Tuesday, July 25, 2006
I'll admit it. I fell asleep during the game yesterday.
Not because it was boring (it wasn't, at least not the bits I remember) and not because of the lateness of the hour (most of you are well aware of my nocturnal habits), but because I was feeling the lateness of the hour much more keenly than usual, having just returned from Toronto, and having failed to consume my usual amount of delicious and life-giving coffee.
Yes, I, the blogger who routinely is typing merrily away at 4:30 in the morning, was tired. It happens. Usually when I don't have enough coffee. And when I'm faced with Travel, which I do not take to particularly well.
Tired.
Tired like Curt Schilling, when he's pitched a solid game on the road, and they got in really late because the plane was delayed the night before, and he's stayed up playing some Everquest over the hotel internet connection, and he just really wants to go to sleep because it's awfully late, and he's got the chain on the door (of course he's got the chain on the door), but he hasn't closed it all the way, so just when he's about to go to sleep Manny Ramirez wedges his arm through the door holding a bunny that he made out of complimentary shampoo bottles and jelly beans that he has to show Curt RIGHT NOW, and Curt has to go open the door to tell Manny how great his bunny is, and he doesn't get to sleep for four more hours because SOMEHOW Manny slipped away from his babysitters for the night, and Curt just wants to sleep so badly, he's so tired, and that is how tired I was last night.
Not that that exact scenario has ever happened, of course, but it could.
In any event, Toronto was good, if somewhat tiring, and if you ignore the fact that we got rained on twice, once by hysterically awful downpours. Very much a walking city, and while the architecture leaned much more towards brutalism and wasn't nearly as nice as that of, say, Chicago, it was still sufficiently interesting to make wandering around fun.
The Jays/Yanks game was OK. Of course the only game of the series that the Jays lose was the one I ended up at. It was my first time in a dome, too... very odd. Our seats were in the second deck, and the whole concourse up there was CARPETED. And the seats were PADDED like movie theater seats. It didn't feel very much like a baseball park, more like, I dunno, a football stadium or something else. Of course the Argos do play there, so it is a football stadium, but it was still odd.
There were a TON of Yankees fans there. In the second deck, I would venture to say that 90% of the crowd was rooting for New York. In our section there was me and my family (rooting for the Jays), and maybe two or three other Blue Jays fans. Everyone else was rooting for the Yankees. It was probably not entirely unlike being stuck in Yankee Stadium itself, except these fans, while extremely drunk and loud, were not actually dangerous, and were generally inoffensive aside from a few anti-Boston remarks and shirts.
I must give them their due: we had no problems with Yankee fans in our section, and we actually sort of held a conversation at one point with the large and communally trashed family behind us. I think they were from Syracuse. They were all staying at a Holiday Inn with, inexplicably, a Red Sox fan, who was drunker than all of them put together and left the game early after the stadium security started trailing him to make sure he wouldn't buy more beer. Evidently he and one of the Yankee fans had split an entire bottle of vodka between the two of them in the (short) ride over to the ballpark. Where they then proceeded to add to their alcohol tally by buying a bunch of beer. Jolly good times.
The highlights of the game itself were Kyle Farnsworth hitting 101 mph (on the stadium gun, anyhow), and ARod striking out swinging in each of his four at-bats in the game. That was a beautiful line in my scorecard, let me assure you. There are few things in baseball more satisfying than writing K after K next to ARod's name.
Top of the 7th in tonight's game and I'm still awake. Good sign. Manny and Trot going back to back was fun, but Curt then sucking it up on the mound was not. Oh well. Still ahead for now. Oh, and if someone can tell me why Manny and Lowell have taken to greeting each other during celebrations by touching the tips of their forefingers together, I'd enjoy hearing the explanation.
ETA: Man, that 8th inning about killed me. I do have to wake up for work tomorrow, guys. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a huge lead as much as anyone, but Oakland could've at least had some consideration and not sucked quite so badly. Yeesh.
Mad props to whoever runs the video stuff out in Texas at Ameriquest, by the by. They have a Kiss Cam that they run between innings, and tonight they put ARod, in the dugout, up on it. Too perfect. Ameriquest Field video dudes, you are awesome. ARod, when he realized he was on Kiss Cam, pulled Andy Phillips (who was nearest) to him and kissed him on the top of the head.
Also, I swear that Hazel Mae, in the postgame highlights, just called Ian Kinsler 'Michael Young'. Of course it's probably the prompt card writer's fault, not hers, as I wouldn't expect her to know Kinsler from Young if they were standing in front of her with their jerseys on.Labels: baseball, Blue Jays, in attendance, MLB, Yankees
11:51 PM
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