Good Day For Yanks, Rough Day For Me

The Yanks took it to Roy Halladay today, beating arguably the AL's best pitcher. Anytime you beat Roy Halladay, you have to be happy. Great win for the Yanks. My day on the other hand was not so great.

I'm not sure how many of you follow me on Twitter (link to me on the left), but if you do, you know what kind of day I had. I took the day off from work so I go could to Toronto for a chance to pick up a few autographs. I was just going up for the afternoon and wasn't staying for the game. It's hard on the wife sometimes to take care of two kids under two, so I promised I'd be home by their bed time. I rolled into Toronto at about 9:30 or so and was about a half-mile from my destination when I got pulled over for speeding. I was at a red light, light turned green, I accelerated, and about 50 yards or so later, one of Toronto's finest jumps out into the street and has me pull over. They had a radar gun fixed atop what I would describe as a giant tripod. He clocked me doing 60km/hour in a 50 km/hour zone. For those of you not up on your metric conversations, that's 36 mph in a 30 mph zone. I got a ticket for going 6 miles over the speed limit. 6 miles! Are you kidding me? It ends up being a $40 fine and no points. What a way to start the day.

As for the autograph hunting, I came up dry. The hotel where the team stays created a patio eatery (which is seldom used) right where we would normally stand when the team bus comes and goes. That access point was basically cut off which really hurt my chances. It didn't help either that there were about 30 other people there also. Space was limited. It was so bad that the second bus pulled right up into the hotel's parking lot, which is off limit to us. That pretty much killed everybody's chances. On top of that, it absolutely poured, which meant there was nobody went out milling around. It was horrible.

I left around 3pm and got home around 7. It's normally a 2 hour drive but traffic was so bad it took twice as long. When I get back to the states, I normally take the last bridge to the USA. This time I took the 1st. When I rolled up to the US Border Patrol, they asked me the standard question, where you coming from? So I told him I was in Toronto hanging around the Yankees team hotel trying to get autographs. He asked me to clarify so I said it again. Next thing I know I'm popping my trunk, opening my back door, and 3 custom dudes are pulling the car apart. I'm not sure if it was a random check or what, but it seemed like security was extra tight as there were a lot of agents hanging around each booth which I've never seen before. They had me pull over and I had to sit in a little room for about 10 minutes while they did a more thorough check. As I expected everything was clean. Not sure what that was all about. Maybe the dude was a Red Sox fan. First time for everything. I made it home in time to help put the kids to bed and then settled in for the game. That's when my day finally got better.

I'd normally write a detailed post about my thoughts but it's late and a nasty thunderstorm just kicked off and being online and blogging probably isn't the best idea. So I'll just hit the high points:

Andy Pettitte was awesome. He out-pitched Halladay and that's not an easy task. He got a lot of help from the defense which was particularly stellar. And the 3 longballs didn't hurt too much either. Despite giving up 2 runs, I thought Phil Hughes looked downright nasty. That was a nasty hook he dropped in on Bautista to end the 7th. That was big right there. His backwards Ks of Lind and Millar were pretty nice too. Mariano gets the save. Yanks win. What would really make the night great is if the Rays end up beating the Red Sox. It's currently 2-2 in the top of the 13th. I'm not staying up to see what happens as the lights keep dimming because of the storm. Tomorrow will start rather nicely if I wake up to find the Rays won. I have the day off and was going to do the Toronto thing again but I'm going to skip it. I'm looking forward to a nice relaxing day with the wife and kids and quite frankly, I think it would end up being a waste of time. Knowing my luck, I'll get a text from my friend up there and he'll tell me that everyone signed. Murphy's Law. If I'm there, nothing will happen. If I'm here, everything will happen. Regardless, I'll be with my 2 kids so I come out ahead either way.

Peace, love and Pinstripes,

J-Boogie