Yankees 7, Orioles 6

Got off the 4 at around 6:30 tonight. There was something special in the air as Yankee fans crept down River Ave for the turnstiles-- a surprise A-Rod promotional item commemorating his 500th career HR was in effect!!! The only question on our collective mind was, "Just how shitty are the Yankees willing to go with this?"

Pretty shitty. We were handed a bizarre 9" by 6" flimsy piece of cardboard with two side-by-side Peter Max paintings of A.E.R. himself. The paintings are... interesting. My date immediately tried to throw hers in the trash just inside the stadium. I grabbed it from her hand as if she were chucking out a Mantle '51 baseball card and tucked it under my arm.

Far more interesting was the pre-game ceremony. Two easels covered with Yankee tarps stood to the left of home plate; a third, shorter easel stood on the right. Randy Levine, Cash, some guy and some lady were introduced by Shep, and finally A-Rod was paraded out. After A-Rod's ass was kissed for a couple of minutes, Peter Max came out! (hilariously intro'd as "the most popular artist in the worrrllldddd...") The ragtag group awkwardly interacted, and quickly settled in for the unveiling.

Were they presenting A-Rod with three bonus checks??!! No, it was the paintings. A-Rod gasped as the works were bared; my date and I laughed uncontrollably. We had no idea that the atrocity exhibition was just beginning.

Bob delivered an incoherent intro to the third piece, something about bats and zeroes. As you may have already seen on tonight's reels, Max and co. wrestled with the tarp cover and knocked the damn thing right over on the ground. I say "thing" because that's just what it is. A weird monstrosity made of balls, bats and a "500" in the style of the paintings. It's utterly awful. I asked my date to grade the paintings and the "piece" from 1 to 5: she gave the paintings reluctant "1"'s and the sculpture-thing a firm "zero". I sheepishly put my promotional replicas under the seat.

Wang was busy stinking up the joint when one of the strangest things I've ever seen at Yankee Stadium happened (and I've seen some weird shit). So fast I missed most of it. Ingredients: sudden commotion, lots of noise, people jumping out of their seats, soda/beer flying everywhere, something shooting past us, and me nearly running for my life. My immediate theories: (1) a drunken dwarf just fell from the top row of the upper deck (we were row R), or (2) the woman behind us was just assassinated by a rogue sniper on top of the stadium diagonal from us.

Turned out it was an insane SQUIRREL darting through the tier reserved. It seemed to just drop out of the fucking sky. People were saying something afterwards about it darting out of a popcorn tub, which may be true since there was popcorn flying everywhere. Anyway, my date got doused with soda. My A-Rod portraits were completely soaked (I still took one home like a complete idiot). The squirrel scratched up the arm of the little girl behind us (allowing me to hang on to my "assassination" theory for just a little bit longer) and bounced around off the legs of the guys right in front of us. Not really sure where the little bugger ran off to. Hopefully not the River Avenue Grill.

Oh yeah, the game was pretty good. Great to see Mo bounce back after the blow, Joba, the walk off... OK, I'm lying. We actually left early. In fact, maybe the earliest I've ever left (in hours & minutes) a game I wasn't thrown out of. I know this is thin ice, but we felt like it was the right thing to do. I was hooked up to a damn IV for most of the afternoon, my date was kinda tired, and that fucking squirrel scared the dickens outta me. Sue me.