Goodbye My Friend

I went to yesterday's penultimate game at Yankee Stadium. Yeah, I just dropped the word penultimate on you guys. Me feel smart. Anyway, I could not have imagined the day going any more perfectly than it did, except for that fact that stupid me left the camera at home. So much for the being smart thing. My friend Dan and I boogied out of Buffalo at about 4pm Friday afternoon with an ETA at our hotel in Budd Lake, NJ at about 10pm.

Now my favorite thing about driving to the Stadium is that we pass a Sheetz gas station in Scranton, PA. If you've never had the pleasure of eating food at Sheetz, you're missing out. Make it a point to stop at one if you ever find yourself in the neighborhood of one. Best eats in the world. I had myself a 6 inch steak sub and an order of Shmokehouse Frys, which were fries in BBQ sauce with bacon, onions, green peppers and some other stuff. Sooo good. After leaving Sheetz, it was about another 1.25 hours to the hotel.

We spent the ride listening to the Yankees game of course. Not a bad way to pass the time. The best part had to be when the Yankees brought out Phil Coke to get an out or two. This prompted Dan and I to start dropping one-liners about the Yankees and Coke. We came up with such classics as: "Girardi really needs to stop abusing Coke," and "Coke has really given the Yankees a nice pick-me up," and "The Yankees use of Coke should be illegal." That exchange went on for a good 5-10 minutes. Good times. We arrived at the hotel when there were 2 outs in the top of the Orioles 9th inning, which was extremely odd because when my father-in law and I went to a Yankees/Jays game at the end of August. we stayed at the same hotel and when we arrived that night it was with 2 outs in the top of the Jays 9th. Weirder thing is that it was a game Pavano started and Mariano closed. Freaky.

We left the hotel at about 9am Saturday morning and headed to the Stadium. There was absolutely no traffic and we made it there in about 45 minutes. Needless to say we had some time to kill, but I wouldn't trade being there early for the world. We just walked around the area, checked out the new Stadium, and went into pretty much every souvenir shop. I had 2 goals in mind for souvenirs. One was to find something for my 13-month old son Cooper. The other was to find a Mike Mussina jersey t-shirt. I struck out on both fronts. I couldn't find anything that would fit my son. He's currently rocking 18 month gear, on his way to a 2T. I couldn't find anything I liked for him in either size. And none of the shops had any Moose shirts??? What's up with that? I found plenty of Igawa shirts, lots of Hughes 34 shirts, even plenty of that scrub Melky Cabrera. But no Moose shirts?!?!? I thought for sure if there was one place I could easily find a Moose shirt it'd be at the Stadium. I was mistaken. MLB.com here I come.

Since we had bleacher seats we weren't in any kind of rush to go into the Stadium when the gates opened. I had never sat in the bleachers before but I know you can't access any other part of the park, which really blows but I get why. So we next decided to chow down some grub. Billy's Sports Bar & Restaurant was our choice. Probably not the best restaurant to choose if one is cost conscious as everything on the menu is ridiculously overpriced. I think 1 egg cost 6 bucks. 6 bucks for 1 egg? That better be one kick-ass chicken. We each got a burger and fires, final cost was $34. $17 for a burger and fries. It was good, but nowhere near $17 good. But we didn't really care too much as we were just amped for the game.

We ended up entering the bleachers at about 12:15 or so, maybe closer to noon. As I mentioned earlier, I have never sat in the bleachers before. It was quite the change from the last seats I had which were behind home plate. Talk about no leg room. I don't know how the bleacher creatures do it. The view wasn't bad but as far as comfort goes, two thumbs down. We had aisle seats which kind of made it worse. Whenever someone wanted to get out of the row, the whole row had to either step out of the row and into the stairs, or step up on the bleacher itself. Not fun. But again, we could have cared less because we were just psyched to be there. We got the tickets from a guy I work with who sold the pair to us for $100. Money well spent in my opinion.

The game itself was great. Talk about a pitcher's duel. You don't get any better than heading into the bottom of the 9th with a zero-zero game. The place was rocking when "Enter Sandman" kicked in. That was awesome. I'll miss that. I tried to take pics/video of that but the quality on my cell phone is brutal. I may try to upload one later but I doubt it. And then the Yanks win on a walkoff! Well that was icing on the cake. Sinatra's voice never sounded so sweet. I tried to capture it all again on my crappy cell phone, but it doesn't do it justice. I'm kicking myself for not bringing the camera. After the first round of "New York, New York" ended, we decided we'd head out. We stopped at the front railing before leaving and just kind of stood there for a minute or two, taking it all in one last time, marvelling at all the history that has taken place there over the last 85 years, and saying our final goodbyes.

Yankee Stadium is a truly special place and I feel blessed that I got to go to back for one final hurrah during the last homestand. There's a very little part of me that wants them to lose tonight so I can say I was at the last Yankees' victory in the grand 'ol Stadium. But there is absolutely no way I'm rooting for them to go out as losers. Tonight's game and pre-game festivities are going to be forever stored in our collective memory banks and a Yankee W will make that much sweeter. And besides, technically there still alive, albeit by the slimmest of threads.

I hope everyone thoroughly enjoys tonight's game regardless of the outcome. If you're lucky enough to be in attendance, savor every moment. It's going to a special day. Goodbye old friend. You will be missed.

Peace, love and Forever Pinstripes,

J-Boogie

Pics From The Stadium

These were the pictures I took when I was at Saturday's Jays/Yankees games. I would have taken more but I realized when I got there that I didn't have a memory card, so I could only save 20 pictures. I deleted a lot as the game went along not knowing what pictures I might take as the game went on.

I wish for a Yankee victory!!

Only 12 more home games left at the old ballpark. *sniff*sniff*

If only I had the $$ to make it to that game.

Jeter during BP

Edwar posing with some people that he knew.

Special Advisor to the Yankees, Mr. October

A view inside the Yankee dugout

Legends Suite Home Plate 3 Row 1 Seat 86

Lucky Day, Ned Nederlander, and Dusty Bottoms during the National Anthem

The Captain, no doubt scanning the crowd for some honeys, probably looking for the Yankee Hottie

The game's first pitch......

.....Steerike 1

Jeter getting ready in the on deck circle

J-Boogie's wife says: "Nice butt!"

Jeter's trademark dip

A-Rod, getting ready to GIDP

Ball game over. Yankees lose. Thuhh Yankees lose.

As I was leaving, I noticed this guy. Somebody needs to drop 70 bucks on a new jersey. Seriously? Robin Ventura? Robin Ventura had a total of 748 at-bats with the Yankees in 2002 and 2003. At least he wore it to a Yankee game. I took this picture at a Cardinals/Brewers game in St. Louis back in 2006:

Esteban Loaiza? I have so many questions about this one. 1)Why would anyone buy a Yankees Esteban Loaiza jersey? He appeared in a grand total of 10 games for the Yankees, in 2004. 2)Why would you rock this at a Cardinals/Brewers game in St. Louis? 3)Why would you wear this in 2006? Again, drop the $70 and upgrade.

Like I said at the beginning of this post, I took a lot more pics but had to delete them. I had a nice video of Damon stealing 2nd, but erased that too, hoping I might need the space to capture a Mariano Rivera save, or a Yankee walkoff. Sadly, neither happened.

Peace, Love and Pinstripes,

J-Boogie

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