Last night I went to my first MLB game of the season, Dodgers-Giants. The game was delayed over 2 hours, due to rain. And this was SoCal rain - a light intermittent drizzle, something they'd probably play through in Boston or New York or Baltimore. So after an endless documentary on the Dodgers from ca. 1988 ("Mike Scioscia: Dodgers catcher 1980-present"), the game finally began around 9:45. When it did, the stadium was half empty (or half full, if you're into that), and only got emptier as the game progressed.
I just kept thinking: this is the big West Coast baseball rivalry? The only sign of life by the fans was the loudness of the "Barry Sucks" chants. (And yes, my proposed signs were far more awesome than anything the Dodgers fans said or did.) Pretty sad. X pretty much nailed it beforehand: "Most Boston-TB games have more intensity." Of course, there's an upside to crappy fanbases like that: we all got free tickets to a game in late May, just for sticking around. Goooo Rockies!
(Speaking of which, a little trivia: Jamey Wright had 132 starts for the Rockies, the starts by a single pitcher in team history. Also, his ears are terrifyingly huge.)
Holy crap, he looks like Shrek.
ReplyDeleteI saw some of the game on TV last night and all the empty seats (sorry Earl, I was looking for your really, really faded Sox cap, but no luck) and today commented on it to a local (in the context of my earlier e-mail to Earl - his excuse, "well, it was raining and the game started two hours late."
Please. If it was Sox Yanks, people would stay. Period. Of the now 36,000 at Fenway, there would be 30,000 easily (if not more) that would stick it out. And we wouldn't get any free tickets for it, for sure.
Hell, even for Sox-TB in april, more than half the crowd would stay. do you guys remember that crappy, rainy April day against TB (of course you do, BG was in RF) and Pedro struck out like 15. I don't recall that many empty seats.
Speaking of which - tomorrow (Easter) was always my favorite day to go to a Sox game. Invariably you can score great seats from scalpers for pretty damn cheap. When tix go on sale in the winter, most buyers don't realize its Easter, thej just see a game and are Jonesing after 4-5 months. needless to say, their wives, GFs, etc have other ideas. leading to great seats.
And wow, just saw the highlights of the Yanks Twins and Mo blowing the save.
ReplyDeleteIt will never show up in the boxscore, but the Yanks defense cost them this one. Man on first, mauer singled to left and Matsui threw to 3rd even though he had NO chance to nail the runner. Mauer took second on the throw and scored the winning run two batters later.
And one other note on rivalries -in a previous book review, it was insinuated the Cards - Cubs is bigger than even Sox-Yanks since it brings in all of the Midwest. And while not a Cubs game today, I could not help but notice in the highlights a ton of empty seats in the new busch stadium. How does this happen?
ReplyDeleteAnnounced crowd was 40K and change with a capacity of 46K or so. I mean this is the FIRST WEEKEND of a brand new ballpark. replacing a dump of a park. How is this not sold out and stuffed to the max. And tell you, there were a lot more that 6,000 empty seats there.
So any time anyone mentions that STL is the best baseball city in america, remember this day....
Tomorrow Earl will do a special analysis of the other huge rivalry that he vividly recounted for us last year - thats right Detroit Arizona.
ReplyDeleteI know its from an ealry post, but here we go:
ReplyDeletehttp://redsox.bostonherald.com/redSox/view.bg?articleid=135325&format=text