The Curse of Rizzuto

The good people at the Shooter Job had a company event at the Yankees game against the Orioles this week. Here are some random thoughts from my first visit to Yankee Stadium in 15 years -- and no, for the last time, Chowds, I am not a Yankee fan.

It turned out to be a very sad day for Yankee Fan, as Phil Rizzuto died that morning and the Yankees died that night in a 12-0 stompfest at the hands of the Orioles. Here are my notes / thoughts / rantings from the experience.

> Every baseball stadium should have mass transportation, and everyone should be forced to take it. There's something that's just damned cool about being a part of a crowd for that extra 30 to 40 minutes, and it becomes obvious where everyone is going.

I used to ride the BART train to A's games, and it's a similar, though not nearly as intense feeling. Be at one with the crowd -- especially if it's a big game, or the team is doing well.

Besides, stadium chants in inappropriate places are just cool. The next time you're in line at the supermarket, break out an E-A-G-L-E-S EAGLES! for me, especially if you are not in the Philly area. See? Instant fun.

> The security shakedown at Yankee Stadium is more thorough than any other stadium I've been at for a regular season game, to the point of being an active ingredient to your trip. I wound up leaving my laptop bag at work, adding a big chunk of time to my commute home. They don't make you take off your shoes and do a cavity search, but it's close.

The shakedown is reasonably fast and professional, but the arbitrariness of it all -- "CELL PHONES OUT AND TURNED *ON*! BAGS WILL BE CHECKED! DO THE HOKEY POKEY THE RIGHT WAY OR BIG STEIN IS SENDING YOUR ASS TO GITMO!"-- just rankles. I feel sorry for you young people, who are always going to think this is how it should be. It's not. We're living in fear, and the people we should be afraid of are making money off it, and the Yankees are complicit with their 7th inning 9/11 fetish. But I digress.

> Our seats were up in the Tier section, which is to say, as high as you can go... but being as Yankee Stadium is very well engineered for views, the seats were more or less fine, given us visibility to everything but the right field corner. Of all of the old-time stadiums still in operation, Yankee does the best when faced with a large crowd; the place was built for large scale theater, not intimacy. But the engineering makes up for it.

> One of the things that I really like about old-time stadiums is... it's all about baseball. Yankee Stadium's in-game entertainment is laughably bad; the sound is tinny, the enthusiasm almost campishly fake, and you half expect people to flip the camera the bird during the Smile Cam segment. Here and at Fenway, there's a game on; there's no mascot or kids area or dramatic concession choices, and about the only dumb thing the fans do is take pictures like they are Japanese for every A-Rod at-bat. It's nice, it's East Coast in the extreme, and it's for the hardcore only. Refreshing.

> Here's a dirty little secret about Yankee Stadium -- it's crawling with Subversive Elements. For the Orioles -- a team that hasn't been good for what seems like centuries, who constructed one of the most unlikable collections of Steroid Achievers ever last year -- there were pockets of resistance everywhere. And as the Yankees fell behind early and often, they were in their glory. Every dog has its day. One suspects this is because the seats are expensive, but still, it's interesting to note that every stadium was Road Fans now.

> Speaking of dogs... this was the game that Clemens would have started had he not been suspended. It was also the same night that Boston came back in the ninth on Tampa Bay, stretching their division lead back up to five.

So, for any Rocket Lovers out there... how much, exactly, does the man want to win when he (a) doesn't show up for the first few months of the season, and (b) gets himself run from games, when there are perfectly good useless RPs -- Jim Brower, anyone? -- who could throw the beanball instead?

> In terms of individual Yankee players, I was struck by the defensive skills of Yankee CF Melky Cabrera. On a team of plowhorses, he sticks out big time; it's like he's the only Yankee who isn't playing the game in slow-motion. The highlight of the game for the Yanks was when Cabrera ran down a sure triple in the gap, limiting the damage to a sac fly. When your top play scores the other team a run, that's not a good game for ya. He also uncorked a perfect throw to the plate on a play where he had no chance, and missed the guy by a step. His mechanics are not quite Mark Kotsay, but he's got the skills (and location, naturally) to win a Gold Glove someday.

> For the O's, Daniel Cabrera was dealing and is still 23 with a 95 mph, so there's hope. That hope, of course, would be manifested in another team's uniform. A-Huff hit a grand slam, delighting the tens of thousands of fantasy baseball owners who stopped paying attention months ago, when they realized their team was filled with guys like Aubrey Huff.

> The Phil Rizzuto highlight reel was tasteful and relatively understated; they played a minute of black and white highlights, then finished with some words from the man himself a his Hall of Fame induction. The man made David Eckstein look huge, and proved once again, that the world can not get enough of the little guy. (Full disclosure: I'm also short. Phil and I would have seen eye to eye.)

> For the fetishists, the Yanks are now 0-2 A.R., so they clearly need to get those #10s off the foul ground grass. I tells ya, he's a jinx!