Even More Baseball!

The day finally arrived! The home opener at Shea Stadium! Luckily, the Mets pulled out a victory yesterday in Atlanta because a home opener with an 0-6 record would have been absolutely pathetic.

I've been a Mets fan long enough to know that even when things seem like they are going to go well, they don't. For starters, this silly keychain didn't even count things down correctly. Instead of counting down to zero at 1:10 pm, it counted down to zero at 1:10 am. And nothing really exciting happened -- unless you are excited by flashing zeros. I wonder though, did Dave's clock on the West Coast adjust itself accordingly to Pacific Time in the way that the cable box does when the time changes?



I left work at 11:30, it is a time honored tradition for me to either skip the whole day or take a half day. My dad and I (Happy Birthday Stone Groove!) went to every Orioles Opening Day from 1982 - 1991. But then it became very difficult to get tickets when Camden Yards opened. We missed out in '92 and '93. That really got to my dad because he decided to splurge on scalped tickets (50 bucks each for 10 dollar tickets) so we could go to Opening Day in '94. I'm so glad that all those bandwagon obnoxious assholes that sold out Camden Yards in the early 90s have found a new place to go.

This year marks the 18th year out of the last 24 that I have gone to Opening Day or a home opener. A good streak. I snuck out without really telling any kids but I did tell one kid who inquired that I was going to a meeting which I guess isn't really a lie, it was a meeting with 55,000 people. A few minutes later, Bowles confessed that he had accidentally let it slip to a couple of his students that I was going to the game. Does he have to ruin every secret?



The Mets looked okay, but the Astros looked terrible. They imploded in the 8th allowing the Mets to turn a 4-3 deficit into an 8-4 victory. But more importantly, we did not find out any new scoreboard nicknames/cheers for the new additions of Pedro, Beltran, and Mientkiewicz. "Jump on the Beltran?" I guess we'll have to wait for another game.

The other thing to look for on each opening day? How does the new pattern on the grass look? I've got to say that I'm impressed. The interlocking NY and the skyline that is on the Mets logo!


Too bad things didn't run so smoothly in the 6th inning when the hitter's background that should be black during the game didn't turn back from the between innings ad for the Mets on cable (which is pretty funny in and of itself considering that close to 3 million Time Warner subscribers are currently out of luck if they want to watch the Mets during the week). Houston batter Morgan Ensberg (and yes Handwashings is right, the Astros are easily the whitest team in all of baseball) refused to hit until things were fixed.

But it couldn't be fixed for awhile! They tried to manually lower the black covering over the board because the technical turning of the board from an ad to a hitter's background wasn't working. After lowering two separate pieces and watching it fall to the ground (I guess it didn't occur to them to mount the material to anything at the top) they just stood around and looked at the board. The players all left the field. Lovely. Eventually, it was fixed and the game was able to commence.



After the game, we went to Two Boots to see a 4th grade rock band -- more on that later. There were many kids from my school including a current student of Mondale. She asked me if I had gone to the Mets game. I asked her why she was asking me that question. She told me that Mondale had told the entire class that I was going and that his class told my class at recess time. I've guess I've got some explaining to do tomorrow. But come on Mondale, you accidentally told a couple of kids? Or you announced it to your entire class? Some people can not be trusted!