home again home again jiggity jog. i am back from the great baseball road trip, and it was great.
wednesday: arrival and evening game in new york
highlight: the NO-HITTER (duh)
amusing moment(s): betsy unwittingly becoming a pigeon pooping target;
getting the “insider’s tour” of yankee stadium’s smelly dumpsters
we arrived at laguardia around 12:30 and quickly found jeremy at the baggage claim (he’d flown in on a different flight that arrived at the same time). we caught a cab to our hotel, which was conveniently located at 8th avenue and 51st street–walking distance from central park, times square, all the broadway shows, etc. (and we paid only $25 each per night, what a steal!) edgar and betsy, who had flown up to the city on monday, returned to the room about 15 minutes after we’d arrived and we all headed out to get a late lunch, since we were starved. we ate at belly delly deli, this neat place where they sell their food by the pound. you just load up a container with whatever you want, they weigh it, and you pay. it was good, though to be truthful, anything would have tasted good after having gotten up at 5 a.m. and not eaten till 2:00. 😉
after lunch we took a quick spin around the area so that jeremy and chris (who’d never been to new york) could see times square, 5th avenue and central park. by 4:30, we were ready to catch the subway to the bronx for our first of 4 straight days of baseball! we soon discovered that the subway is horribly inaccessible to people in wheelchairs, so we had to come up with a makeshift solution we called “operation chris.” it mainly involved edgar and jeremy carrying him up and down multiple sets of stairs. on one occasion, we were met with only a turnstile gate, at which point “operation chris” became even more imaginative with betsy carrying chris through, us taking the wheels off his chair, edgar carrying the chair through, and jeremy and i each carrying a wheel. (later that night after the baseball game, we added yet another tactic to the operation when one of the wheels on the chair locked up completely, resulting in aborted dinner plans, a cab ride back to midtown from greenwich village, a late-night search of the howard johnson for some sort of wrench, and a trip to the hardware store the next morning.)
we climbed out of the 161st street subway and were met with the sight of yankee stadium rising above us. cool! as much as i hate the yankees, i have to admit that it was awesome to be in a place that has seen so much baseball history. if it were any place other than yankee stadium, i’d probably say it was a dump (narrow aisles, dingy concrete, etc)…but wow, i mean… the house that ruth built. mickey mantle, joe dimaggio, roger maris, yogi berra. it’s yankee stadium. cool.
we met chris’s friend sarah and headed into the park. we first stopped by monument park out in center field to see the monuments to all the yankee greats, and to things like two visits from the pope and to the new york firefighters and policemen of september 11. a stadium usher took us to an elevator that would take us (and chris) down to monument park while avoiding the stairs, but when we arrived, the elevator was broken. hmm. instead, the usher escorted us down a back ramp that went directly through the massive dumpsters that store all of yankee stadium’s trash. this was highly amusing, and we immediately dubbed it our “insider’s tour of yankee trash.” phew. it smelled.
from monument park we took a return trip through the dumpsters and finally headed to our seats. we were on the first row out in right field, within shouting distance of raul mondesi and richard hidalgo (the right fielders for the yankees and astros). the game started but looked like it might go downhill fast when roy oswalt left the game with a strained groin after throwing only 2 pitches in the second inning. yikes. little did we know we were about to see history.
pete munro came on to pitch and did well, loading the bases at one point but not giving up any runs. runs, you see, was what we were concentrating on at this point. when a team has already managed to load the bases (as the yankees had done), you don’t really think about whether any of the runners actually got a hit. it just doesn’t cross your mind. there were people in the stadium, edgar and jeff kent (astros second baseman) included, that didn’t even realize they’d seen a no-hitter until the game was over! it was just that kind of thing–with so many pitchers, and with walks and a hit batter that made it far from perfect, a no-hitter seemed crazy.
kirk saarloos came on next, and did a fantastic job shutting down the yankees lineup in the 4th anf 5th. at this point, i was still only looking forward to an astros win that had seemed improbable with oswalt leaving so early. it wasn’t until brad lidge came on in the 6th that i happened to glance at the scoreboard and saw the big “0” in the yankees hit column. “whoa,” i thought to myself, “they’re no-hitting the yankees through 5-and-some innings.” but i didn’t say anything out loud. no jinxing it!!
lidge came back in the 7th, and i started getting nervous. some guy a few rows behind me was calling people on his cell phone and telling them he was watching a no-hitter through 6.1…then 6.2…then 7 innings, and i was silently praying for the guy to shut up about it. doesn’t he know it’s better not to mention it?!? i mean, i’m not really a superstitious person, but geez man! 😉
when octavio dotel came on in the 8th, the butterflies in my stomach were really getting going. he struck out the first batter, and then struck out alfonso soriano…but it was a wild pitch and soriano made it to first base! eeps! i was about to die. i could just picture jeter and giambi coming up and knocking soriano in with a bloop hit, or a walk, or some bomb home run, or pretty much anything else. but dotel struck them both out!! amazing!! four strikeouts in one inning, three of them against the best three hitters in the yankees lineup! the astros were through 8 innings with no hits, with billy wagner and his 100-mph fastball still waiting in the bullpen!!
i was going crazy inside and had trouble sitting still as the astros scored 2 more runs in the top of the 9th to make it 8-0. when billy wagner ran in from the bullpen to pitch the 9th, i almost jumped for joy. i was pretty sure the astros had it made…but at the same time, i’d seen wagner blow one too many saves to be completely comfortable. but he struck out two and got hideki matsui to ground to first base. when jeff bagwell fielded the ball and touched first base, i jumped out of my seat cheering. NO-HITTER! NO-HITTER! NO-HITTER!
we were all going crazy out in right field as the astros ran out onto the field to congratulate wagner for closing it out. i called the biggest baseball fan i know and woke him up to tell him i’d just seen a no-hitter. “by who?” he asked. “by six different guys!” i said. crazy. i had a smile on my face for the rest of the night, and whenever i stopped to think, i’d end up saying to no one in particular “we just saw a no-hitter.” i never in a million years expected to see a no-hitter. it may not have been perfect, it may not have even been pretty, but it was history. it was one of the coolest things i’ve ever seen.
