23 posts tagged “baseball”
Yes, I was there for the debacle, and this is how I survived:
- The game starts at 3:55 p.m., the hottest time of the day during the hottest time of the year, because Fox Sports has made this its Game of the Week. During a steamy walk from the subway (no air conditioning on my subway car!) to the ballpark, I curse Fox. I arrive just as an Italian-American man—it's Italian Heritage "Night," according to several signs and the scoreboard—is butchering the national anthem.
- Since I know Adam Eaton is pitching, I head right to Brewerytown. I have a feeling I'm going to need help cutting down down the heat- and Eaton-induced crankiness.
- My friend is already in our seats, puzzled by my arrival just at game time. That's so unlike me, he says. A sweaty 300-pound man is in the seat next to me. Oh my. I plot our escape to empty seats.
- The D'backs score two in the top of the first. Our seats our still in the shade, but the sun is moving toward us fast. I think about asking the usher about the policy for fans who can't fit in their own seats.
- Shane Victorino hits a two-run homer in the bottom of the third, tying the game. To celebrate, my friend and I move over a couple of seats. In just a few more minutes, our row will be in the sun, though.
- Eaton collapses in the fourth, giving up a two-out double to D'backs pitcher Randy Johnson(!), a career .126 hitter. I boo, puzzling my friend again. That's unlike you, too, he says. By the end of the long, long inning, the D'backs are ahead 10-2, Eaton is in the dugout, R.J. Swindle is our pitcher, and my seat is fully in the sun.
- We score two more runs in the bottom of the fifth. Victorino likes the heat, apparently, hitting another homer. It's too hot, and we're too far behind, though, for me to take much pleasure in Victorino's efforts.
- In the sixth inning, my friend says he's never seen me sweat so much. He goes for bottled water. I try to imagine cold-stream waterfalls.
- The Dasani helps, but the SPF-70 sunscreen on my arms and legs is glistening. I touch up the sunscreen on my face. Our seats suddenly smell like a nuclear piña colada explosion.
- I snag a Minute Maid frozen lemonade from a vendor. This is the first time during the season that a vendor has graced our section with frozen lemonade. What's up with that, Phillies? That frozen lemonade is one of my favorite things. On the planet. The first couple of bites are close to a religious experience.
- The frozen lemonade has saved me. The next few innings slide by, scoreless.
- A co-worker visits us in the ninth inning. She thinks we're taking the heat well. I try to act cool, literally, but I know it's all the Minute Maid's doing.
- The game ends, and I'm disgusting. I'm wet, from sweat and sunscreen. No one sits anywhere near me on the subway or train rides home. I'm an outcast.
- I eventually arrive home, just as darkness is falling. I need to take a shower, obviously, but I have to sit down. Very, very tired. I fall asleep. I have a dream involving frozen lemonade. The next thing I know, it's 9 a.m. on Sunday morning. Wow.
I don't really have much to report from my attendance at last night's game. The Phillies were offensively in-offensive. Or something. My pre-game roast pork sandwich was good but not life-altering. Worst of all, I didn't meet the Handsome Stranger™ of my dreams.
I did have some delicious post-game mead at Tria Cafe. I guess that's something.
The mead was Makana's ¡Qhilika African Herbal Blossom Mead, which I blogged about last year. It's a South African mead flavored with—among other things—rosehips, cinnamon, apple, and licorice. It's spicy enough to sort of counteract the sweetness of the honey, and it's sweet enough that you don't feel like your swigging something from your spice rack. In other words, it's well balanced. It's mighty tasty, and I highly recommend it.
I paired the mead with a delicious banana, goat's milk caramel, and mascarpone panini. Zowie! The sweetness of the dessert helped to sharpen the spiciness of the mead. When I visit Tria, I usually pair my dessert with a good beer, but the Makana mead was a nice change of pace.
(By the way, it looks to me like Makana may have changed the name of its African Herbal Blossom Mead to Honey Sun African Mead. Does anyone know for sure?)
