’s and another team’s tradition? Is this another case of “We’re only the Mets and have only been around since 1962 and our ground isn’t sacred and we have no history” abashedness? Because you know, at some point you might want to see a shrink about your inferiority complex and GET OVER IT.

This is exactly the kind of thing we get ridiculed for uptown. We should be making our own traditions, our own customs, our own cool moments at the game.  This is one of the top things I L-O-V-E about baseball, the individual traditions of each park and each team.  For the love of all that is good and holy, pick different songs. Pick different promotions. If you have no ideas, go hire someone who can help, the team can certainly afford it, and we, as fans, deserve the best, not some other team’s reruns.

My nomination for an alternate would be “Rockaway Beach” by the Ramones (who are from QUEENS!), but I will concede TBF’s point that people might not know the words.  His suggestion, “Glory Days” by Bruce Springsteen, makes perfect sense - everyone knows it, it’s upbeat, it’s about baseball, and if you want another contextual tie in, Bruce played three nights at Shea. I’ll take it.

I would rather hear “Centerfield” than “Sweet Caroline,” and I hate that song so goddamn much I cannot even begin to describe it to you. I would sing along with gusto and enthusiasm.

Get rid of “Sweet Caroline.” We’re entitled to more imagination than that, and so are the Mets. We got rid of “Our Team Our Time” because of shared fan outrage; don’t let them foist this travesty upon us now, especially as we head into the post-season and all eyes will be on Flushing. It’s embarassing.

TBF is sitting in the other room composing his letter to the front office as we speak.

===

We’re not going tomorrow, but we are going on Sunday, and having Breakfast With Mr. Met. No, seriously, TBF finally stepped up.

*There was a punk rock compilation in the 80s called THIS IS BOSTON NOT NEW YORK.

scenes from a punk rock bar

The conversation started a few weeks ago, when I confessed to one of my best friends, V., that I had been writing this blog.

This has been a hard thing for most people I know to understand. Unless they are already baseball people, they are bemused, confused, cynical,patronizing, condescending and a million other similar adjectives. It doesn’t compute. They don’t know how to respond to it. They leave voicemail messages like, “Well, it’s Sunday afternoon, so you’re probably at a baseball game...” And all I ever want to respond is, Yeah, asshole, I probably am. Where are you? Drinking in the latest hipster bar in LA or Brooklyn or wherever? That’s certainly new and unique and progressive. You are seeing the same people you always see.

But it is hard. It is like I have announced that I’ve turned Republican or religious or something (and I don’t much care if you are one or the other or both, leave it). It’s just baseball.

This week V. is in New York, and we are out drinking on Avenue B. There is a game, but I have one night to hang out with her while she is here on business.
Shaking her head: “I don’t understand it.”
“Neither do I.”
“So you write every day?”
“Sometimes.”
“I think it’s great that you’re writing every day again. You’re excited about it.”
“I am, that’s why I started it.”
“What do you write about?”
“The games, the people, what it’s like to sit there, what I’m learning about...”
“You write about the experience.”
“Right. It’s not that much different than me writing about music.”
“You don’t write about numbers or statistics or anything like that--” She looks fearful, for a second, trying to figure out how I have turned into a person who likes sports.
“No, no, not at all. I can’t do numbers. I know more or less what they mean but I could stare at them for hours and they would never make sense to me.”
“And people read your blog? Still?”
“Yeah, still. Some people read me every day.”
Another incredulous look.
“With all the things you have written about...”
“Well, this is the next thing.”
“But this! Of all things.”
“You know, I never thought I would be the person who would go and choose to sit in a baseball stadium, and know who the players are, and follow the rivalries, or come home and say, ‘Honey, can’t we just watch Baseball Tonight? I don’t feel like I know what happened around the league today.’”
She shudders.
“And I listen to sports talk radio.”
Horror now. “You don’t!”
“And I get upset about what some of the callers say.”
“NOooooO!” She reaches for her cocktail. Gulps.
“I love it because it is new, and it’s different, and I’m outside, andthere’s air, and there’s beer, and the green is just so soothing and peaceful, and I get to talk to people I would never ever in my daily life have any opportunity to have a conversation with. I’m not talking about the war or politics or gossip or what musician X did this week or what so-and-so wrote on the internet. I can have conversations with 9 year old Hispanic girls on the 7 train, a bank teller up on E. 82nd Street, the people who sit around me every Tuesday and Friday, the old drunk Polish guys who see me walking home from the game in a Mets shirt and want to know why we lost. It takes me out of myself and my world and my life and engages me in the rest of the planet.”

