6/8 Sunday afternoon, Shea

Mariners 13 Mets 1
Mariners 7 Mets 0
In attendance- Sujan

Another Mets doubleheader, two more losses. This is the third time the Mets were swept in a doubleheader thus far in 2003, two of which I attended. This was actually the second time they were swept in five days. Ugh. Sujan and I showed up late after a great brunch at Great Jones. We arrived in the 5^th inning of Game 1 and the Mariners already had a 12-1 lead. Perfect. Ichiro had a huge day and the Mariners add to the best record in the major leagues.

The mere sight of Ichiro got us talking about our favorite Japanese players. We reminisced about our favorite Ichiro quotes and decided that our favorite might be the one in 2001 when a reporter inquired about his dog’s name and he responded, "I would not wish to say without asking its permission."

In that day’s paper, Shinjo was quoted "I’m just trying to have as much fun I can as a 31 year old male." Amen. And speaking of lovable Japanese Mets, we both still miss Masato Yoshii. Oh Yoshii.

I predicted that Steve Phillips would get fired the next day. However, I was off by three lousy days.

We also had a continuation of the age-old discussion of players you thought were one race and turned it to be another. We decided the poster child for this phenomenon is, of course, Troy O’Leary.

This was the second time of the year that Sujan was denied getting a coveted bobblehead giveaway because she is indeed over twelve years old. Last time, it was Mo Vaughn, this time it was John Franco. Brendan and Richard also were at the game and Brendan came over to visit at one point. Lo and behold, BOTH… BOTH got bobbleheads! Sujan was incredulous! She cried out, "But Richard has gray hair!" And then she pouted.

There was a crazy woman in front of us who we ended up seeing at a few games this season. She kept talking to herself and was disgusted with the Mets. She reminded me of the woman at Sunday afternoon games at Memorial Stadium who also sat by herself. Stone Groove and I would marvel at the venom that she spit out. She despised them all, but she saved her most bitter criticism for manager Frank Robinson who she affectionately dubbed "The Gutless Wonder." This woman left Shea early and left her seat cushion. For a minute, I debated whether or not to take her cushion, but I was too afraid of her. When she came back for it a few minutes later, I breathed a sigh of relief at my good decision.

Lowlight of the game: Shinjo made an error and then was booed the next time he hit. Don’t boo Shinjo!

Highlight of the game: Between an inning, the fans were given a choice of songs to cheer or boo. The winner would be played the next half inning. The choices?

The Scorpions- loud cheer

Brandy- absolute silence

Dixie Chicks- deafening boos almost as loud as the boos normally reserved for Roger Cedeno.

In other words, Shea Stadium is full of war mongering racist German hard rock fans. Hmmm… replace hard rock with Wagner and you have 1939 Berlin instead of 2003 Flushing.

6/20 Friday night, Shea

Yankees 5 Mets 0
In attendance- Marc, Jamie, Kaci

It was a cold and rainy night. It was Kaci’s first ever Major League game. It was the night that there wasn’t much to cheer about except for the scoreboard cheer for Ty Wigginton where his bouncing head implores us to get "Wiggie with it."

Once again, the Mets shit the bed. Absolutely nothing of note from this crapfest of a team. The most interesting moment of the game was Alfonso Soriano’s long homerun which is easily one of the longest I’ve ever seen in person.

What else was there to engage us about this game? Um, Jose Reyes played his first game at Shea, Robin Ventura got doused with beer as he tried to catch a foul ball, and Tsuyoshi Shinjo (in one of his final games as a Met) robbed a Yankee of a homerun, threw another runner out at the plate, and notched his first hit of the month. Kaci, I promise you that not all baseball games are this dull.

Jamie was again needled for maybe needing to get glasses. It was the second or third time of the year that he insisted that a number on the Shea out of town scoreboard was an 8 when it was really was a 0. Maybe, he doesn’t need glasses, but just to take off his Red Sox tinted blinders because the mistakes usually involved him hoping that a 0 representing the amount of runs Red Sox had scored really was an 8. On this particular night, the Red Sox game eventually had a p next to it for postponed. I couldn’t resist asking Jamie in all earnestness if the "p" next to the Sox score was "p" for postponed or a "v" for victory. He didn’t think that was funny.

Two topics of conversation:

1.Where/ when was I going to propose? Again, I had to be talked out of my roller coaster idea.

2. Belle and Sebastian show at Prospect Park. I was trying to convince Jamie to go see them with me and sit outside the fence so we wouldn’t have to pay the 35 clams. Jamie was concerned, however, that their sound was too fey for the sound to reach us behind a makeshift fence.

Luckily for me, Sujan ended up getting us free tickets for the show. Stuart looked so cute in his tight Mets shirt during the show. However, I did not appreciate the boos for his shirt. Man, even at a show full of twee rock fans, the Mets can’t buy a break. Stuart seemed perplexed at the booing and said, "Come on, they are in last place, someone needs to root for them."

I suppose the most fun of the evening was watching fifteen or so security guys (some of them not in the best physical shape) huffing and puffing their way around the perimeter of the upper deck breaking up fights amongst the 55,000 fans. And the head security guy’s nametag read "Daniel R."

6/21 Saturday afternoon, Shea

Yankees 4 Mets 3 when game was called
In attendance- Alex B., Sujan

Awful, awful weather. Miserable soaking weather. But, it was Mets- Yankees so we had to go. I wished we hadn’t. However, we were rewarded with a few funny moments.

