Sunday, August 05, 2007

WHY GO HOME?

I am now going through the 496 photographs (I am not exaggerating) of the last two days, so any detailed posts will have to wait until tomorrow.

One small detail to keep it interesting:

Thursday night we got to see Pearl Jam play a small (1400 capacity) theater at a fan-club only show. (In a previous life, I was an enormous PJ fan, but it’s been years, really.)  Somehow I got tickets, and we drove straight from Miller Park to the theater, got in line, and saw the show.

During a short pre-show acoustic set from Eddie Vedder, he announces that he’s going to play a new song that he’s written about the Cubs, since they’re actually doing well this year. This being a Pearl Jam audience, way too many people applaud the Cubs because they’re Eddie’s favorite team, not because they actually like them or follow baseball. (And if you want to argue with me about that, see the previous paragraph.) I didn’t start the boos - I leave that credit to the dozens of Phillies fans (who were at Wrigley that day) - but once they started, we joined in with great enthusiasm.

However, we were not about to let them get away with the resulting “Let’s go Phillies” chants, and having seen a few Mets hats earlier in the evening, Coop and I started “Let’s Go Mets,” at which point we were all booed down, but not before Coop got in a hearty, “Jose, Jose, Jose.”

Of further note, but this is only interesting to the majorly geeky, is our sighting of a questionable personalized baseball jersey with the letters AMENT 10 on the back, being worn by a random fan in the crowd (Jeff Ament being Pearl Jam’s bass player, and 10 being a number significant to Pearl Jam fans, the title of their first album, etc.). Two minutes later, the jersey walks the other way and I see it is a YANKEES jersey. We express our disgust, only for a Phillies fan in front of us to turn around and offer, “Yeah, that’s just all kinds of wrong.” Then he sees my hat, pauses, raises his beer: “At least we can break bread on that.”

The photos, and the full reports from both Milwaukee and Wrigley, will be up starting tomorrow.