And that was something that even she could understand and approve of.

This approximated the conversation Wednesday night. When I was out West I had come clean about this blog to her, my independent businesswoman, total leftist-feminist-progressive, former anarchist-punk-rocker, modern revolutionary pal. We talk about the ACLU and police brutality and fashion trends and life and love. Sports was so far away from anything we considered to be our orbit.

But V., unlike most of the rest of my friends, is fascinated and supportive and curious and asking a million questions, and, while flabbergasted at this turn of events, is thrilled for me. The only thing she wanted to know is when I was going to get my merchandise line together.

Thursday, August 17, 2006

mooooookie

As we roll into 1986 weekend, I notice that Mookie Wilson is signing DVD’s down the street from me today (Thursday) (Borders at 100 Broadway in Manhattan at 1pm) and also out on Lon Guyland (Best Buy in Westbury at 6:30pm).

:::end gratuitous plug:::

However there is only so far having a Mets fan manager can get you.

More to write about Metsgrrl and 1986, but it is late, we lost AGAIN, and I ended up drinking with friends in the East Village in an establishment that only had the Yankees game on.

Probably for the best.

*sigh*

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

metsgrrl tours the safe, part 2

I’d like to start this portion of my Seattle travelogue by acting like a 7-year-old.

This man would never survive in the New York area. He could be The Second Greatest Closer In The History of Western Civilization, and he would not make it through half a season. His team could have a J.J. Putz t-shirt day where they dutifully instruct us that his name is pronounced “pootz” - it wouldn’t matter. No one would buy his jersey. No one would add him to their fantasy league. Mike and the Mad Dog would have a running joke daily—no, hourly—over him. Keith Hernandez would say stupid things while Gary Cohen tried to suppress his laughter. Jay Horwitz would throw his hands up in despair over his inability to stop the entire New York baseball community from acting like a bunch of grade schoolers.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, I can tell you about our seats for this game. I had known that our friends had these seats, or somehow vaguely knew that their charter seats were in the front row, but Alan has access to a gazillion seats at any given moment and I would have been happy to sit anywhere. The point was for the four of us to go to a game together, and more importantly, for Alan and TBF to see a game together.

Late Saturday night, as Alan showed us the video where he threw out the first pitch last September (it’s disgusting, I know), he asked, “Do you want a preview of your seats tomorrow?”
I said no because I honestly wanted to be surprised. And I never expected we were going to sit in the charter seats because there were only two of them.

Sunday morning, both Alan and I manage to wear different Mike Cameron t-shirts; neither of us can be bothered to change.  We are just heading out the door to the game, driving separately so TBF and I can have dinner with other friends post-game.
Alan hands us a parking pass, and then he hands us our tickets.
“Alan, this says Row 1,” TBF says.
“Yes, I believe it does,” Alan replies.

If you’re that interested, there’s surely a Safeco seating chart available, but the pictures kind of say it all.

Section 119, Row 1. I mean, ROW 1. Row 1, that you can walk down to the seats and kick out the Japanese kids waiting for Ichiro (who is done with signing autographs and isn’t coming back out). Row 1, where you can reach down and touch the dirt on the warning track. Row 1, where the Mariner Moose will come strolling along the field level and pose for pictures and sign autographs. I take one for TBF, I take one with Alan and Sarah and the kids (Lauren screamed, Jake looked concerned). And then, finally, after all these years, I get my photo with my guy.