My buddy and I hit the ballpark last night for some more interleague
action (that still sounds dirty to me), this time involving the California Anaheim Los Angeles (insert eye roll here) Angels of, ahem,
Anaheim. The Phillies had almost no offense. Manager Charlie Manuel
finally gave the apparently exhausted Chase Utley a night off, and the
rest of the Phillies line-up seemed to have nothing to offer. The Phils lost, 6-2.
In the seventh inning, when there were already two outs, the Phils did manage to score two runs to tie the game. Jayson Werth hit a solo homer. A few minutes later, Pedro Feliz doubled, sending Chris Coste—who had walked—home. Eric Bruntlett, who was subbing for Utley, ended the rally with a baserunning mistake, but it wouldn't have mattered. The Angels roughed up Phillies starter Brett Myers, as well as reliever Chad Durbin, in the eighth. The fans, disgusted at the fourth straight loss, streamed out. Not me, though! I hung tough, until the final out.
Myers, by the way, pitched fairly well for most of the game. He gave up two solo homers to Vladimir Guerrero early in the game, and I guess I wasn't absolutely shocked that Manuel sent him out to pitch the eighth. In retrospect, though, that was a mistake. Myers got two outs and then gave up a two-run homer to Erick Aybar (who?). Myers is a real puzzle this season. He'll be pitching really, really well, and then, suddenly, he gives up a home run. Then he's back to pitching well..and then, suddenly, well, you know. He's given up a league-leading 23 homers already this season. Ouch. And that's our opening day starter, you know? Ouch, again.
But I have to put the blame here pretty squarely on Manuel. With the game tied in the eighth, Myers—whose pitch count was nearing three digits—should've come out.
But on to more important things. I got to the game extra early so I could stand in the long, long, long line at Tony Luke's for a roast pork sandwich. Damn, it was delicious—all moist and meaty. It might've been the best thing I've eaten all year. It's certainly the best thing I've eaten at the ballpark this year, and that's high praise because I love those crab fries from Chickie's and Pete's.
I don't have time to do it justice right now, but remind me to go on
a real tear sometime about baseball teams that change their names to
something silly. Yup, I'm thinking about the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. But I'm also thinking of you, too, Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Bay Rays? That is so dumb.
I think I need another roast pork sandwich right about now.
Despite a tornado watch and heavy, rain-laden clouds, 40,000
Phillies fans and I headed to Citizens Bank Park last night for a game
against the Cincinnati Reds. What motivated this devotion craziness? A bobblehead, of course. It was Jimmy Rollins Bobblehead Night!
I was at the park on Monday, on what was a much nicer night, for a game against the same opponent, and there were thousands fewer fans in the stands. That's the power of the bobble. Those little pieces of plastic fill the seats, even damp ones.
Anyway, the game was a good one, a defensive battle. Phillies pitcher Brett Myers had a no-hitter going for six-and-two-thirds innings. Just as the fans in my section seemed to be waking up to Myers's feat, though, Reds first baseman Joey Votto ripped a pitch to centerfield, driving in what would be the winning run (Myers had walked a previous batter). Reds pitcher Edinson Volquez, who already owned the League's best ERA, pitched seven scoreless innings for the Reds. Volquez did look vulnerable at times. The Phils had two men on base in the fourth, and Volquez hit two batters in the fifth, helping the Phillies load the bases. But they just couldn't finish the deal. They also had a chance in the eighth, after Volquez left the game, but the Phils' bats just weren't there. The Reds won, 2-0.
Somehow or other, I managed not to get wet at the game. When I left for the ballpark, it was raining outright. When I got off the subway near the park, it was still sprinkling. But by the time I got to my seat—dry thanks to an attentive usher—the rain had stopped. And it didn't start up again until my friend and I were walking back to the subway.
Obviously, I was meant to have that bobblehead, and it was meant to be dry. Or something.
Pretty much on impulse, I headed to Citizens Bank Park after work last night to watch the Phillies take on the Reds. It was a beautiful June evening, and the game was a good one. That after-work impulse really worked out....
