Game 1: Yankee Stadium, New York City, NY
Baltimore Orioles vs New York Yankees – Saturday, April 13, 2013
Five big flies? A run cut down at the plate?? Cervelli manning second??? Cano playing short???? Someone we hadn’t seen in years joining us for the game today????? Wow! We witnessed a lot of cool stuff today but first things first.
After a three-hour bus trip from Augusta to Boston and then a four-hour train ride we arrived in New York City yesterday afternoon around 4:30. After checking in at the hotel, we headed out for a night on the town. Following obligatory visits to Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum, The Hard Rock Cafe, and Ripley’s Believe It or Not, however, we were pretty much wiped out and retired for the night. This morning, we spent three exquisite hours at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and made it to Yankee Stadium about half an hour before game time.
At the stadium, we were met by Doug Otte ’01, a former member of the Team Thamattoor Lab. The meeting, although pre-arranged, was initiated by chance. As it turned out, a friend of ours who was originally supposed to go with us to NYC could not make the trip and we had an extra ticket to the game. Coincidentally, just before we left Waterville, we got an email out of the blue from Doug (who was probably in a witness protection program somewhere all these years) just checking in to see how things were going. To make a long story short, we talked Doug into coming over from Jersey City and joining us for the game. He obliged and after nearly six years, we got to see him in front of Yankee Stadium!
Soon after we got into the stadium, we went up to the Yankees Museum for a quick look around. After snapping a few pictures we went down to our seats in the left field bleachers. The view was fantastic. The sun was playing hide-and-seek all afternoon, but it was a beautiful day.
The wind tunnel that is the right side of the new Yankee Stadium was quite active today. Four of the five homers we saw were launched in that direction. Only Vernon Wells got one over the left field, late in the game. We also got to see a spectacular play in which Ichiro Suzuki fired a relay to Robinson Cano, who then cut down Nate McClouth at the plate. After all these years, Ichiro still has a bazooka for an arm.
There was another interesting twist late in the game. The Yankees were down by two, but they had men on first and second. They chose to send Brennan Boesch to pinch hit for shortstop Jayson Nix, but he struck out promptly. In the top of the ninth, with Nix out, there was Robinson Cano playing shortstop for the first time in his professional career! Catcher Francisco Cervelli was moved to second, which was a “second” for him in his career! Weird!
After the game, we went back to Penn Station with Doug to get back on the road again.
Bye for now. See you in the next town!
