An Evening At The Ball Park

When my neighbor Andy asked me if I was free to go to tonight's Phils/Mets game earlier in the week, I was a bit apprehensive. I thought the season was definitely over after the pitching staff imploded in the final two games against the Reds. However, after watching the Phils take the Mets to the woodshed twice to start their four game series, I figured I'd get behind the Phightin's one last time and told him I'd take the ticket. As I’m sure you can expect, I was not disappointed.

My evening started with a quick trip down the Broad St. Line to the Park. Thereafter, I walked into McFadden's to meet up with Andy and quickly noticed that the “A Team” of Beer Tub Girls was on duty. Apparently, when the Mets come to town, McFaddens brings out the "Big Guns". Since I had some time to kill while my neighbor traversed a sea of traffic, I was happy to have such talented array of scenery to enjoy. The only down side to my stay was that the place was over run by a large contingent of Mets fans who came in two categories, those who look like Turtle from Entourage and those that more resemble Dom, that huge meathead who was run off the show after 3 episodes.

During this time, I also find out that my buddy George is at this game - in the same section no less, which is downright spooky because this is about the 10th baseball or hockey game over the last two years that we both have attended by coincidence. Either George is stalking me and has tapped my credit card account to determine when I will be attending games, or we just go to way too many games. It's probably the latter, but we still got a good laugh out of it.

Finally, Andy gets to McFaddens about 10 mins before first pitch and we grab a beer and rush to our seats. As we get to our 2nd row, right field seats, I start to feel depressed because I realize that I have lost out on the opportunity to rag former Phil, Bobby Abreu for nine innings, but I quickly get over it when I realize that the Mets fans sitting near us at the moment appeared harmless.

Then, I hear Andy say, "Holy Sh*t!" I look to my right and see a dude coming down our row, who is Andy Reid fat with a huge bullseye painted on his belly with "Hit It Here" painted on his chest. I quickly pray that he is not sitting right next to me (which is quite similar to the "please don't let the family of four sit next to me" prayer I go through when boarding a plane.) Thankfully, he climbs over my row and sits behind me. He was the comedic relief for the evening, especially when he broke his seat by doing nothing more than sitting there.

Eventually, a group of Mets fans sitting next to us got into some ribbing with us Phils fans. I have to admit, it wasn't your typical nasty back and forth with these Mets fans. I guess the tension is removed when one team is 13 games up on the other. Things were going fine in my section until one guy made a comment along the lines of "The Phils stink and The Eagles will be even worse without T.O." That didn't go over very well with the locals. Even the Mets fan sitting next to me conceded that bringing up T.O. was a "Low Blow". Things got a little heated, but eventually calmed down.

Wait...there was a game played. Lieber and Glavine were in control most of the night and worked very quickly as the game finished in 2 hours and 3 minutes. I haven't been to a game played that fast since Lefty faced off against Jerry Reuss of the Dodgers in the early 80's. Lieber, quite possibly, pitched his best game as a Phil and led the squad to a 3-0 victory with the help of a 3 for 3 performance by Chris Coste, which included a two run homer.

Clearly, it is not a coincidence that this team is playing better since Bell and Abreu were traded and Burrell's role was minimized to give Delucci and Victorino more playing time. In fact, the team is 10-5 and still within striking distance of the Wild Card leading Reds. I don't want to be greedy, but it would be awfully nice to see the Phils get the sweep, but I can't possibly be lucky enough to catch two wins in two days, can I??? I'm not real confident with Mathieson on the mound tomorrow, but you never know.

By the way, one of the Mets fans told me that there is a 200+ member contingent of the NYFD making the trip down the NJ Turnpike to watch the game. In the understatement of the year, this could make for an interesting BPS to finish the series.