Pre-game: This time my guest was a friend of mine who is (unfortunately) married to a Yankee fan. She had been at the new Al-Yankzeera Stadium the week prior so she was eager to compare the two. I’ll use her words for the comparison: Going to the stadium in the Bronx is like going to a professional baseball fan convention because everything is so serious and closed in (no open concourses there) while Citifield has more of a “fun” vibe to it. This she said while we were hanging out in CF before the game waiting for our other friend (who snagged her landlord’s season tickets for the day) to show up. We got an order of Box Frites to share – they were much saltier this week than last, but nothing that a vigorous napkin shimmy over the fries couldn’t solve. After getting some sun it was game time & time to head on upstairs.
Seats: No one around us was the same. Which means that either everyone around us that has partial plans is selling them off, or, the whole thing about all the Sunday partial plans being sold was a lie. Instead of the annoying older guys behind us this week, we had 2 of the most incredibly obnoxious 14 year olds sitting behind us. We weren’t sure if they belonged to the father-type sitting two seats over from them or not as a boy about the same age was sitting in between father-type and obnoxious kiddies and he was so quiet and behaving as one would expect someone to behave. Eventually one of the obnoxious kiddies behind us called the father-type “dad” so we were pretty amazed at his (lack of) parenting skills. It’s not like the father-type couldn’t hear what these kids were saying – they were pretty loud about it. Great. Hopefully they are not the real owners of those seats. I don’t know if I’ll make it a season without having to bust a cap on those kids.
Game: This game should’ve been brought to us by the letters ‘W’, ‘T’, & ‘F’ because seriously it was that type of game.
Poor Daniel Murphy trips on his own two feet while turning around and gets a hearty round of boos. He did make up for it with a good catch against the wall later on. And then when he was about to make a diving catch/stop for a ball later in the game I swear it was like the feeling was “noooooooo” but thankfully he did keep the ball in front of him so all was well, as much as it could be well. (Addendum: Anyone watch Kid’s Clubhouse this past Saturday and see the little league footage of little Daniel Murphy? I’m guessing at some point in his baseball career he learned that one runs through first base on a single and that you do not need to start skipping the last two steps?)
I wonder if Daniel sees the ball hit at him and says “OH NO” in his head. I know I do. For 7 seasons I played either 1st or 2nd base in both of the softball leagues I’ve been playing in. Last year, I got converted into an
outfielder thanks to an influx of people who can really only play infield and don’t have the speed to cover ground. It was a bad time for me too to move out there thanks to my busted knee (which I eventually got surgery on), but even with the busted knee I could run better. Go figure. I have no issues with catching the long, lazy line drive type balls that come into the outfield. The hardest thing for me was to figure out the depth of the ball when it is one of those high arcing balls – I would always start running in when I should’ve been running out, or running out when I should’ve been running in, so you can guess what happened to the ball… Towards the end of the season I was starting to figure it out a bit – or at least going in the correct direction from the start. But some of the guys we play against can aim the ball where they want it, so of course they aim for The Girl in the outfield and everytime the ball would come my way, it was an immediate “OH NO!” I feel Daniel Murphy’s pain. I do.
Poor DW looking lost at the plate, striking out over and over and over again. That was painful. It reminds me of an Onion article, “Kitten Thinks Of Nothing But Murder All Day”. There’s hope though considering yesterday he shaved his head, got a triple and all. Keep that hair short!
Beltran not sliding while stealing a base. I couldn’t figure it out at the time. The throw was on, but really high. If he would’ve slid, it would’ve been a pretty close play. But he just…stopped. I think whoever it was playing 2nd base was shocked because even though Beltran was
standing right there, the guy still went to tag him on his leg. Of course we now have the hindsight of him saying he thought he heard the bat hit the ball – but you know that is a REALLY distinctive sound. I didn’t mistakenly hear anything of the sort at the time. Plus if he’s stealing, wasn’t there probably signs being shared, oh he’s going to take this pitch, you steal or something? And if it is a hit and run there should be an attempt at a swing to make contact to protect the runner. So strange this aversion to sliding. So strange.
Eventually, the Mets lose to the Nationals 8-1. That makes 3 losses for games-viewed-in-person for me this year. That is about 2 too many.
