Monday, May 19, 2008
START SPREADING THE NEWS. [05-18-08]
Mets v. Yankees, 5-18-08
Wang v. Perez
It is a very good thing that this is the last year of Yankee Stadium, because we hadn’t been there for more than 15 minutes before I declared tonight was the last time I was ever going to put myself through the hassle of going there again. We know the rules, we know we can’t bring a bag and everything is in our hands or in clear plastic, and yet we had to pull everything out of my purse and our pockets and take off our hats and then after that I get hassled again over my LEGAL BY THE RULES purse… and then my ticket had trouble scanning.
By the time we made it upstairs, to the wonderful right-behind-home-plate seats that TBF grabbed off of eBay, neither of us were in the mood to be there. At all.
“Cheer up,” said the Yankees fans in front of us. “Don’t look so glum!”
“We’re plenty cheery,” TBF said. “Our team isn’t losing.”
And then there was a game.
Oliver likes big games. Oliver likes pitching in Yankee Stadium. All of which is true. And for several innings there, I contented myself with the fact that the other side hadn’t scored any runs either.
But even better, the Mets decided they liked hitting in Yankee Stadium… of off Chien-Ming Wang, no less. You’re going to take a three-run homer away from us? No worries. We’ll just get it back…and back again… and back again. As we sat there in disbelief after what will probably go down in the record books as one of the worst calls of the year, TBF gets a text message - but not from any of our baseball friends or one of his buddies. It was his mother, saying “Definitely a HR!”
I’d pay a large sum of money to know what Jerry Manuel said that got him run out of the game. From our vantage point we could see the whole thing go down. Personally, I think Willie should have gotten himself run and let Jerry take over, but I’m glad someone gave a huge dose of WTF to the umpires. Unfortunately we came home to find that the DVR didn’t record and that scene got left out of the Baseball Tonight highlights.
In the 6th inning, after Ryan Church hit that solo HR, TBF sat back and said, “I feel much better about this game.” This became our refrain throughout the rest of the game… and by the time it was 11-2 and I said back for real and said, “You know, I feel much better about this game,” all TBF could do was start laughing. “Really? A 9-run lead makes you feel good, does it?”
Ryan Church. Ryan Church continues to hit… as well as be All-Star caliber defensively, even though we know he won’t go he deserves it. He is a wonder and a joy to behold and even the Yankees fans were taking their hats off to him, shaking their heads in disbelief. We saw Ryan Church shirts in a Modell’s off of Times Square on Saturday night… we’re going back there tomorrow to make a few purchases.
Jose Reyes. The joy on his face as he rounded second base, as he came into home plate, as he headed to the dugout. He needs to find a way to bottle it and take it back out when he needs it. Or better yet, let’s just get it back full time.
As Cerrone said on Friday, given the way the Mets have been playing, I found it hard to muster a lot of enthusiasm for these games. The pageantry seemed forced and artificial, and my tolerance for dealing with moronic Yankees fans less than zero. We needed to pitch well, we needed to hit, and we needed to win these games. Period. We need to be able to go into Atlanta feeling like a team that’s winning, instead of a team who lets the Washington Nationals walk all over them.
To give credit where credit is due, we would like to extend our completely sincere and warm thanks to the season ticket holders of section 601 (some of whom had been there since 1979) for their hospitality Sunday evening. No one fought. No one hassled us. There wasn’t even a lot of trash talking (except for the guy next to TBF whose entire repertoire consisted of “Mets suck,” and then realized he was in way over his head. “You’re in last place! Who are you going to trash talk, the AAA teams?”). These were old-time baseball folks and it smoothed over the rough start we had to the night. Of course, the Mets helped with the rest of that.
[My photos suck. Don’t know what was up with the camera. Can’t figure out if it was the distance or the lighting or the fact that, well, I don’t shoot in Yankee Stadium very much. But, as they say, don’t blame the instrument. The Flickr feed is here, I’ll have to clean it up some more tomorrow night when I have more time.]
Actually, I love the second photo! Great shot of Willie & ump and Church & Sandy pointing.