Oh Crappy Day

It's quarter after one, just got back from the Bronx, and today's game could not have gone any worse. What started out so promising, ended so badly, all thanks to an errant "throw" by Robbie Cano. Ugh.

Today was the day I've been waiting all season for. I had tickets in the Legends Suite section behind home plate. I redeemed a whole buttload of credit card points for the tickets and I couldn't have been happier that I did. The seats were awesome. It felt like you were in the action with each and every pitch. I took some pictures and will post them sometime tomorrow, though there aren't that many because I didn't know my wife swiped the memory card from my camera, so it only had room for 20 or so on it's internal memory.

We, my father-in law Dave and I, left yesterday afternoon and drove to Mt. Olive, NJ, which was a little less than an hour away from the Stadium. I was worried that it might rain today as all the forecasts I saw were calling for scattered thunderstorms. When we left our hotel to leave, around 8:45am, it was pretty cloudy. When we arrived at the Stadium about 50 minutes later, the skies didn't look promising. But then the clouds broke, the sun came out, and the day started out great.

We didn't rush to get down to our section for BP because they won't allow you into the lower sections of Yankee Stadium unless you have a ticket in that section, so we knew there wouldn't be that many people down there. When we got down there we were both instantly taken aback by how on top of things we were. I tried to take some good shots with the camera but everyone and their brother on the field kept blocking my view. Michale Kay was one of the big offenders. no matter who i was trying to snap a picture of, there he was, with his big melon, blocking my shot. Thanks a lot Mike. Even in person you find ways to annoy me.

After the Jays BP ended, we made our way to our seats, which were Legends Suite Home Plate 3, seats 85 and 86. For those not familiar with the section, it's set up into 3 rows. The first row (Legends Suite Home Plate 1) is your standard fold down seats, except with an extra (optional0 seat cushion. Same seats Rudy Guiliani sits in. The second (LSHP 2) and third (LSHP 3) rows are plush folding chairs, and both in the same row, so if someone is in row 2, the people in row 3 are looking at the back of their heads. Lucky for us, nobody sat in row 2. From the TV vantage point, we were to the right of the radar gun, about 5 seats away from Rich Monteleone, who is the guy sitting back their charting pitches. The seats themselves are as good as they look on TV. You literally felt like you were in the game. It was awesome. I have bleacher tickets to the 2nd to last game of the season and I'm not sure how I can even sit out there now. And memo to the Bleacher Creatures: box seats don't suck. Oh, and we sat next to 2 younger dudes who ran up a $194 tab, pretty much just on Jack and Cokes. My mouth dropped when I saw the bill. I'd have taken a picture of what $194 worth of empty drink cups look like, but the camera battery also died on me at the tail end of the game. Which wasn't necessarily a bad thing because it's an ending I'd rather forget.

The Yanks were in pretty good shape pretty much for the whole game up until Cano's error. That pretty much blew it right there. What would have been a 6-2 lead with 2 outs, ended up being a 6-5 lead when the inning was over. The bullpen tanked and the Yankee lead quickly became a deficit. When Jeter and Abreu both reached to start the 9th, the Stadium was rocking. I've never been in such an amped up atmosphere. And then A-Rod, as I predicted to my father-in law Dave, grounded into a DP. Dave predicted before the inning Alex would hit a walkoff. I went with the DP. And as soon as the DP was completed, you could feel the energy being sucked right out of the Stadium. Ransom flew out and that was it. Ball game over. Yankees lose. And what will likely go down as my most favorite Yankee Stadium experience ever, ended on the most sour of notes.

And of course, the Yankees lose and everyone else that matters wins. They again trail the Sox by 7 for the wild card and by my guesstimate, the Yankees can only afford to lose 5 more games before I officially write them off. They can still do what I said they needed to do and that's win the series, but a win today would have guaranteed that and opened up the door for a sweep, which would have made up for losing two to Boston. I said the other day that their best chance at winning 94 games was to take 2 from Boston and win every series the rest of the way while sweeping the Mariners and the Orioles, and while beating the Tigers in their make-up game. Since they lost 2 to Boston, they now pretty much need to win what's now today's game against the Jays, and sweep one of the other series they have, against either Tampa Bay (2 series = 6 games), Toronto (3), Anaheim (3), Chicago (4), or Boston (3), again while sweeping both Seattle (3) and Baltimore (3). If they can do that, they'll finish out 22-5 and end the season with a 94-68 record.

It's not impossible, but it's extremely unlikely. Stranger things have happened. Be back tomorrow with some pics from today.

Peace, love and Pinstripes,

J-Boogie