Riding the Rivalry Returns....Again

As we speak the Old Yankee Stadium is being torn down and making way for NYC park space.  The times they are a changing...

So there will be a 2010 edition of Riding the Rivalry.   This year there will be featuring some new and returning faces to the Baseball Odyssey.  Personal Statements of the Riders will follow soon.

The plan, and remember with us nothing but our goal is set in stone.

July 31st will be the Departure Date from Yankee Stadium

August 7th: Arrival Date at Fenway Park.

I am well aware that the Yankees are playing the Sox at Yankee Stadium when we will be in Boston but, that is how the cookie crumbles.

Wish us luck

~ Johnny

Boycotting Dunkin Donuts

     Saying that people are pretty crazy when it comes to their coffee is an understatement. People are dedicated to a certain brand, and want their coffee just the way they want it.  It used to annoy me being stuck behind a person in Dunkin Donuts who wanted a half decaf/half French Vanilla Iced Coffee with a Splenda.  I would just think, "really".  

    Who the hell am I to judge a person on how they want their coffee?  If they want a Hazenut with breast milk, give it to them.  There are not to many places where a person can get exactly what they want for $2.75.

     My sudden enlightenment aside, I am going to be boycotting Dunkin Donuts for awhile.  I am a Dunkins fan, something that coffee aficionados have and will continue to judge me for.  However, I can not walk around with an Iced Coffee that looks like this:

I can not go through with it.  I bought one yesterday on my way to get some school work done.  The weather was nice, I had the windows down on the ride, a little sample of what summer was going to be like.  Get my Blice (black,iced) French Vanilla and as I am leaving the store, I encounter some former students of mind who are also enjoying April vacation.  One of them commented on my sox apparel, and I died a little bit.  Why is there no Yankee equivalent of the Red Sox cup?  Who knows?  There will be plenty of Starbucks for me this summer. 

"Well what are you doing out here?! Get the F in there!"

  I went down to Kenmore Square with $100 and a dream. I was about a week late, and a couple of hundred short.

    In the limited experiences that I have had around Fenway on game day there never seemed to be a shortage of scalpers hawking their tickets around the ball field.  I have seen them outside of Copperfields and right when you get off of the T @ Kenmore.  However, that was not the case on Sunday night. 

    Maybe I should not have been so naive and believed all those reports that the game was not even sold out.  The rumors of tickets available at face value was just too good not to believe.  My greed got the best of me.  

  Tim and I walked around Fenway Park while the game went on.  We did so many laps, that one of the sausage and peppers vendors recognized us.  He told us that he was able to get tickets for $25 last week no problem.  Tonight he heard that they were selling bleacher seats for $400.     We saw one scalper, and he was offering his one bleacher seat for $200.  At that point, it was already the 4th inning.  

It was nice to be down there though, despite the frustration.  The weather was warm, and plenty of people there had spent the weekend out in the sun.  The first sun burn of 2010 was accompanied by Opening Day, baseball was officially back.

   The bars outside Fenway were packed, with people waiting over 45 minutes to watch the game on a flat screen T.V. and pay way too much for a draft beer.  I forgot about the Drunken shuffle that is only heightened by sandals.  There were a few of girls shuffling on Lansdowne Street, that broke out the summer dresses before they lose the winter lbs.   

A man who could have passed as C.C.'s twin brother was leaning against a lamp post on the corner of Lansdowne.  He was wearing his Yankee gear and had the swagger to go with it.  He asked if I was waiting to get in to the Cask n Flagon.  When I told him that I was trying to get tickets for the game he looked me up and down and gave a little pep talk that is the title of the blog. 

         Taking my hefty African Tony Robbins' advice I soldiered on with Tim for another lap that was as fruitless as the previous two.  I had enough and headed back to the T feeling like I wasted a good amount of my evening.

The Yanks lost, so maybe it wasn't a complete waste.  It spared me having to endure the taunts of Red Sox fans while leaving Fenway Park.  Which, by the way I did not experience while I was walking around during the game.  Nobody bothered me or said anything to me while I looked for tickets.  Maybe the rivalry is fading a bit?  Or is it too early in the season to be angry?

Monday morning, one of my least favorite students and I had an exchange:

L.F.S.: "so, you ah enjoy that game last night?"

me: "I did. I fell asleep when the Yankees were winning."

L.F.S.: "well, we won."

me: "we?  I didn't see any 4 foot 9 Asian ball players. Who is we?"