(No, I’m not sharing that here. It was a - private moment.) This isn’t the Moose playing peek-a-boo, it’s the Moose signing autographs - he holds the ball up to his eyeholes so he can see, is what I figure. “He’s a good mascot,” TBF admitted a little bit later.

HA!

Row 1, where Ichiro will fly by you on his way to and from the outfield 18 times. Row 1, where you could hear the players talk if the entire experience of being THIS CLOSE wasn’t making your ears ring. TBF had to have a few moments alone when he finally settled down to fill in the starting lineups in the boxscore, he was so overcome.

All I could think was: Wow. Imagine if this was Shea? Imagine if that was Delgado standing there, or the Mets bullpen was just down the row, or if this is where I’d watch Reyes fly by as he hit a triple or Wright careen into first or Valentin angle as he threw someone out at first or or or or…

*sigh*

I will sound like a complete moron if I tell you that it was very, very difficult to concentrate on the game in those seats, but it was. From the mezz or the upper deck, you have the entire field of action in your view. Here, you had to constantly change your field of vision and if you watched a play at 1st you might miss what went on at 3rd. I would have to completely relearn how to watch baseball if I had seats anywhere this good.

Yes, my friends bring their kids to the game. They are just getting to the point where they are getting too squirmy, but for now, they bring the kids. (If you’re thinking about filling up the comment section with your outrage, please go do it somewhere else.) And I’m happy to report that both kids got baseballs from the A’s first base coach, whose thing is to walk out of the dugout each inning with a ball in his back pocket, and find a deserving youngster to give it to. “You gotta root for the A’s, kid,” he’ll admonish them, and they’ll nod their head half-seriously.

Lauren preferred to eat her ball:

“It’s mud and grass, she’s had worse in her mouth,” was the comment made by one of her parents.

Yeah, the Mariners sucked again. But it wouldn’t have mattered if they got trounced. Not in those seats.

I remarked to TBF that our plans to become rich and famous needed to pick up steam so we could come somewhere close to approximating those seats at the new Shea. Alan immediately leaned over and started offering up his strategy on how we could do just that.

Now, that’s a friend.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

was there a game tonight?

I wouldn’t have known except that I was working late and my boss was IM’ing me the score.

And then we had DVR and remote management issues (any advice on how to set the DVR to record, and then start watching the game at, say, 9pm, via fastforward, and eventually catch up to the live game? This can be done, right? TBF does not want to concede he might have remote management issues), which meant we saw the end in real time, just when it was starting to get really bad.

As a result of all of these things, TBF and I have been walking around crabby all night. We retreated to our respective computers, where he is likely bitching on the Crane Pool forum and I am working on updating the second part of my Seattle post.

Because - what am I going to write about the game? You can read Mike, or Jessica, or Jason & Greg. I’m sure they’ll all be cranky too, but they’ll be discplined enough to get a blog post out of it.

Not me.

-----

metsgrrl tours the safe, part 1

I have this odd, unintentional history with the Seattle Mariners. I moved to Seattle in March of 1995, which should tell you more or less what you need to know: I was in the right place at the right time, and I had friends who were baseball crazy. I remember being at work at Internet Startup #1 that fall and listening to the Mariners game over the INTERNET. I remember our IT guy Steve, diehard fan with season tickets in the upper deck first row behind home plate, asking people if they would cover for him and allow him to work untraditional hours when the Mariners started to head into playoffs, because (and I quote), “Who knows if I’ll ever get that chance again?” I knew nothing about baseball but I sure understood faith and devotion, so I was more than happy to help him out.  Steve was The Guy Who Kept The Boxscore. Again, I had no idea what he was doing, but as the woman who writes down setlists of concerts as they happen, I certainly understood the concept and found it to be completely logical.

I also remember my first Mariners game at the Kingdome in the fall of 1995. It was a company event with the aforementioned startup. I remember all 13 of us (again, remember, it was a startup) being there, and how the three of us from the East Coast were booing a questionable umpire call. Someone actually reported us to an usher who walked over and lectured us about how we certainly weren’t from around here but at the Kingdome things are done differently. As the usher walked away, one of my compatriots muttered, “He’s lucky I didn’t bring the D batteries.”

