I've gotta ressurect this blog somehow, someway.
After the big reunion show I'm thinking of a massive Floorpunch history piece.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Sunday, October 5, 2008
The last game at Yankee Stadium
Yankee Stadium closed it's doors on September 21, 2008 and with it the book was closed on 25+ years of memories for me. My mother took me to my first game in 1980. It was a bus trip from the bank where she worked. About all I remember from that game is they played the Royals and Lou Piniella was in the outfield. I can't even estimate the number of games I went to since then, including the last game on September 21st. I have many incredible memories from games there, and saw lots of interesting and funny things that had not much to do with the on-field action. Trying to boil down that many memories into one blog post is not possible, so I singled out this funny moment.
Sunday April 22nd, 2001 vs. the Red Sox (http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2001/B04220NYA2001.htm). I don't remember who got these second row, main box seats but attending the game that day was myself, Zusi and Porter. I've been to too many Red Sox games to count; many before they had any fans whatsoever (1999) willing to come to Yankee Stadium and many after they started polluting our airspace with their presence.
This was your typical tight, back and forth Boston/NY affair. There was drama on every pitch; every inning. The Red Sox were still trying to get over the hump against the Yanks, yet their fans were growing more arrogant, combative and annoying by the week. And they were out in full force for this one. And many of them were baked in the afternoon sun and, of course, full of beer and brandishing big mouths. There were two sitting in the field boxes in front of us who were particularly irritating. You all know the type. Twenty something dudes with fake jerseys, filthy hats, the ever present beer and loud mouths. Whenever something went the Red Sox way they'd get up, turn to face the rest of the crowd, hold their plastic beer bottle in the air, smirk and make that annoying nodding head gesture that made everyone scream shit at them and send the occasional piece of pretzel flying at their heads.
Not surprisingly every time these yo-yo's stood up the three of us let some serious profanity fly their direction. And anyone who knows us knows we don't use the typical type of profanity in these situations. You get most of the people throwing out the standard "Sit down asshole!" etc, but we were taking it one step further. These guys would occasionally glance our way with their smirks, which only brought it on them harder. At one point Zusi was giving them a double middle finger while I shouted "Kill yourselves you scumbags!". That outburst finally brought a warning from an usher to tone it down, but F that. We can't sit by and let these tools try to control the area!
Dirty hat dudes must have seen that because I saw them laughing in our general direction and that was about all Mr. Short Fuse (Porter) could take. He immediately started devising one of his famous schemes to get people to start with us. "Dude, next time those assholes start their shit really let them have it. Then when they come over here to start something I'll pretend I don't know you and I'll sneak one of them. Then we'll totally fuck them up." Sitting next to Porter was a weaselly looking Jewish guy who was visibly nervous. He wanted no part of any of this. Trying to diffuse this situation he says to Mark, "If you guys don't calm down you're going to start a fight." Calmly, Porter looks at him and says, "If you don't mind your own business it'll be with you." Dude nods his head, looks back towards the field and slowly slipped away soon thereafter.
My goading didn't bring the desired results though. The dudes stayed put. Finally David Justice put and end to this with a game winning home run in the bottom of the 10th sending profanities flying from my mouth and the dudes slinking up the aisle having verbal abuse heaped upon them. At this point our memories diverge slightly as Zusi remembers me giving a little girl with a Red Sox jersey the finger in the aisle, but I think he's just embellishing the story.
Sunday April 22nd, 2001 vs. the Red Sox (http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2001/B04220NYA2001.htm). I don't remember who got these second row, main box seats but attending the game that day was myself, Zusi and Porter. I've been to too many Red Sox games to count; many before they had any fans whatsoever (1999) willing to come to Yankee Stadium and many after they started polluting our airspace with their presence.