Such as:

1. The longhaired blonde guy temporarily lost in the upper deck after buying two beers. The Yankee bleacher creatures who we had the unfortunate pleasure of sitting near (come on guys, stay in your shithole of a stadium, you don’t have to come to ours) started chanting at the guy "Kid Rock! Kid Rock!" The guy smiles and salutes his new fans with his arms outstretched, beers held aloft. For a brief moment all is well with the world. Only for a brief moment… because at that moment a security guy heading to break up a fight runs right into the guy spilling beer everywhere.
2. The Yankee fan near us who we had to hear chatting with his beer vendor friend, "Yo, I don’t care, this bitch Mets fan is so annoying, I’m going to hit her. I don’t care if I get thrown out, at least I would have hit her first." If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: Yankees fans are all class.
3. A lot of chanting at the game including my personal favorite about Piazza being a horse’s ass and having a small penis.

The game was 4-3 in the 4^th with little Jose Reyes due up when the game was called.

6/24 Tuesday night, Shea

Marlins 8 Mets 4
In attendance- Sujan

Little did we know that we were going to be watching the eventual world champion Marlins on this evening,

While I bought ice cream for me and my lady (because honestly something needed to take my mind off yet another snoozefest), I was bombarded with questions by the ice cream vendor.

As I left with my cones, I thought that that worker didn’t have much of a future working at Shea with an attitude like that.

When pitcher Brad Penny dragged his .194 batting avg. to the plate, Sujan quipped, "He has a higher avg. than the Mets." It would have been funny if it wasn’t true.

At one point to take our minds off the misery on the field, we spotted one of the goofiest 13 year olds we had ever seen wearing a shirt that read, "Been there, Drank that." Unless you are talking about Ovaltine and Tang, I seriously doubt that, kid.

The real highlights of the game were the 60 year old guys behind us and their entertaining dialogue. The most memorable comment was about Roberto Alomar. One of them said with much anguish, "In the American League, he was a superstar for years. When he comes to play real ball (National League), he’s a bum. A bum!"

From Sujan’s livejournal:

Her loss.

6/27 Friday night, Yankee Stadium

Yankees 6 Mets
In attendance- Dave N., Sujan, Stone Groove

From the NY Times:

Yikes. Rivera had pitched three days in a row so and why risk pitching him against the pitiful Mets anyway? And Piazza? He was, of course, in his 3+ month hiatus while touring the world with "Groin Pull ’03."

This was the first time Stone Groove had been to Yankee Stadium since a 1955 game against Cleveland that Yogi Berra won on a homer in the bottom of the 10^th. I asked him if he rooted against the Yankees. He looked at me with disbelief that I would ask such a stupid question and retorted, "I’ve ALWAYS hated the Yankees."

After a collision between overrated asshole Derek Jeter and catcher Vance Wilson, I bolted out of my seat and screamed at the top of my lungs to implore Wilson to inflict bodily harm to Jeter, "Ken Huckaby him!" Ah, nerddom rears its ugly head. I think the Yankee fans near us were too perplexed by my statement to get angry at me. And at least my reference was too obscure for the fairweather Yankee dickheads who have no idea who anyone is on any other team unless they want to sign him in the offseason.

Dave’s criticism of Jeter is far from obscure. He insists the most famous play of Jeter’s career (the underhanded toss to nab Jeremy Giambi at the plate in Game 3 of the 2001 ALDS) was unnecessary. He believes that if Jeter hadn’t interfered with the ball, Posada would still have had time to make the play and Jeter would not be lauded for such a useless play. I’m not sure I believe that but damnit I want to!

Dave gave us all packs of 1986 Topps cards. The gum was scary but I did get a Rollie Fingers card as well as, I believe, a Dave Van Ohlen card.

Roger Cedeno came to the plate after already notching two hits which led Dave to quip, "If Cedeno gets his third hit here, I have faith there will be peace in the Middle East."

For a few innings, I noticed one of the 60 year-old men right in front of us kept looking back at me. Finally, he turned around and asked if I had been at the Mets game a few nights earlier. Holy shit, it was the guys from Shea the other night who called Alomar a bum. When I filled in my crew about who they were and that they were sitting behind Sujan and me a few nights earlier, one of the guys commented about his friend, "It’s too bad he’s not sitting behind you again tonight." We were sitting in the last row. Drumroll! When I told Dave and Stone Groove about how funny the Roberto Alomar line was, the guy who had made the statement blushed.

6/29 Sunday evening, Brooklyn

N.J. Cardinals 1 Cyclones 0
In attendance- Sujan, Stone Groove, Mom

Me and the folks raced to Coney from Broadway after seeing the lousy "Cabaret." My mom does not like baseball but was convinced to go see this game because Coney Island is fun and what the hell else was she going to do while we were at the game? She had fun just looking around and looking at all the pretty scenery. At one point, a screaming line drive foul ball almost hit her. Luckily for her, she didn’t get scared at all because she was caught completely unaware.

Stone Groove insisted on buying T-shirts for everyone. He really wanted one for himself because the guy on "King of Queens" has a Cyclones shirt.

As the game ended, my mom was jolted back to reality when Stone Groove informed her that it was time to go. "Who won?" she inquired. New Jersey won, Mom, New Jersey won.

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