on opening day night

maybe not the prettiest pitchers game i've ever seen. certainly not the taut pitcher's duel i'd half-expected. on the face of it a garden variety regular season game, except some of the cast was different: renteria booting the ball instead of nomar. wells looking incredulous instead of lowe. manny somehow momentarily inhabiting johnny damon's hands of steel in center. and (i have to) halama doing his best bill buckner impression. randy johnson giving me agita instead of, well, whoever last went through the revolving door that used to give me agita. tony womack, doing his scrappy speedy slap happy best to make me forgive both his signing here and 2001. tino martinez shining around first base again; tino, whose presence in pinstripes is so comforting, so ridiculously right it nearly erases my momma hen type doubts and fears about age and slowing bats.

some things remained the same, of course: zilla continuing his opening day insanity, sturtze defying his bumhood with two perfect innings, jeter minding his boring old shortstoppy business, arod's catlike athleticism.

but nah, it wasn't beautiful. (ruben sierra hitting cleanup is not something i EVER want to see again. and tom gordon coming into a 9-1 game? excuse me?) but it was baseball, and that's all i really wanted.

for great takes on the game, visit bronx banter for cliff corcoran's thorough and funny account (okay, i lol'd: "when you want to get to first and you get struck-out by Sturtze, Renteria! Renteria! ...when the Yankees are in first and the Red Sox are the worst..."), and miss karen for pictures, in-game phoneblogging, and a missed opportunity to sabotage curt38.

oh, and this gem of an anecdote about one of the latest between innings gimmick, which i can't wait to see for myself:

...they've added this AWESOME new segment. I'm not sure what the full name is, but it involves the Stadium people picking three songs, and I guess sometime during Spring Training, they asked the Yanks which song they preferred. Whichever is the most popular gets played after that. Last night the theme was the 80s (which, hello, you won me right there) and the three song choices were "Tainted Love," "Super Freak," and "Video Killed the Radio Star." When they show A-Rod, Shef and a few others picking Super Freak (and A-Rod looked particularly pleased with that song) I wasn't so shocked. But guess who else likes it? MOOSE. I almost lost it right there. Because, seriously. I can't picture the man grooving around to Rick James in the locker room, but he looked pretty excited when mentioning it. Then there's Kevin Brown going, "Grrrrr...Tainted Love....Grrrrr..." and Bernie, the musical virtuoso of the bunch, laughing going, "Um, PASS?" Well, Super Freak of course wins out, but not till they flash Tino hopefully saying, "Video Killed the Radio Star?" and then this loud buzzeresque "EHHHHHHHH!" as if to say "Tino, you are obviously the Old Man Loser of the Yankees with that response."

don't worry tino, that would have been my answer too.

Labels: yanquis