The Phils, who are now leading the N.L. East, continued to be impressive on offense and defense. 2008 MVP (that has to be the prediction, right?) Chase Utley (3-for-4) homered in his fifth straight game, and Pedro Feliz and Chris Coste each had home runs as well. The Reds closed to a single run, but the Phillies bullpen hung tough, securing the 5-4 win. Fittingly enough, Utley ended the game by catching a piercing, two-out line drive. (You can see the play at The 700 Level.) Chase, will you marry me? Please?
What else can I say about the game? Well, for one thing, it could've been the game when Ken Griffey, Jr., hit his 600th career home run. But "general soreness" kept him out of the game. A Griffey-jersey-clad man in the row ahead of me was truly bummed when he found out that Junior'd been scratched. Personally, I'm hoping Griffey won't get No. 600 in Philly.
I sat in Section 233 tonight, which is sort of the third-base, mirror-image version of my usual section (Section 211, near first base). There's no real view of the scoreboard in Section 233, but the sight lines are definitely better than in Section 211—where the seats are all at a weird angle, causing grumbles about seeing home plate. Plus, during a day game, Section 233 probably has better overhead coverage. When I'm choosing season tickets next year, I'll have to give Section 233 some thought....
I skipped the last Phillies game in my season ticket package because it was darn cold and I needed to pack for my trip to Santa Fe. So...despite tonight's forecast for thunderstorms, I headed out to the ballpark to see the Phils take on the Rockies. I owed it to the Phillies, you know?
The Phillies took a seven-run lead in the first two innings, as the skies darkened significantly. In the stands, there was tension. We wondered whether we'd get through four-and-a-half innings so the Phillies would get the win and not a rain-out. After the Rockies' third out in the top of the fourth, Phils starter Kyle Kendrick got a huge ovation. Relief!
It actually didn't start to rain—significantly, anyway—until the eighth inning. Quickly enough, it was pouring. I took shelter near, um, an ice cream vendor for awhile. But during the bottom of the eighth, when the lightning started and when the tarps came out, I headed home. I've only ditched a game early a couple of times in my life, but it looked like this rain was going to last a long time.
Just as I was getting home, the game finished. The Rockies closed in some, mostly due to Tom Gordon's poor "relief" pitching and what scorekeepers call "defensive indifference" (i.e., when a team is so far ahead that it's willing to concede runs to get outs). But I'll take a 7-4 win any day.
The most puzzling part of the evening was a freebie handed out by the Phillies. It's a ballcap, a pretty bland, white ballcap, one with the cheapest possible plastic clasp. It reads: FIGHTINS Philadelphia Phillies.
FIGHTINS?
The hell? When the Phillies employee handed me the cap as I entered the stadium, I shot him a look, I guess. "I don't know what it means," he shrugged. Several hours later, I still don't have a clue. Not Fightin' Phillies. FIGHTINS Phillies. Hmm, it's pretty preposterous.
FIGHTINS?
Someone...anyone, enlighten me.
Update #1 (5/28/08): The 700 Level has some great pictures from last night's games. Cool clouds, huh?
Update #2 (5/28/08): I've been informed that Fightins is a legitimate, if little-used, nickname of the Phils. Hmm, ok. A Google search for Fightins returns only about 6,000 hits (versus, say, about 3 million for—randomly, I know—"rhinitis"), but most of them seem to be actual references to the Phillies. The term has even appeared—again, if rarely—in the inquirer and Daily News. Some of these references add an odd apostrophe (Fightins'), but that's another battle, I suppose. Oh, and also: There's even a new Phillies-oriented blog called The Fightins'. So, ok, I surrender. I've been a Phillies fan for a long time, and I ain't never heard anybody call 'em The Fightins, but apparently it was time I did. It still doesn't make any sense, though.
Last night, I was back at Citizens Bank Park—and in my regular section—to watch the Phillies' first game of the season against the Giants. There's no news in the Man Trap Department™ to report, I'm afraid: I went to the game with my best female friend. She pretended to be a tall, athletic, goofily charming stallion, though, and that helped. (If she reads this, there'll be hell to pay for saying that, believe me.)
