Sox-Yanks part 1
Alright, I don't think this will be a running diary as much as just a few posts during the game. I woke up right around the time the game started it was the middle of the second before I got up and about.
But, watching Manny Ramirez's massive home run in the first reminded me of something I need to confess -- I love watching the Red Sox play at Yankee Stadium. I love getting on the train at 28th Street station, near where a friend of mine lives, switching trains (interruption here -- John Olerud just put one in the upper deck, 3-0 Sox), and getting off at 161st. I love the absolutely pulsating energy outside the park, where Red Sox fans seek each other out and Sox and Yankees fans sort of eye each other. It used to be Yankees fans would have all sorts of taunts about 1918 and Ruth and Buckner and so on, but they were strangely quiet for some reason last time I was there, in April.
I've been to six Yankees-Sox games in the Bronx since 2001 (the Sox have won four) and have sat in the upper deck all six times. I love, again, just the incredible nervous tension in the park with 55,000 people crammed together. I love looking out at the city and watching the trains go by. (Uh-oh, there's a serious-looking meeting on the mound with Shawn Chacon -- you know it is serious when all the infielders come in and Joe Torre comes out and Brian Cashman comes down from the stands and sometimes George Steinbrenner joins in. I digress). I love how they play Rock 'n' Roll by Led Zeppelin right at the start of the game.
Say what you want about New Yorkers, but they know baseball. They absolutely do. I was at the second game of the season this year, the one in which Jason Varitek hit the game-tying homer in the top of the ninth and Derek Jeter hit the winner in the bottom of the inning, and by the third inning, was engaged in some great baseball talk with both the middle-aged guy from Queens sitting in front of me and the Puerto Rican guy from the Bronx sitting next to me and we kept talking baseball the rest of the afternoon. That does NOT happen in Seattle. Trust me on this. We gave each other crap all day for sure, but they know what they're watching in New York. The guy from Queens asked me what it was like when the Sox won the Series, and he was wearing a New York Rangers hat, so I put it terms of the Rangers winning the Stanley Cup in 1994 for the first time since 1940 and he shook his head in agreement and laughed.
So, back to Manny's homer. There's something about watching a home run at Yankee Stadium from the upper deck you can't really replicate elsewhere. I don't know if it is the way the seats are angled or how exactly it works, but David Ortiz and Ramirez's blasts just seem all that much more majestic in the Bronx.
I think I can best sum up the Sox-at-Yankee-Stadium experience with a moment from the epic 13-inning game last July, the one where Nomar needed his day off, but Jason Giambi managed to get to the plate despite his various ailments and infections. I went with my friend Matt, who is currently in Iraq. For years, I had been telling the Northwest born-and-raised Matt that yeah, Safeco Field is nice, but you don't know baseball until you've seen the Sox and Yanks play. Matt would generally deny this.
In the top of the sixth inning in that night, Manny hit the first of his two home runs of the night, an absolute moon shot to center that bounced off the hitter's backdrop and cut New York's lead to 3-2. Matt sort of sat back and watched the 10,000 or so Sox fans in attendance go bonkers, and the Yankees fans start jeering in response, and felt the heat rise several notches in the park, and he looked at me and basically smiled and said "OK, now I get it." And that was before the Sox tied the game and Jeter's catch and everything else that transpired over the next three hours.
Back to real time -- hey, what do you know? Matsui can't hang on to the ball and Manny is up. Manny drills a single. I was hoping for a grand slam to bring this post to a perfect serendipitous conclusion, but it was too much to ask. So, 5-0, bases still loaded. Base hit for Nixon, two more runs in.
You know, this series is starting to turn out just like the Memorial Day weekend series at Yankee Stadium. Remember the Friday night game? The Sox were on the verge of breaking things open, Dale Sveum killed a potential big inning waving a runner home when it was obvious he'd get thrown out by 75 feet, and the Yanks roared back to win. Then the Sox won 17-1 the next day. Last night? Sveum kills the Sox again (whoops ... Robinson Cano just threw the ball into the stands), Yanks turn the game on a dime. Now the sox are up 8-0 in the third in Saturday's game.
BTW, do you know how you can tell last night's Pitt loss to Ohio was a bad loss? When that Ohio DB returned the game-winning touchdown, you could see an open-ended end zone with high-school style bleachers and some sort of temporary tent set up behind the bleachers. There's no way a school that got a BCS berth should lose to a school with such a setup under any circumstances.
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