Baseball was a social thing. Baseball was what I went to when Steve would offer his season tickets to friends and I’d go with a girlfriend and we’d sit there and pretend to swoon over Joey Cora’s picture (if you think Miguel Cairo or Chris Woodward have ears, you clearly never saw Joey Cora).

My biggest baseball friends were Alan and Sarah. Alan proposed to Sarah at Safeco. They have a baseball room in their house. They have season tickets, charter tickets, if you ever need a ticket to a Mariners game, Alan can send a series of emails and can get you get you whatever you need.  It was from the two of them I learned what I know about baseball ticket buying strategies, and seniority, and it is, essentially, Alan’s fault that I put the money down in December for our tickets.

When I first started dating TBF, Alan and Sarah’s first reaction was to inquire which New York baseball team he was a fan of. Once that piece of information was ascertained, they started trying to feed me lines to drop into conversation in order to impress TBF.
“You can just casually mention that you think Mike Cameron will really improve their defense up the middle,” Alan said.
I looked at him as though they were insane. “*I* can’t just casually drop that into any conversation, EVER.”
“Well, if you’re going to a bar, and Sportscenter is on, they’ll definitely mention the Mets, you could say it then,” Sarah offered.
“No bar I hang out at has 1) televisions 2) ESPN on,” I insisted. At the time, it was true. Great jukeboxes and ex-members of various punk rock bands bartending, but no sports.

Alan has wanted to take TBF to a game for a couple of years now, but the timing never worked out. WHen the Mets were in Seattle last year, there was no physical or financial way we could make it out West. But this year, there is time and there is money and TBF made a comment about wanting to go to Seattle, so I dutifully sent email off to Alan, who came back with a long list of dates. At the top of that list was an event called Albabe Day At The Mariners, when Alan buys about 100 tickets in the center field bleachers and invites basically everyone he knows. At $7 a seat, it’s a pretty good deal. It’s not much about watching baseball, but it is a big part of what baseball is to some people.

And, he added, he had “some really good seats” for the Sunday game.

We used some of my Alaska Airlines miles and set our sights for Seattle, and the first TBF/MG out of town baseball-related excursion.

Saturday was bleachers day. Saturday we got there early enough to drop off the tickets at will-call (you manage getting 1-year-old twins to the game in time for first pitch and drop off 100 tickets for various people).  It was there that we noticed the ticket windows marked TICKET EXCHANGE, and marveled at the concept: switch your bad tickets for better seats, and you’re actually encouraged to do it?!

We also marveled at the concept of ONE ATM IN THE ENTIRE BALLPARK. Sure, it’s free (Boeing Employees Credit Union), but the fact that there is only one (okay, two machines, in one location) and it is located behind home plate, made us long for Banco Popular.

We did a circuit and a half of the main concourse. Keep in mind - I have been to this ballpark before. Hell, my former employer, a large multi-national software concern located near Seattle, used to hold their company meetings at Safeco. (No, the beer stands were not open for the meetings.) And I even took TBF on the tour during the winter when we were first dating. But I have never been in the Safe as a baseball fan.

Therefore, there was much to wonder at, observe and document:

The espresso stands. (This is Seattle, after all, but as an avowed coffee snob, I would have to be majorly hungover to drink this swill.)

Toto, we’re definitely not in Kansas any more, if we’re seeing listings for where we can listen to the Mariners in Butte:

The multiple microbrews on tap.

The acceptable conduct guidelines. “Obscene or indecent clothing” is how they get away from banning the YANKEES SUCK or A-ROD SWALLOWS shirts sold at my old haunting ground, the Five Point Cafe (whose motto was: “Alcoholics serving alcoholics since 1929").

The field-level bullpens, a detail I certainly wouldn’t have ever cared about before.

The expansive beauty of the Safe on one of the three weeks of summer Seattle gets.

The old-school touches, such as the manual scoreboard and the league flags, arranged in order.