This was your typical tight, back and forth Boston/NY affair. There was drama on every pitch; every inning. The Red Sox were still trying to get over the hump against the Yanks, yet their fans were growing more arrogant, combative and annoying by the week. And they were out in full force for this one. And many of them were baked in the afternoon sun and, of course, full of beer and brandishing big mouths. There were two sitting in the field boxes in front of us who were particularly irritating. You all know the type. Twenty something dudes with fake jerseys, filthy hats, the ever present beer and loud mouths. Whenever something went the Red Sox way they'd get up, turn to face the rest of the crowd, hold their plastic beer bottle in the air, smirk and make that annoying nodding head gesture that made everyone scream shit at them and send the occasional piece of pretzel flying at their heads.
Not surprisingly every time these yo-yo's stood up the three of us let some serious profanity fly their direction. And anyone who knows us knows we don't use the typical type of profanity in these situations. You get most of the people throwing out the standard "Sit down asshole!" etc, but we were taking it one step further. These guys would occasionally glance our way with their smirks, which only brought it on them harder. At one point Zusi was giving them a double middle finger while I shouted "Kill yourselves you scumbags!". That outburst finally brought a warning from an usher to tone it down, but F that. We can't sit by and let these tools try to control the area!
Dirty hat dudes must have seen that because I saw them laughing in our general direction and that was about all Mr. Short Fuse (Porter) could take. He immediately started devising one of his famous schemes to get people to start with us. "Dude, next time those assholes start their shit really let them have it. Then when they come over here to start something I'll pretend I don't know you and I'll sneak one of them. Then we'll totally fuck them up." Sitting next to Porter was a weaselly looking Jewish guy who was visibly nervous. He wanted no part of any of this. Trying to diffuse this situation he says to Mark, "If you guys don't calm down you're going to start a fight." Calmly, Porter looks at him and says, "If you don't mind your own business it'll be with you." Dude nods his head, looks back towards the field and slowly slipped away soon thereafter.
My goading didn't bring the desired results though. The dudes stayed put. Finally David Justice put and end to this with a game winning home run in the bottom of the 10th sending profanities flying from my mouth and the dudes slinking up the aisle having verbal abuse heaped upon them. At this point our memories diverge slightly as Zusi remembers me giving a little girl with a Red Sox jersey the finger in the aisle, but I think he's just embellishing the story.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Straight Ahead and the hot dogs
Thanks to my wife Colleen for the name of the blog. Should I take it as a compliment that it took her about 2 milliseconds to come up with the name of this blog?
There is only one story than can kickoff Big Mouth, Lots of Opinions. It's been told over and over, but needs to be recorded here for posterity...
January 2nd, 1989 was the day of the big Roger Miret benefit at CB's, fifteen bands or something. Straight Ahead were one of them, and it was a reunion. They did an unannounced reunion a few months earlier at the "Pete's Sake" benefit, but I was not there because my mother wouldn't let me go. There was no way I was missing this one.
We got there at 11:30am for a show that didn't start until 3:00pm and there was already a line. To make matters worse it was really cold. I wore three sweatshirts and a pair of army pants with cut-off army shorts underneath. They finally started letting people in and there were so many people on line I missed the first band (Vision) entirely. Finally I made it inside and took off all my outerwear and threw it in a big pile of flight jackets in the back, near the pool table. (Don't ask me how I recovered all my clothes, I'm not too sure either.) By now it was worse than a sardine can in there, you could hardly move.
Nausea take the stage and are playing for a long time, considering the amount of bands left to play. I guess it was abut 4:30pm by now, and I'm starving. Hell I was on line for five hours. So I get the bright idea that I'll go get some food. Don't want to go too far though, just a quick bite. I went next door to the Record Canteen and ordered up a couple of hot dogs. I was gone 20 minutes, tops.
As I was walking back into CB's I noticed all these sweaty people coming out. "Couldn't be Nausea still.", I thought. A wave of panic spread over me, and I grabbed some sweaty kid on his way out. "Who just played!?", I shouted. His answer: "Straight Ahead! And they were awesome!"
Holy shit. Straight Ahead had set-up and played their entire set in the time it took me to walk 10 feet up the street and eat two hot dogs.
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