The Phillies played well. Very well. Super-stud Chase Utley started the game off with a homer in the bottom of the first, and the Phillies were ahead, 4-1, by the bottom of the fourth. Somehow or other, though, things gradually almost got out of hand. In the top of the seventh, former Phillie Aaron Rowand (who, happily enough, got a big ovation from the fans at his first at-bat) hit a three-run homer to tie things up. Meanwhile, what began as a beautiful spring evening was turning into an outright cold night.
And, of all things, my section suffered from what had to be one of the loudest fans in the ballpark. She YELLED out to every batter. She WHISTLED—so loudly that my friend pulled out ear plugs. And Annoying Fan delivered a running, running, running commentary on EVERYTHING. It was like sitting next to Ethel Merman on steroids. Whew. At one point, when she wondered where everyone else in her row had gone, the group of fans around me (we bonded a little bit) lost it. We laughed and laughed, especially after someone yelled back that he envied the missing fans....
Anyway, the game was still tied, 4-4, at the end of nine innings. My friend and I wondered how much of the cold, and the LOUD fan, we could tolerate. And then Rowand hit another homer for the Giants in the top of the 10th, making it seem like the game was headed for the worst possible ending. But hunky Pat Burrell came to our aid—with a bottom-of-the-tenth, game-winning homer. It couldn't have been more exciting. The Phillies had two outs when Burrell launched a fastball over the left field wall. Walk-off home run.
Sweet.
Because it was Jamie Moyer Bobblehead Night (really, that's why I went!), I headed to Citizens Bank Park last night to watch the Phillies play the San Diego Padres. The Phils didn't play all that well, first on defense and later on offense. Not a good combination, of course. They lost, 4-2. And, damn, it was a chilly night. I wished I'd brought gloves....
Since last night's game wasn't part of my season package (i.e., it wasn't a part of the Man Trap), I sat in a different location: Section 129, Row 30, Seat 8. What a weird seat! I know it sounds like it's probably smack dab in the middle of some row (it's Seat 8, after all), but it's not. Seat 8 is the only seat in that row! Section 129 is itself a funny little section, wedged between two normal-sized sections along the third base line. And by Row 30, there's only room for a single seat. Row 29, which was right in front of me, had two seats, and Row 31—the final row in the section—also had just a single seat.
I felt like I was in a royal box, sorta. A baseball royal box??? There was no one at all, of course, to crawl all over me. And I had tons of room around me, which I filled with the bobblehead and the remains of crab fries, a hot dog, and a beer. Plus, I had a great, close-up view of home plate.
If you're ever headed to Citizens Bank Park by yourself, well, I'm sorry you couldn't find a date, either. But I highly recommend Section 129, Row 30, Seat 8. It's the perfect place to be alone at the ballpark.
Someday or other, I'm going to write a long post of tips for single travelers to Philly (and maybe another one for Las Vegas).... Seat 8 is going to get high marks, I tell you.
Gosh, it's been awhile since I posted. I need to do better. But I've been busy with the usual things—work [insert eye roll here], Phillies games, beer, rooting my Fly-boys into the next round of the NHL playoffs, and spending way, way, way too many hours working on [dang, this is kind of embarrassing] my fantasy tennis games.
On Tuesday, I caught my second game of the baseball season from my perch in Citizens Bank Park's Section 211, accompanied this time by a different co-worker. Yes, the plan to use my season tickets as a man trap is still a work-in-progress. Instead, I keep inviting colleagues—men, mostly straight, who are sports fans but not a single one who's likely to evolve into the beer-drinking, baseball-addicted boy toy of my dreams. It is good to spend time at the ballpark with a friend, though. And since it's not a date, I don't have to worry too much about how my hair looks.... [That was a joke. Really.]
Anyway, Tuesday night's game was a chilly affair, but the hometown fans who stuck it out were rewarded with an almost unbelievable, come-from-behind victory in the bottom of the ninth. Trailing 3-0 to the Astros, the Phils strung together a comeback with an improbable home run from a just-added player; a hit batsman; a homer from hunky [see, it's always gay when I'm at the ballpark] Pat Burrell; a stolen first base after a strikeout by Geoff Jenkins; and a probably unwise trip home by Jenkins, who missed the third base coach's stop sign after Pedro Feliz's game-winning double. Wow. After all that, the teeth-chattering I'd suffered for the last half of the game suddenly didn't matter so much.