The obscene amount of food offerings (local barbeque, grilled salmon, and the legendary Ichiroll - sushi at the ballpark).

Amongst these - or rather, in the forefront - you haven’t been to Safeco unless you’ve experienced:

Forget peanuts and Cracker Jack. You haven’t been to a ballgame until you’ve eaten chocolate covered strawberries on a skewer for brunch. Of course, this is a food offering we will never, ever see anywhere near a New York ballpark: food served on a sharp stick? Yeah, right. Seattle is possibly the only place where this would not result in immediate riots.

Thanks to our friends’ largesse, we were in the front row of the center field bleachers, with tickets assigned to other friends around me. TBF, stubbornly, insisted on keeping score. He exhibited considerable disgruntlement at how no one, repeat, no one (and I mean literally in a full ballpark) claps at the second strike. Sometimes TBF would do it just because he couldn’t not do it.  Sometimes the scoreboard would read ‘CLAP!” and the crowd would make noise - but then would stop before the windup. The Seattle baseball fan’s need to be given permission to make noise is one of my friend Sarah’s biggest peeves about the city.

However, I am happy to report that Seattle has learned to boo. That’s right. A behavior I was reprimanded for at the Kingdome in 1995 is now acceptable, thanks to Lou Piniella - at least for questionable ump calls. They won’t boo anything else, though, and they - wait for it - applaud the effort if someone tries to make a play and misses. We were aghast.

The seventh inning stretch is just about the same as it would be anywhere else, except that the followup song is - wait for it - “Louie Louie” by the Kingsmen, who originally hail from Tacoma, Washington. I don’t even know if this is a new innovation or if whoever programs the music knows this (they must, there’s a whole Kingsmen exhibit at Paul Allen’s Jimi Hendrix muse-- oops, The Experience Music Project), but I certainly enjoyed the song and the reference.

Somehow, it amazed me that our bleacher seats at Safeco were 1000% times more comfortable than our mezzanine seats at Shea. “Yeah, our seats were put in in 1962, honey,” TBF said, as I attempted to prevent one of the twins from stealing his scoring pen. (Jake was awfully interested in the boxscore, and I did try to get him to wave and yell “Konnichiwa!” at Ichiro - because I’m quite sure no one has ever sat in the outfield at Safeco and done that before.)

And finally, the Mariner Moose, my first true (mascot) love. TBF was grumpy at first, and then started pointing him out every time he saw him. By the end of the game he announced that he wanted to have his picture taken with the Moose if at all possible.  Sweet, sweet vindication.

I do not remember much of the game; the Mariners lost, and they did not play well. I had a lot of friends to talk to, and was happy with my ability to socialize and watch baseball, while my friends tried hard to deal with my apparent transformation.  From our vantage point, I did appreciate the bleacher bums from Oakland who ensconsed themselves out in the standing room in the outfield, and acquitted themselves nicely, rooting for their team. I liked the sunshine, playing with the twins, seeing my friends, eating garlic fries, and not having my butt ache after the game. And, I loved that I had baseball as the background for all of it.

On the way back to Alan and Sarah’s, TBF tried to call into the local sports radio show. He actually got past the screener before he had to hang up because it would have been anti-social. (He was going to bitch about the lack of noise.)

Part two, where we sit in Alan and Sarah’s charter seats, and actually watch the game, next.

Monday, August 14, 2006

walt whitman bridge*

Late last week, after being thoroughly tired of missing first pitch because I’m still at work, or heading home from work, the MG household made the decision to acquire a DVR from Time Warner.  (We are actually not technophobes, nor Luddites, just busy and not realizing that this was an affordable option.) We picked up our new box yesterday, conveniently arriving at the Time Warner store-thingie in time to watch the end of the game, which was of course on one of the many screens around this location.

(Our obvious interest in the game - despite the security guard yelling at us that we had to Sit Down And Wait For Our Number - got the one guy in the store who cared about the game to wait on us as soon as our number came up, where we had a lengthy and spirited discussion about the Mets while he processed the paperwork faster than I have ever seen a Time-Warner employee do ANYTHING. “Clearly, the Mets are on everyone’s mind these days,” TBF commented.)

