Day games in baseball

Looking back on my childhood experiences as a baseball fan, it feels like there were more baseball games played during the day. For example, I can remember asking my parents if I could leave school early to watch day games during the 1967 and 1968 World Series. When I was recovering from my broken hip at home, I can remember watching the 1963 World Series, the Yankees v. the Dodgers. I know for a fact that there had to be some day games in 1963 because I had an early bed time and would not have been allowed to stay up late to watch baseball.

Baseball writers and sports radio talk show host will frequently bemoan the lack of baseball played during the day, especially around World Series time. All I am going to say is that I am glad that there were more day games played during the week while I was growing up in the sixties. I feel fortunate because watching day games gave me an appreciation for baseball and some of the dominant players of the era that I might not have gotten otherwise. I will be writing about some of these players, so stay tuned.

PATH tubes to Yankee Stadium one last time

For many years we lived less than two miles from what are known as the PATH tubes, in this case the Newark to World Trade Center line. So, for all those years and continuing after we moved further west in NJ when we had need to go into NYC we would drive to Harrison, NJ and take the PATH tubes into lower Manhattan.

The lower Manhattan station, as many of you may know was in the World Trade Center. There were some escalators leading from the mall–like promenade to the PATH station. Sometimes we would meet up with people, usually my older cousin, at the top of the escalators leading to the PATH station. This was a good rendezvous point, and reasonably easy to get to from the west–side subways. I have many found memories of the PATH station at the World Trade Center and environs. It was for many years, our gateway to New York.

When we would go to Yankee games with Anne and were husband, we would usually meet up at our house in west Hudson County and drive the short distance to the PATH station. There were some reasonably clean bathrooms in the PATH station that we would use. They also were not too scary in that we were never afraid to use them.

So when we had tickets with Anne for a September Yankee home game we rendezvoused with Anne in the PATH station at the World Trade Center. We were living in western Jersey at this point and drove to Harrison where we parked our car and boarded the PATH train. We met Anne and her husband in the PATH station, used the facilities and got on the C train to start the subway trip to Yankee Stadium.

This was an ordinary Saturday in September. We had ended up being invited to a wedding of some friends in Massachusetts after we had already purchased the tickets to the Yankee game. So, we regretfully declined the invitation. I was scheduled to have thyroid surgery 12 days later, knew that I would be busy at work finishing up various projects, and was looking forward to spending that Saturday afternoon watching a baseball game with good friends.

My scorecard showed that the Yanks were playing the Toronto Blue Jays. David Cone was pitching for the Blue Jays and Mike Mussina was pitching for the Yanks. The Yanks beat the Jays by a score of 9 to 1.

The date was September 8, 2001.

A memorable baseball weekend (part 3): May 28, 2000 Red Sox v Yankees

The four of us had purchased tickets during the winter to the Yankees home game against the Red Sox on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. We did not know that this would be our second game of the weekend. Our friends husband had to miss the game because of a bad cold, so we had a ladies night out and an extra seat for our stuff. The seats were pretty decent seats on the third base line in the loge (second) level.

I don’t think that I kept a scorecard because I had a notation on Friday night’s scorecard that this game was a pitchers duel between Pedro Martinez and Roger Clements with the Sox winning in the top of the ninth inning. I dug up the box score for the game on the Internet. Both pitchers pitched nine innings. Martinez gave up four hits and no runs and Clements gave up five hits.

Watching the two pitchers battle it out was awesome. The Red Sox – Yankee rivalry is one of the oldest in baseball. Crowds at either ballpark are always highly energized, and the crowds during the two games we saw this weekend did not disappoint. But the crowd on that Sunday night was even more energized because the game was scoreless into the top of the ninth inning. No matter whether the game is played in Yankee stadium or Fenway Park (in Boston), there are always a representative number of fans from the opposing team in the ballpark.

There were two buddies in their twenties sitting in front of us, one a Yankee fan and the other a Red Sox fan. Both were wearing Jerseys from their respective teams and were razing each other about the respective opposing team. As the night went on, they continued to raze each other getting a little louder towards the end of the game. It was all in good fun and they were very respectful to us, and especially so to our friend, Anne. Anne took it in her stride, later commenting that she is often treated as if she was someone’s mother.

In the top of the ninth inning, Boston’s Trot Nixon hit a two–run homerun off of Clements to make it a two –nothing ballgame. We did not lose hope, hoping for a bottom of the ninth comeback. The home crowd got even more vocal and more energized. The Yanks did not score a run and the game ended.

By the way, Anne’s husband watched the game on TV.