Yesterday afternoon, I was back at the ballpark, catching my first Phillies-Mets game of the season. I met yet another colleague [this one gay, if not at all a likely candidate for the man trap]. It was a gorgeous day for a game, springlike and sunny, and I even broken open the sunscreen for the first time this year. The Phillies' offense was pretty lackluster, though. Half the team, it seems, is injured. And Chase Utley, who went two-for-four and homered, just can't carry the whole team. The Evil Mets won, 4-2. Bummer, huh?
What else did I do this week? Well, there was some beer—not all of it at the ballpark. [<Digression>The beer selection at the ballpark is better than you'd think, but it's not superb. I usually stick to Victory's HopDevil. I normally rail against hops-heavy American craft beers, but HopDevil is good—and it's one of the best things I'm going to find at Citizens Bank Park.</Digression>] On Monday night, I was at another beer-tasting at Tria's Fermentation School. The session was devoted to La Trappe Brewery, one of the seven remaining Trappist breweries in the world and the only one in the Netherlands. [The rest are in Belgium, of course.] In the States, La Trappe beers are sold as Koningshoeven beers for reasons attributable to church politics.... I was smitten with the Koningshoeven Bock, the Koningshoeven Tripel, and the Koningshoeven Quadrupel—which was my favorite of the night, all caramel and goodness. I was also smitten with one of the brewers [not a monk, Mom!], Gijs Swinkels, but even the slightly buzzed me recognized the futility of making a pass at a straight man from another continent.
So that's pretty much what I've been spending my time on. Baseball and beer. And, well, perfecting my entries in Tennis Channel and ATP fantasy games. [Hmmm, this could explain why I'm still single.] My picks for this week's U.S. Men's Clay Court Championship were, I thought, stunningly good. I even correctly put the way unheralded Marcel Granollers Pujol into the final on my bracket. [I did not have him upsetting James Blake to take the title, however.] And despite this prescience, I still only barely finished in the Top 200 [190th out of 1733 entries]. How good do I have to be, anyway?
And do I have to be that good to get a date, too?
For several years in a row, I've had tickets for the final game of the season. And I've sat through a string of cold, dreary, meaningless games. Today was different. The Phillies and the Mets were tied for first, and the game with the Nationals mattered.
I got to the ballpark in time to stand in an absurdly long line for crab fries before heading out to the outfield (I sat in Section 103, if you're [inexplicably] keeping track). It was a gorgeous, more-like-summer-than-autumn day. In fact, in the late innings, as the sun found just the right place to get to me, I might've gotten too much sun on my face. The ballpark was packed, of course; it was a sea of red and white—and rally towels.
By the time I was in my seat, the Mets—whose game started 25 minutes before the Phillies'—were already way behind. The Phils took an early lead (thanks, primarily, to Jimmy Rollins, who got on base and then stole two bases), and they never trailed. As the game progressed, and especially after the Phillies took a 5-1 lead in the sixth, it started to sink in—with me and everyone else, it seemed—that the Phillies were going to win the Division. "Wow," I kept hearing people say. And they were right. Wow.
It was an amazing season. The Phillies had a dreadful April, but they recovered and hung tough. During most of the season, I figured the Phillies would finish, inevitably, as they so often do, two or three games out of the Division lead. Indeed, at the beginning of September, the Mets were seemingly a sure-thing to win the NL East, leaving only a possible wild card for the Phillies. As everyone knows, though, the Phillies played like demons in September, and the Mets collapsed in spectacular fashion, becoming the first team to lose a seven-game lead with a mere 17 games to play.
When the game was over, fireworks accompanied the players' on-field celebration. In the stands, there were high-fives aplenty and at least 15 minutes of uninterrupted cheering. I've never been a part of anything like it. Noisy, communal joy. Today's game absolutely made up for all those dreary, end-of-the-season games.
Wow.