I can't just inspire kids, I'm sorry

Play Ball!

After hearing reports and rumors that tonight's Opening Day was not sold out, I made up my mind that I was going to to the game.

So, in less than one hour I will take the 10 min T Ride to Kenmore and attempt to get scalped tickets. If all goes well, I will be crashing Opening Day.

Pretty in Pink

I am going to start off with what I think a "pink hat fan" is and it is pretty similar to one that is actually on wikipedia.  

pink hat fan: a fair weather fan, who attends a ball game as a social gathering with little to no knowledge of what is going on.  Pink hat fans tend to be more concerned with how they look than the score of the game. 

  *Note: not all pink hat fans have to be wearing a pink hat, or be female.

   Anyway, I digress.

    I have had a couple of interesting conversations about bandwagon fans before, but when I brought up the pink hat issue it kind of touched a nerve.  There are some very passionate and well informed female fans out there, and I am not take a crack at them.  It is that small loud, over makeup and underdressed minority that gives female fans a bad name.  That group is the focus of my ire.

      

   I hate fair weather fans/bandwagon fans, because I hate fake people.   If you are ever at a baseball game you know who I am talking about, just take a look around. They could be attending the game because they got tickets from their job and be wearing a shirt,  tie, and baseball hat.  An excellent look if you want to look like a total douche bag.   Try to avoid eye contact and enjoy the game.  Here are my rules for appropriate baseball attire:

1. no ties.  Even the GM of the Yankees will not wear a tie, so there is no reason that you should.

2. No pink jerseys, hats, shirts, or shorts.  Unless it is for a fundraiser for Breast Cancer, there is really no need  to be wearing pink at the game.

3. No hats or shirts with flags of different countries on it.  We get it, your half Irish, move on Sully

4.  Ladies, make sure your shirt covers your whole body.  In other words, wear something so we do not have to see your ass crack. 

5. A player must be on the team at least one year before you buy their shirt/jersey.  

Don't be that guy with the new Lackey shirt this year.  

6. This has nothing to do with attire but: Don't dance to a player's warm up music.  You are not at the Hong Kong, and nobody cares.  Stop it. 

Here is an article that discusses the pink hat issue in Boston. 

Nomahhh

    When I was in high school, one of my favorite sketches on Saturday Night Live was the "Boston Teen" sketch.  That was the one with Rachel Dratch and Jimmy Fallon as oversexed, trashy teens from the greater Boston area.  The writing was brilliant with the word "retahded" probably featured close to 30 times, and always a way to incorporate "Nomah!!" into one of the skits.  It was so popular that Nomar himself even made a cameo on it. 

The late 90s were awesome for Nomar.  He was one of the best shortstops in baseball, (maybe the best depending on what paper you read) had a rabid fanbase in New England, A Rookie of the Year Award, and an A.L. batting award.  He even started the new century off on the right foot, hitting .372 in the year 2000. 

   All that would become a thing of the past, just as quickly as he rose, he fell.

While his  Sports Illustrated Cover in February of 2001 made girls from Providence to Portland  something to think about during those formative years, it also about gave hope to scrawny and awkward New England teenage boys.  That with hard work, determination,  and the right pharmacist you can add 35 extra lbs of unnatural muscle to your frame. 

   To be 100% honest, I was thinking that guy was on the juice back then, my only gripe with Nomar was that he was constantly being compared to Jeter.  The Jeter-Nomar debate was in some ways the continuation of the Williams-DiMaggio debate that my grandparent's generation experienced.  The immediate successor of the Fisk-Munson debate that was enjoyed by my parents. 

     My early days at Marist, and my first real exposure to Red Sox fans were spent trying to perfect my case for Jeter.  The Sox fans my age loved their Nomahh, it was disgusting.  He was probably the first *pink hat type player that the Red Sox have ever had. 

*Note, a "pink hat" player is the player that the majority of female fans find ascetically pleasing.  They are the girls who put on make up and turn a night at the ball park into a night of drunken prostitots.  I will definitely write about this subject later

  Anyway, here were are.  I am going to be 5 years out of college, Garciaparra has  just retired and Jeter has just won his 5th World Series.  Nomar's fall from grace was ugly, I will let you read more about that, he even lost his ice cream flavor at J.P. Licks. (replaced by another potential candidate for the Sports Icon Fall From Grace Hall of Fame, Mr. David Ortiz.) 

