Tuesday, June 06, 2006

A New Perspective on How Big this Rivalry is...

The person I was going to go to last night's game with backed out. I then called Grillo to see if he could go. He couldn't. Then I got a phone call from one of my old assistants and she was in town from Florida. She was wondering if I'd be around in the afternoon. I said yes, and asked her if she wanted to go to the Yankee game.

She said she couldn't she had already made plans to go out to dinner with a friend. Fine. As I'm trying to figure out who to ask next, I get a call back from her, and she says "I didn't realize it was Yankees-Red Sox, so if I can, I would love to go."

Nothing may seem weird about this yet, as it seemed perfectly normal to me. So she leaves her friend voice mail we hang out in the city before heading to the Bronx. As we get there, I'm telling my story about when I was arrested at Yankee Stadium. I told her that after the police let me out, I was able to get into the game in the 5th inning, to which she responded, "Out of how many innings, 6?"

This was one of the most shocking moments of my life. Flabergasted. Beyond words at this moment.

Once I get over the initial shock (but still with some lingering shock), we're in the Stadium and I make sure to tell her "remember, it's called runs, not points." Fortunately she did remember this throughout the game, because there are few things in life that drive me closer to insanity than that. I think that was easy as she actually played softball in high school (I think their games are only 6 innings).

I didn't think it was going to be possible to have a comment or question close to being as crazy and insane as that one. I was wrong.

The Yankees scored one run in the first, and seven runs in the second inning. She looks at the scoreboard and says "So the Yankees already have 17 runs?"

I then had to show her that these are numbers that are added together, otherwise if the game got into the 10th inning, the Yankees would top the 1 billion run mark for the game.

However, looking at these events from a different perspective had me taking an interesting point away from this experience. How big has this rivalry gotten, that somebody who knows this little about baseball, the knowledge of a 3-year old, to cancel their dinner plans and get excited about going to the ballpark because they still knew that when it's Yankees-Red Sox, it's something to get excited about.

3 comments:

Greg said...

Ugh - these are the kinds of bimbos that show up at every Red Sox game, only the ones at Fenway are double-fisting beers, cat-calling Varitek, and generally not paying any attention to the game whatsoever. So, you know, I hope the rest of your night went well.

And I agree on the runs vs. points thing - it's maddening.

Ross said...

Believe it or not, she was paying attention and was well-behaved.

Greg said...

Sorry about that - I think the word "bimbo" was a bit too harsh. I didn't mean to imply that she was a bimbo, just that there were a lot of bimbos at your average Red Sox game. Plus, I just like the word bimbo. Bimbo.