It's Been One Week, Volume 4

Ok, this would have to rank as one of the best baseball days of my life.

We went out to Queens for an afternoon game between the Pirates and Mets. It was a crisp, sunny day.  The Bucs laid the smack down 13-1. We bought a couple of cheap tickets and sat behind a hippie who aired twenty years worth of grievances against the Mets. He was a funny guy though and it was like having a tour guide from an era when Strawberry and Gooden were kings. This was my 100th big league game that I attended and it was a perfect afternoon for it.

Afterwards we took the 7 train to Grand Central Station where we connected to the 4 for another trip up to the Bronx. Our seats for this game were in the top row of the stadium. I lasted for all of about fifteen minutes before I had to come back down a little closer to the earth. Holy hell is it steep up there. From our seats in we could actually see the Empire State Building!

I scurried down to section M16, where I seat hopped for the first few innings. I finally ended up sitting across the aisle from an older Yankees fan. He struck up a conversation when he saw my Mets bag of goodies (program, a 2008 Topps Mets team set, with their special logo silver foil embossed, and a nifty wool cap with said logo on it) and we ended up chatting most of the game. For the record, I can now say I've met one (1) cool Yankee fan. 

The Tigers won 6-2. The Tigers were trailing 2-1 after four innings, when I decided that I needed a rally beer. I hadn't taken three swigs when Marcus Thames homered off of Ian Kennedy. I hadn't taken three more swigs when it dawned on me that Andy Pettitte was pitching, and not Kennedy. You see.....Kennedy was supposed to start.....I wasn't paying attention during the pre game lineup announcements.....I've never seen Kennedy before and didn't know that he isn't a lefty......well you get the gist of it. I didn't know until we got back to the room that night that Placido Polanco had hit the home run that I could've swore Pudge Rodriguez hit. I even thought it was Pudge running the bases. I learned two lessons here. One, start wearing my glasses to games and two, start drinking before the first pitch.

I'm pretty sure I consumed 6 hot dogs throughout the day. Which is about the same number of beers I took back on the train to Irvington, NJ after the game. My last night and finally found out that little tidbit. Sure would've made the first night easier if I had've known.

For the rest of my life the Tigers will have a 2-0 record in games I attended at Yankee Stadium. That's pretty hard to beat on my all-time list of baseball memories.