   He was an extremely talented player who self-destructed.  Tragically (and I sincerely mean that) his ambition and greed was his downfall. He bulked up so much that his body could not handle it, and became injury prone.  With the loss of swing, his numbers sunk lower and lower.  He saw himself making the type of money that Jeter and A-Rod were making and refused to re-sign with the Red Sox.   Writers and players have cast him as an almost villainous  role in the Red Sox clubhouse.   

 

  Oddly enough It was Nomar who opened the door for me to date Liz.  I kind of knew who Liz was our freshman year of college, we were in the same dorm.  She was not hard to miss that spring, decked out in Red Sox gear.

    In my Religions in America class we had this project to create our own religion. By a 4-1 vpte, the group I was in decided to make a religion based on the Boston Red Sox. 

  So, I ended up interviewing Red Sox fans to try and get testimonials for our presentation, and I interviewed Liz.  (Yeah, that was the first time I was on her bed) The way she spoke about her love of the team was so full of passion, and sincere, it kind of hit me.  She told me this story of how her dad got seats that were on the Red Sox dugout and after every inning she was screaming for Nomah and pointing to her Garciaparra shirt, hoping he would make eye contact with her.  Halfway through the story I had  a giant crush on her, One year later we were dating.

98.5 The Sports Hub

I got on the radio last Friday, for roughly 15 seconds before I was dumped on air to go to commercial. 

   Last Friday was one of those days where you question your career choices.  In thirty minutes I went from ready to begin my lessons, to wondering if I ever should have left St. Anthony's. More than once I found myself thinking, "F these kids."  I was supposed to have lunch duty that day as well, but I was able to switch out of it...thank God.  If I did have lunch duty that day, I promise you there would have been a 13 year old with a black eye.

        However, it was Friday.  I had tickets to the UNH vs. Northeastern and BC vs. BU games at Fenway Park that night.  I was ready to enjoy my weekend and let off some steam.  I was also going to donate blood at Children's Hospital.  I try to donate as frequently as I can, and have donated over one gallon.  When the nurse told me to drink plenty of fluids, I replied that I intended to.  I don't think she meant pitchers of Blue Moons at Copperfield's, but thats what I did.

On my way to Children's, I was listening to Felger and Massarotti on 98.5.   These guys keep me entertained each day, and I like them better than when I would listen to Mike and the Mad Dog.   While I drove on Route 9 they were talking about how Adolfo from the morning show was walking from the studio in Brighton to Gillette Stadium in Foxborough.  Roughly a total of 24 miles.   He would be wearing a football uniform with a Wes Welker Jersey and one of those Fathead cutouts of Welker on his back.

     Adolfo called in and talked about his trip so far.  He had some staff following him on his journey and they were going to drop him off at a hotel before it got dark. He was in great spirits during the trip and it sounded like he was enjoying himself.  When he was giving the update he had traveled 14 miles. 

   I am thinking, holy shit.  This guy is has three days to walk from Boston to Gillette and Bea and I did our 270 plus mile journey in two weeks.  This is ridiculous. 

   I was hesitant about calling, I mean would they care?  What they think I was lying? Then, oh my God I got through. The person who answered the phone wanted to know why I was calling.  I was pretty nervous but I said that I was calling about Adolfo's trip.  

"A few years ago, a buddy and I walked from Yankee Stadium to Fenway Park.  We averaged 20 miles a day and finished in two weeks.  Its totally doable."

The person on the other end sounded a little impressed, (maybe it was my imagination) and told me to hang on the line and that he was going to put me through. "Make sure your radio is down" was the last thing he said to me.

   I turned my radio off and could hear the radio show on my phone.  The caller ahead of me was talking about the Patriot's chance against the Ravens.

  Then after his conversation Mike Felger said, "we have an update on Adolfo's jounrey."

What followed was awful, and luckily I got to hear it.

me: hi, I am calling about Adolfo's journey. He's gone, what 14 miles so far.

Felger: yes

me: well, I just wanna say that its totally doable.  A few years ago a buddy and I walked from Yankee Stadium to Fenway Park.  We did it in two weeks and averaged 20 miles a day.

Voice that was not Felger, "Were very proud of you"

then a commercial 

I was confused and hung up the phone.  I turned up the radio in the car and got to hear to whole thing.  Oh my Go was it was painful. 

So, yeah I made it on air, and embarrassingly was dropped within the same breath.