Anyway, tonight I went to the Mariners game, because it was on my season ticket plan, and thanks to Matt Thornton and Jason Giambi, my plan is now 7-for-13.
Speaking of Giambi, I realized something disturbing tonight. I've been to 5 Yankees games this year. In those games, Jason Giambi made 21 plate appearances, struck out 5 times, walked twice, got hit by a pitch once, hit 4 singles, and 5 home runs, and got 11 RBI's.
He's hit 25 home runs ALL YEAR which is a rate of a home run approximately once every 5.2 games, but he's hit a home run at the rate of 1 per game for games I've attended.
Jason Giambi is hitting .500/.571/1.333 at games I attend. He's hitting .277/.443/.545 for the season. I'm afraid to go back to Safeco this week.
I got to the game around 6pm to try to take pictures of batting practice, but didn't get very many. There are way too many Yankees fans, of course. I did go to watch Mike Mussina warm up. I stood next to a guy who was wearing a Mussina shirt, and we chatted for a while; he said he used to be a minor league pitcher and modeled his mechanics after Mussina. I thought that was pretty cool. We talked about different stadiums and bullpens and whatnot. It wasn't hard for me to make idle chatter pretending to be a Mussina fan, since I actually genuinely like him, and even yelled "GO GET EM, MOOSE!" with the other Yankees fans behind the bullpen.
I mean, cmon, what was I going to do, go cheer for Ryan Franklin? Plus, Mussina is like ninety times cuter than him.
Anyway, game notes:
- I'm not bothering with it in chronological order. Not worth it. To sum up, Mussina really was NOT himself today (3 IP, 4 ER, 4 BB, 0 K, walking in a run), and Franklin actually had the game at 4-2 into the 6th, when he walked two guys and Matt Thornton let up a 3-run homer to Jason Giambi; the Mariners never really threatened to score again after the early bursts, so with a few extra homers on the cake, the Yankees won, 7-4.
- Richie Sexson seems to have dyed his hair bright blonde. It looks so bizarre I can't even begin to describe it, sort of like there's a guy with a gigantic fuzzy mango on his head playing first base. (Edit: found a picture on the PI page.)
- There were these annoying kids sitting behind me for the whole game. Sometimes they were funny (like when they were making fun of Mussina's pitching, saying "That guy throws butterballs. Butterballs!") but most of the time they were just plain annoying ("I hear that guy is from Cuba, I bet he can't speak English, no wonder he keeps going for the ball when someone else has it.")
- There were also many Yankees fans in the section. Most just cheered when the Yankees did stuff, but of course we had the Token Loud Yankees Fan who kept getting up and yelling stuff like "THAT'S DEREK JETER, ALL-STAR SHORTSTOP" or whatnot. Anyway, there was only one really hilarious moment -- when Giambi hit that first monster 432-foot home run off of Franklin -- and Token Loud Dude gets up and yells "YOU SEE, SEATTLE? THAT ONE WAS SERVED WITHOUT STEROIDS."
- I started mooing instead of booing for A-Rod. Heh heh. I have to admit, I wasn't here in 2000, so I don't care the way so many other fans do, but it's just sort of fun to boo him anyway. It's just like being back at home in Philly!
- Earth to Yankees: Bernie Williams is SLOW. SLOOOOOOOOW. Incase you don't know already, that means several things. Like, he probably shouldn't be playing center field any more. Or trying to steal bases.
- Would you believe that we got TWO double plays off strikeouts today? Yeesh! First time was in the 2nd inning, with A-Rod on second and Giambi on first. Williams struck out, the guys attempted a double steal, and Ojeda threw out A-Rod at third. Second time was in the 5th inning, with Williams on first; Matt Lawton struck out and Williams got thrown out trying to steal second. See my prior point.
- Man, Matt Lawton's been all over the damn place. I saw him playing in Pittsburgh when I was there in April, after all, and he got trad
- Willie Bloomquist got hurt, which actually is kinda bad, because it probably means more Morse at SS and Betancourt at 2B. On the other hand, Willie made a pretty nice Boone-type stop play, before getting hurt the next inning running out a fielder's choice, which may have actually been a double play, but ah well.
- ♥♥ Yuniesky Betancourt ♥♥. Need I say more? He's so graceful making plays no matter where they are, and he's always so eager to go for the ball. If Wiki is the Laziest Man in Baseball, then Yunie is the Craziest Man in Baseball. It was hilarious when there was a pop-up, between first base and the mound, and Richie Sexson actually had to wave off Yunie, since he was there already. Betancourt also stole a catch from Ichiro in right field, heh.
(Whee, I'm a girl, I get to do things like put hearts around people's names and judge pitchers by how cute they are.) - I think Dave Hansen was out there with a catcher's mask on, warming up the pitchers between innings? Unless we've acquired someone new to wear #10 in the last day or two...
- When Franklin walked Sheffield and A-Rod and then Matt Thornton came in, I knew right then that Giambi was going to hit another home run. I don't know how I knew, but I just knew it. And I was imagining Franklin down in the dugout:
Franklin: "Giddamnit! Sumbitch done given up my win!"
Hargrove: "Oh, shut the fuck up, Franklin, you suck as much as he does."
Price: "Yeah, who are you kidding, you'd have given up a second home run to Giambi too."
Franklin: "Ain't nohow, I was gunna gettim double-playin' grounder."
Reed: "Ha, you're a groundball pitcher like I'm Mark Kotsay."
Franklin: "What?"
Reed: "Uh, you pitched great tonight Ryan, did I not say?"
Franklin: "An'way, y'all gitten on my case fer bad pitchin' butcha never say nothin' to those other guys."
Hargrove: "Wanna bet?" *heads out towards mound to bitch out Matt Thornton* - We got to see Miguel Ojeda's first hit as a Mariner when he singled to lead off the third. He was 1-2 for the evening with two walks and a run scored. For the record, this brings his line as a Mariner to .143/.455/.143. Hmm.
- Get this -- it's been a while since we've seen Mark Bellhorn at Safeco, but he very well might show up tomorrow, as a Yankee. How bizarre.
Tomorrow, we see Shawn Chacon, finally freed of the terror of Coors Field, going up against 31-year-old rookie Jeff Harris, who hopes to duplicate the quality he showed in his last start in Texas. Should be an interesting game, but everyone's really waiting for Wednesday's matchup, I'm sure.
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