I proudly programmed the box last night to get the pregame show and the game, and noted to TBF the wonderful feature attached to live events. I think he was peeved he didn’t get to set up the DVR, but he was busy hammering bookcases together.

I got off the L train close to 8pm, giddy that I could actually see all of the game, and not just the highlights. We didn’t have to rush home, or try to cook dinner while craning our necks towards the television set hoping we didn’t miss something.  We took our time making dinner and settling down.  TBF immediately pounced upon the DVR remote, and hit the wrong button. The button for the live tv.

And we saw that the game was at 9-0 in the 6th.

He promptly got up and said, “We don’t want to see this game.”
MG: “They could rally.”
Rolling of eyes, but he returned to the couch and the remote and we began watching the game in fast forward.

As things got worse… and worse… and worse… I grabbed the laptop and watched the game out of one eye. I went over to Faith And Fear In Flushing, which was a slight tactical error, because the game was already over in real time at that point, and one click in the latest post took me to the ESPN boxscore.

“It gets worse,” I said, quickly closing the browser window.
“How much worse?”
“Bad.”
“Did Pedro get hurt??! Willie needs to put him on the DL until playoffs,” TBF said.
“No, not that.”

And then TBF hit the “Live TV’ button by mistake.

13-0.

Well, at least we didn’t try to drive down for the game. Our Philly friends are so going to have trash talking privileges when we see them next if the Mets don’t turn something around in the next day or so, and remember that THE SEASON IS NOT OVER YET.

Go Mets.

*title taken from the song of the same name

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Saturday, August 12, 2006

don’t you start me talking

I do not buy the New York Post. I did not grow up in a family that would have ever considered reading the Post. I don’t care that their sports page is better or that they have four sudoku puzzles, I wouldn’t buy the thing if it was the last thing to read on the planet and I was about to take an 8 hour plane ride.

However, if you walk to work in the morning on the streets of New York City, you are going to see the Post hawked at newspaper stands and by vendors outside subway entrances and on corners throughout town. So there was no avoiding the screaming headlines and photographs better suited for an UK paper’s Page Three than for the front (or back) page of a daily paper.

I’m not a big fan of gossip, either about people like us or celebrities.  It’s hurtful, and I don’t care much for the whole argument that if you decide to be famous you discard your right to dignity, privacy or simple human consideration. It doesn’t matter that I don’t know them or that they make millions of dollars or I listen to their music or watch them play baseball, all I can ever think of is how much it would suck if the tables were turned. If you’ve ever been the target of idle or just plain wrong gossip, you can probably identify.

All I can ever think is: where’s the humanity? When did we start turning on each other with such velocity? I have been in conversations with people I considered friends, and listened to the so-called ‘reliable information’ they were generously sharing with me about Famous Person X (because that’s how they viewed it, they were giving me something precious) and all I could think is: my god, I’m glad I’m not famous yet, because what would you be telling total strangers about me if I was?


(I do want to make it clear that someone who commits a crime is in a different category as far as I’m concerned.)

I also always, always, always question so-called “inside sources” or “friends of” sources. How good a friend can this person be, how much of an intimate, if they are willing to share private information with total strangers, or blatantly spill secrets to a journalist. How reliable could this information possibly be? Or even if factually true, if you have an agenda that impels you to spread it around, what are you leaving out? What context is being omitted in your quest for your 15 minutes?

The other thing that occurred to me this week, walking through the barrage of Mets-related trash in the media, is that none of this would be happening if the Mets weren’t doing well, weren’t being taken seriously as contenders. Otherwise the media would be continuing to fawn over Jeter’s perfume brand.

(I’m sorry, I just threw up a little bit in my mouth when I said that.)

I had hoped to write about the Seattle trip last night but it’s been a long week. Hopefully over the weekend. About last night’s game, all I can say is that I’m glad we decided not to drive down to DC this weekend.

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