(3:52 p.m.)
thursday: ground zero, yankee stadium take 2, and the great white way
highlight: front row seats for the evening show of “aida”
amusing moment(s): fording the 49th street river in the pouring rain
the day dawned cloudy and humid. though i’d checked the weather beforehand, new york turned out to be much warmer than weather.com had told me it would be. we hopped on the subway and went down to the world trade center site. i’d seen most of the big new york attractions before, and visiting the wtc site was the one thing on my list besides baseball. (when our cab from the airport crossed
into manha
ttan, i pointed out the chry
sler and empire state buildings to chris and jeremy, and it felt weird to not see the towers, as i had during my first two trips to new york. i hadn’t expected that. but it felt weird. new york somehow felt smaller.) we got off the subway to see, well, nothing more than a big hole in the ground. if a person were simply plunked down on the street with no prior knowledge of history, they’d only see a busy, bustling construction zone. there is hardly a sign of the flowers, posters, flags, etc that covered the site for a while afterward.
it’s only when you start to look closer that you see the remnants of september 11. a building directly across the street from the site is covered in semi-transparent black netting, and through that you can see that the building’s facade is damaged, and there’s no glass in any of the windows. the city has put up a heavy-duty chain link fence that runs the length of the block on two sides of the site, so that people can see what’s happening inside. on a pedestal near the fence is a large cross fashioned out of twisted steel beams. there are a few display boards explaining the history and construction of the towers, and boards listing the names of the people who lost their lives.
but there are also signs of rebuilding. down at the bottom of the hole are shiny new subway tracks, and most of the surrounding buildings showed no sign of damage, having been repaired by now i guess.
it was sobering. it was interesting. i suppose there is something inherent in human nature that makes us want to visit the scene of infamous events, whether to pay respects or simply to enforce the reality of what happened. i’m glad we paid a visit.
from there were headed all the way back up to the bronx for an afternoon game. the astros weren’t so lucky on thursday, and ended up losing the game by one run, 6-5. as a consolation, chris and i did have great seats, directly right behind home plate about 20 rows back.
after the game edgar and betsy headed off to visit some of his family in queens, and chris, jeremy and i headed to times square in search of tickets to any broadway show. about halfway down 42nd street (we were coming from grand central station), chris wheelchair locked up again, which resulted in a pit stop on the sidewalk with lots of stares from bored new yorkers. ah well. we fixed the wheel with the wrench we had smartly bought that morning, and were soon on our way.
the tkts booth was an absolute madhouse. “urinetown” (yes, urinetown) was jeremy and chris’s choice of musical, but it was sold out (thank god), so we got to go see my choice, which was “aida,” the elton john/tim rice tragic romance that was actually in houston last week. i’d wanted to see it here but didn’t get a chance, and as it turned out, seeing it in new york was infinitely better. we paid $25 for two handicap seats somewhere down front and $45 for a seat up in the mezzanine. i sat up in the mezzanine first, with the intention of switching places with jeremy halfway through the show. the musical started off slow, but by the end of intermission i was completely engrossed in the story.
when i found the boys during intermission, they mentioned that there was an empty seat next to them! hurrah. so the three of us headed back down to their seats, at which point i discovered that chris had received crazy mad gimp hookups and the $25 handicap seats, though all the way on the left side of the theater, were on the front row. amazing. i could actually see each and every facial expression; in fact, we were actually so close that we could see the enormous amounts of makeup each singer was wearing, which was almost comical.
the second half was wonderful, and i almost cried at the end. i tend to do that in tragic romances. 😉 but it was really great. one interesting factoid is that the main male character (ramades) in the current broadway cast of “aida” is the guy that originated the role of roger in “rent.” even if i hadn’t read it in the program ahead of time, i’d have known it from the moment he started singing. every time he opened his mouth i could almost hear “one song…glory…” in the back of my head. sort of neat, to see someone whose voice i know doing a different role. and in the end, jeremy and chris ended up really liking the musical. score one for sarah.
we came out of the theater to discover that rain had starting falling, no, pouring from the sky. hmm. we went through our options. subway? no, the connections from where we were to where we needed to be were annoying, not to mention the subway stations didn’t have elevators. cab? we tried for 10 minutes, but no luck. finally jeremy bought an umbrella from a guy on the corner, i rolled up my pants legs, and off we went.
we were quite a sight, chris holding his umbrella, me pushing chris, jeremy following right behind me holding his newly purchased umbrella over both himself and me. all was going reasonably well (we were wet, but not soaked) until we reached 49th street, a mere two short blocks from the hotel. 49th street was a freaking river, with water up to the curb on both sides and about 3 inches deep all the way across the street. my poor tennis shoes stood no chance. they were soaked as soon as i stepped into the street, and only got worse when i had to step into an enormous puddle to pull chris onto the curb (the ramp was invisible under the water) before he got swept away to who-knows-where. the other side of manhattan, probably. 😉 i have never been so glad that i’d brought two pairs of shoes, as my gray sneakers were damp for the rest of the trip.
