Yanks getting worked

May 16, 2006 by alex

Our good friend Jason (back from the Gotham Broadband days) is moving to China next week with his wife, Mariam. Prior to his departure, he wanted to get to a Yankee game and got together a bunch of people (including karen b., carin g., sara l., gabe b., brian m., andy k., robb s., matt s. and others) to join him last night to take on the Texas Rangers. We all met at Stan’s outside the Stadium for a couple beers before the game got underway. We were fortunate to discover *another* Stan’s (not the Hoochie-fest Stan’s we always go to) that, while packed, wasn’t booming with Dancehall Reggae, which was really nice.

The title for this post came from the title of a photo I sent from my cameraphone during the game. That’s how bleak it looked. The wheels on the Chacon-wagon feel off and they fell off in a hurry. Also, our lineup was missing 3 of our 4 top RBI guys (Matsui, Sheffielf and Giambi out with a sore neck), which resulted in a 5-9 stretch that went like this: Cano, Williams, Phillips, Cairo and Cabrera. Scared? Neither were the Rangers. With our Murderer’s Row in triage, Jorge Posada was slotted in the cleanup spot. Me, along with others, we admittedly a bit skeptical.

We got in, sat down and before we knew it, the Yanks were down 9-0 and it started to feel that, not only was Jason’s last game in person would end with a beating, but we might even be catching the end of it from our couches at home. There’s really no way to properly convey how the game went - it was long (4+ hours), ugly at times (Chacon early on), really giood baseball at others (Jorge’s play at the plate) and crazy (Jeter’s 3-run blast, Cairo’s 2-run single and Jorge’s walkoff) - than just looking at the scoreboard. There were a lot of crooked numbers in this 14-13 victory. Yanksfan vs. Soxfan links to an awesome graph of the game, mapping the big events of the game to each team’s percentage chance of winning (nerd alert!). Here’s a more prose-heavy
recap for ya.

Jason and I have had great luck the past 2 games we’ve been to together - the last one being the July 1st 2004 “Jeter into dives face first into the stands and Nomar sits on the bench” game. I’ll absolutely miss the good fortune he’s been bringing with him to the Stadium in recent years. That game was the best game I’ve ever had the pleasure of attending. Last night’s game is easily the second-best. (Random observation: I think its funny when people you don’t even know shared the same experiences you did but you don’t even know them. There’s something more existential here that I can’t properly convey this early in the day)

Meanwhile, Gabe sampled all of the food groups in an impressive concession triumph: Hot Dogs, Pretzel, Ice Cream (both a sundae and some of Karen’s Dippin’ Dots, which proved to be a strange experience). Oops - I knew one food group was missing. Damn you, vegetables! Hey, isn’t mustard a vegetable?

Anyway, we’re sad to see Jason and Mariam go, but we’re happy the Yankees helped send them off in epic fashion. We’ll miss them but we know they’re off to start something completely different and that’s always exciting. Good luck, guys!