"It's great to be young and a Yankee."

April 27-29, 2012

The Crew, Episode IV

Sorry for the brief respite on posting (is that redundant? Is "brief" part of the "respite" definition? If so, apologies). But it was with good reason. For one weekend a year, NYC is blessed with the presence of one Krista Willim--the writer, the lawyer, the legend--and every year, Yankee Stadium gets a visit from "the crew."

Episode I
Episode II
Episode III

And this year...Episode IV.

Kinda cool. CYC site now going on its 4th year.

Here's what I remember about the weekend:

• The Yanks came back to beat the Tiggers on Friday, with a walk-off passed ball. In the annals of pleasurable anti-climax* that rates about a 8.5 outta 11.

*In the annals of That's What She Said Phrases "Annals of Pleasurable Anti-Climax" rates a strong 10 outta 11.

"Why he is bringing in a righty right now?"

• Keith, on the pigeons on the field: "Do you think those birds know what's going on?"

Everyone else: "Excuse me."
Keith: "I mean, not like in a there's-2-outs-with-a-runner-on-third kind of way. But do you think they know there's like 55,000 people watching them eat grass?"

These are the questions that arise when the Yankees are failing to get more than 1 hit. Which prompted this:

It's true. It was.

• So, yeah, Sweaty Freddy Garcia has zero idea what the eff he is doing. Seriously. There are pitchers like Phil Hughes, who I'm pretty sure are cognizant of the fact there is a way they SHOULD be pitching but just aren't executing. And there are people like Freddy Garcia.

Not that this needs explanation-by-analogy, but come on, when has that ever stopped me before. I'm imagining a beer pong player on the other side of the table who stares at the cup he should be hitting, and then concentrates and concentrates, poises the ping pong ball, and then throws it as hard as he can at the water cup.

And you think, "I can't tell whether he thought that was what he was supposed to be doing or not. There's a good chance he thinks that's what he SHOULD be aiming for."

Freddy Garcia threw a "fastball" with an 0-2 count to the #5 batter Andy Dirks, who has a face that makes me loathe him. He looks like he should be playing a smarmy bad guy in a comedy that schemes a lot in the corporate world.

Dirks had no problem manipulating the ball out of the stadium, which Sterling rightly noted is pretty much easy for anyone in the world to do, when your 0-2 count is an 85 mph pitch down the middle. I mean, if I were Dirks, I'd almost be suspicious of the pitch. Like, what kind of moron would throw that? There's gotta be some kind of go-go-gadget mechanism that pops out of the ball and makes it spiral around right when you think it's about to hit your bat. I'd lay off it.

Dirks didn't though. That scheming jerk.

• Another highlight of the weekend was running into Joe and Jen, who win for greatest Yankee couple and who get the Ford Bold Move of the Day for catching Jeter's foul ball, which has recently skyrocketed to my list of things to do before I die. Which means that basically the span from 80 years old to 90 years old will be punctuated with some aggressive psycho old lady in Yankee Stadium body slamming people for foul balls. In 50 years, I don't want to hear anyone say they weren't warned about this.

• Swisher hit one out to put the Yanks on the board in the run column as well as the hits column. I missed this because it took me roughly 1201 years to get beers. This is because in the bleachers, you only get ONE BEER PER PERSON. This was NOT boding well with the bleacher crew, let me tell you.

A) this is clearly a new regulation so the surprise element alone was enough to send us all into an angry tailspin.
B) this was coupled with the fact I had my ticket checked SCRUTINIZED every time I went back to my seat
C) I had my license scrutinized for every beer. My sister even had to show back up ID once.

I said to Laur, "I feel like I'm at JFK and not Yankee Stadium."
Laur: "No way, at JFK you can drink as many beers as you want."

Keith, being Keith, was not going to tolerate the one beer-per-person thing if it meant making one of us the designated Gunga Din of the inning, so he takes matters into his own hands, and sure enough, he returns an inning later with 6 beers, trudging back to his seat murmuring (then screaming): "Don't tell me I can only have one beer! Yeah!"

My friends believe in moderation. Nope.

• The Yanks, on the other hand, were being very economical about their run production. They certainly kept the hits in moderation. Good work, guys. My biggest fear was that I was going to see a spillage of runs and an absolute mess of hits all over the place. Keep it clean, keep it neat.

• Finally, in Yankee form, the runs start coming in during the last inning, making everyone excited. But then they lost.

Me and the crew? We were still excited though.

Our record now is .500. Like a sonnet's rhyme scheme. L-W-W-L. A-B-B-A.

We're all about the symmetry.

Once again, thank you SO MUCH to one of my absolute favorite people in the world, Krista Lindsey Willim for spearheading what is always the greatest weekend ever. She never fails to disappoint, in any sense of the word. The Yankees are lucky to have her in their corner.

So am I.

(Smiley, not Smyley, emoticon. See what I did there?)

Cheers to taking down the O's, because that's what the O's like to do!