First of all, congratulations are in order. It’s been a GREAT year and, to no surprise of anyone here, we have made the playoffs once again!
MLB, with their never-ending wisdom and marketing genius, has once again altered the playoff format to everyone’s benefit.
This year, instead of a play-in game to get
to the Post Season we have the first In-Season Post Season. The ISPS is a round
robin tournament that pits the top four teams in the AL East against each other
in a death struggle to get to the play in game that gets the winner into the
first round of the playoffs.
The Yankees will play nine games, needing to win only seven
of them to advance. Get your popcorn ready. This is as close to what we old
people used to call Real Playoff Action!
So, let’s talk about getting the most out of our ISPS experience
3 Games in Boston!
Tomorrow night the Yankees will be in Fenway, the site of the Bucky Dent Home Run.
For you kids out there it was a one game playoff back
when there were no playoffs to get to the playoffs to get to the playoffs.
But this blog post is not about just about watching them play in Fenway, where
nothing ever goes wrong, and every lead is safe. This is about having fun!
Boston Tips
1) Find A Comfortable Place To Sit
Games against the Red Sox can last as long as a cricket match between India and Pakistan and contain the same amount of good vibes. You might as well be comfortable.
Think of it like this, you are flying from LA to Melbourne Australia. Do you want to sit in coach in-between two fat guys with Covid or do you want to sit in first class next to a hot chick with chlamydial? Sure it's not going to go well in the end but...
2) Pace Yourself
If you are going to drink alcohol, pacing yourself is VERY important. Don’t drink pre-game. By the time you reach the later innings you will be blackout drunk.
Actually, being blackout drunk for Chapman’s meltdown
in the 9th is not that bad an idea.
I’ll leave it up to you.
That said, it might be best to tie your
consumption to on-field events.
Passed ball? Drink!
Gleyber throws late to first? Drink!
DJ doesn’t move a guy up? Drink Twice! Once for the failure and once for the sadness of dealing with DJ’s decline.
He was "The Machine" damnit! Now, every time he comes to bat, I feel like I used to on cold February mornings in Brockport NY (Where the only thing in between the winds of Canada, made even more frigid by Lake Ontario, and Rochester, was my face.) and I’d sit in my Plymouth Fury and beg, “Please start. Please start. Please start.”
You’ll be drunk by the third inning.
And finally…
3) Buy a TV
Usually there are specials on electronics around the Super Bowl
for viewing parties but that’s not what I’m talking about. Chances are you have a nice big screen 4K or
5K TV already. I’m suggesting you go to Target and pick up a couple of 45
inchers for around 200 bucks each.
These are for destroying in the late innings.
Boone takes out Holmes after a 7-pitch inning to put in
Heaney? You take out a TV.
Greene give up a two-run bomb with two outs and two strikes
on Rafael Devers. You bomb a TV.
There is something very satisfying and dare I say Elviserating about this act.
---
I’d write about having fun watching the ISPS against the
Blue Jays but we’re not getting out of Fenway so what’s the point?
Enjoy!
Doug...consider yourself lucky owning a Plymouth Fury. Back in those times in very cold upstate CT all of my cars were different models of Volkswagens-Beetles, Squarebacks, Karman Ghias, Busses and so on. While they all looked different, all had 2 common features: the floor rusted out, and worse, the heater boxes often got tied into the exhaust pipe due to the car's configuration and rust holes. So in the frigid winter it was either freeze to death or slowly die of asphyxiation from carbon monoxide. It was frequently a tough choice to make.
ReplyDeleteBrilliant, Doug K.! I will follow your instructions to the letter. Save for the whole not being blackout drunk thing.
ReplyDeleteOn the Plymouth Fury thing....you should feel good because you were young then.
ReplyDeleteWhen you were in your twenties, I was still hitching up our wagon to the clydesdale.
Or so it seems.
Great piece. Especially the council about consuming alcohol.
I hate to be down and out before Chappy is.
Dick Allen--I have 106 runs starting August 28. I think that was the start of the challenge, but correct me if I'm wrong.
ReplyDeleteIt was right when we started our Serious Sucking tour. Apologies to David Bowie.
JM...I believe it was wins starting at some point in late July. But only a few responded so I believe it reverted back to total wins that many submitted at the end of Spring Training.
DeleteDick, if I assumed incorrectly, let me know.
Doug, those are wise and hysterical instructions that I will follow to the letter. People upstate are more likely to have a gun, so shooting a TV gives you that real Elvis feel. (As opposed to that Barton Fink feel.)
ReplyDeleteThose bygone upstate windows were brutal. At -20F, motor oil turns to sludge and starting the car was impossible. Fred Astaire was filming a nighttime outdoor scene for Ghost Story about five blocks away and there was no way I was going to stand outside to watch. Too fucking cold. Poor Fred, old and thin as always, must've caught pneumonia.
All,
ReplyDeleteThanks. My car was actually a used Plymouth Grande Coupe which was just a Plymouth Fury with a paisley roof. (It was the 70's!!!!)
The car actually saved my life when I accidentally drove into three parked cars, a tree, and a dentist's office. Came to upside-down and hanging from my seat belt.
They don't make them like that anymore.
Doug K.
What was your blood alcohol level during that event, Doug.
Delete..approximately?
Speaking of alcohol....was a meet up date announced or has the Co-vid plague scared too many off?
ReplyDeleteCarl,
ReplyDeleteNot that bad but if I had to put a number on it, it would be 714 (Wink)
Doug K.
ReplyDeleteJM, you are absolutely correct - August 28
And Carl, there were several attempts at total wins, but to make things square, I made an executive decision (I believe you were drowning in a vat of Costco liquor and not readily available at the time) and asked everyone to submit a “final answer” to the total win.
In the event of a tie, the grand total of runs scored by our flaccid home team for the final 33(?) games, being carefully administered by JM, will decide who Carl buys the prize for. (Unless, of course Boooone decides to totally screw me and start Sevy twice before we all retire to play golf with Aaron Hicks for the winter. (I imagine his golf game is in mid-season form)
The worst guess of the year will be required to wear the banana boat 617 Sux jersey to next year’s F2F.
PS: the idea of a zoom meetup was met with the kind of dead silence usually reserved for the Yankees late-inning offense
ReplyDeleteYeah, alcohol and zoom don't mix much like driving and booze. Some scary things might be viewed.
ReplyDeleteStill, a get-together at a Manhattan bar not far from GCT or Penn Station would be nice if enough people are up for that.
I can still try to pull a zoom thing together. It would be really easy, in fact, if I knew which game you all wanted to do.
ReplyDeleteBitty, just pick one!
ReplyDelete714s were a cheap thrill. Like anything good, they got pulled because they were popular. Of course they were so good, injuries frequently occurred. Glad you were wearing a seatbelt.
ReplyDeleteI'll go in drag before I'll wear sux gear.
ReplyDeleteThe Yankees have barely played .500 ball recently against bad teams. They didn't exactly annihilate Texas, the worst of the worst. Baltimore went toe to toe with them. Cleveland kicked their asses. Against serious contenders in the final heat of the season, this sorry crew is going to be pounded into dust, and quickly.
ReplyDeleteRufus, I might take you up on that
ReplyDeleteYou know, sometimes I don't think we sufficiently appreciate the Minnesota Twins around here. Our little buddies from the Midwest kicked Toronto's butt tonight, behind—wait for it—Michael Pineda. Yes, THAT Michael Pineda, still alive and kicking, apparently!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Twins. Thank you for being you.
Black out drunk for the 9th. Let's make memories we don't remember!
ReplyDelete