Yankees 8, Indians 4

Honestly, I had a pretty good feeling about this one from the git. We got there in record time, marred only by a very long wait for a chicken strips basket five minutes before the first pitch. Our seats stunk, but so what?!

Our section (U-34!) was peppered with an entertaining assortment of freaks, weirdos and lowlifes. A girl to our left waved an enormous sign around ("Marry me, Jeter!") for the entire damn game. My favorite character was "Victor"-- a super-slick young man with a gold chain, earring, visor, bluetooth headset, and wet-looking hair. A classic middle-aged nerd was diagonally in front of me, with whom I shared two botched high-fives.

But none could compare the terrifying twosome directly in front of my date and I (row K, seats 5 & 6, to be exact). The miscreants were dead ringers for George Kennedy and Al Goldstein, respectively. The latter had one of the worst cases of dandruff I've ever seen, which he promptly scritched into my Diet Coke as soon as I sat down (I swear to God!). The back of his blue shirt looked like the bottom of a bag of pretzels. He kept taking his hat off and scratching his head.

Even worse was the guy's gaping buttcrack. First I was cracking up (hah!), then I was embarassed for the guy, and then I was just plain embarassed. I don't ever want to see anything like that again.

Not much else to say, although I did have a quick back and forth with a pathetic Indians fan, who scurried off shouting, "Fausto will be waiting for you on Wednesday!!" Maybe the weirdest "diss" I've ever heard.

I thought Wang was pitching tomorrow, but they have Moose up on yankees.com. I liked the Matsui batting 7th thing, but they'll probably screw that up all over again. We confirmed that we really only need half the guys to hit reasonably well to win, and maybe our pitchers to pitch reasonably half-well. Or maybe that will only work half the time.

Game 3 postscript

A few things I forgot to say...

I told at least three people yesterday that "all I want from Clemens is a quality start." On my way to the stadium last night, I realized how absurd my claim was. When wouldn't anyone be happy with a quality start from Clemens (or any pitcher, for that matter)?!As I thought about it, I realized that what I meant to say was that I'm happy if Clemens only lets up three runs. I didn't really care how many innings he pitched-- "limit the damage," as they say in Toronto. So I'd like to introduce a new term into the grand baseball lexicon:

A near-quality start is defined as any game in which a starting pitcher allows no more than three earned runs, regardless of the number of innings pitched.

I'll be using this as the new standard for most Yankee pitchers, both geriatric (Clemens, Mussina, etc.) and psychiatric (Igawa, etc.).

Oh yeah, I've been slagging the Yankees for years about their refusal to give anything extra at all to the fans (promotions, performances, BEER!). Last night was no exception. They just don't understand what the fans really want.

Is it really that hard to find someone to sing the anthem??!!! Preferably a local singer that people love?! I have nothing against the West Point Glee Club, or whatever the hell they were, but gimme a break! I felt like I was at a funeral, not a friggin' baseball game! They never get the sound for the ensemble vocal performances right anyway-- last night's feedback-drenched ordeal was typical.

Here are some easy ideas:
Jon Bon Jovi, Mariah Carey, Norah Jones (ok, maybe she's a Texas Rangers fan), Mary J Blige, Karen O... they'd all jump at the chance to sing the anthem at Yankee Stadium, right? The place would go nuts. I remember seeing Michael Bolton sing at a playoff game years ago, and it was fucking awesome!