Saturday, July 09, 2011

At-Game Recap: Minotaur Mauls The Mets (July 7, 2011)

Thursday night at the Stadium was wonderful, as SoSG Alex Cora and I arrived eager not only to receive our Andre Ethier Bobbleheads, but also to watch Clayton Kershaw face the Mets. The Mets had already taken the first three games of this series, but Kershaw was dealing, gritting out an eight-inning, 9 K performance that stymied the Mets all night long and gave the Dodgers our ninth shutout of the year.

Having the house that packed was awesome, as it was an electric atmosphere which I've already described in the Post-Game Thread. Not only was the crowd into the game, they were standing and cheering at the right times and cheering for defensive plays which kept the shutout intact. In fact, everyone was so focused on the game that when an errant beachball came our way and I tucked it under our seats, I didn't get one boo of derision from anyone. People were actually transfixed by the game!

But it was difficult getting to our seats in the first place, not only because of the uncommon crowds at the Stadium, but also because of this person, wearing a "Traffic Sorter" vest:

Seriously, I don't know if we happened to have the bad luck of heading up the hill from the Sunset gate just behind three drivers-in-training, but the entrance to the preferred parking area was an absolute logjam, with this and other Traffic Sorters plugging up all traffic just to let cars pull a full u-turn (across incoming traffic) to reverse direction. Surely, there has to be a better way!

Luckily, AC and I made it into the park before the Andre Ethier bobbleheads ran out. Here's Andre, presiding over the warmup throws in the bullpen:

Note that we did not take the Ethier bobblehead out of the box for a picture. Do you know why? Because if you try and hold the bobblehead itself, one could end up like these folks:

That's right Andre Ethier's bobblehead suddenly took a head-first nosedive about as fast as his All-Star Game Final Vote campaign ended...but just like a phoenix (and Andre's All-Star Game candidacy!), the Ethier Bobblehead rose back up quickly and was restored.

Also taking a digger during the game was the scoreboard operator, who got stalled on an at-bat from the Mets' David Murphy and apparently went into carbon-freeze stasis for a couple of at bats, including Juan Uribe's at bat in the second inning (check the ribbon scoreboard behind him):

...as well as James Loney's at bat soon after (at least, I think that's James Loney):

The Dodgers were off and running in the sixth inning with five runs in the frame, which gave SoSG AC time to thoroughly devour his malt:

And seriously, the utility value per dollar of a malt (at $4.50) vs a mini-bucket of Dibs (at $6.50) isn't even close. The malt is larger in volume even before one considers all the empty space between Dibs in the mini-bucket. Malt > Dibs, right?

But why even bother with malts when there's frozen lemonade as well? Just look at the kid in front of us as he salivates over his frozen concoction:

But wait, he's not just salivating. He's actually using his tongue to lick away at the frozen lemonade!

What was the reference that Orel made in last night's GT? There is no spoon.

3 comments:

Kyle Baker said...

AC with the acid wash jeans!

The scoreboard operator was high that night. S/he consistently didn't keep up with the ABs. The asterisk was on the wrong batter at least several times. I figured Frank fired the asterisk person and is relying on summer interns, or his kids.

Steve Sax said...

Two things:

1) If Frank is using one of his kids to work the scoreboard, I'm sure he is earning $250K/year salary as fair compensation for that job.

2) AC also brought his sony walkman and was rocking out to ABC's "The Look of Love" all game.

Pistol Pete Reiser said...

Two things:

1. Malt >>> Dibs, no doubt, not even close. I'd suggest a poll be conducted.

2. Pet Shop Boys >>> ABC. Yeah, I said it. Mentioning a poll here would only get me in trouble.