On this page, you will find a list of all the events that the KHH bloggers have gone to and written recaps for. To give our readers a sample, there is a short quote from each recap.
After we saw R.A. Dickey lose at home to the Rockies, Astros, and Giants, he was able to win on the road at Yankee Stadium. Do you get what I mean by unpredictable?
The Angels had two errors tonight, and they were both on Jason Bay ground balls in the infield. In fact, they were both overthrows of first base that went into the crowd.
Today, the Mets will host the Pirates at Citi Field for a 4th straight game. This will be our first day game since seeing the Mets-Rockies double header in April and this Mets-Pirates day game is sure to be a joke. The pitching matchup features Mike Pelfrey for the Mets and Paul Maholm for Pittsburgh. The last time we saw Pelfrey, he pitched great against the Phillies, but the Mets bullpen was not able to hold the lead, which has become very typical in recent games. Pelfrey is going up against Maholm who is only 2-7, but has a shocking 3.18 ERA. He is a classic Pirate. The Pirates have only scored more than 3 runs twice in his 11 starts, so he has gotten very unlucky this year. I kind of feel bad for him because he has pitched well. After seeing Terry Collins’s rant after last night’s game, I expect the Mets to come out today with more of an effort. Because of this, I think they will get the win, 3-1.
As Raphi put it, this was our first baseball surprise of the year and it was not predictable at all. The Mets won 2-1 in the Bronx to improve to a somewhat respectable 3-5 when we have attended their games and more importantly for them, 22-22 on the year. That is surprising enough. The Yankees fell to 1-1 in front of the KHH bloggers and 23-20 overall. After we saw R.A. Dickey lose at home to the Rockies, Astros, and Giants, he was able to win on the road at Yankee Stadium. Do you get what I mean by unpredictable? Freddy Garcia pitched well, but still got hit with the loss. There were plenty more surprises from this game but I will start from the beginning.
The first surprise of the night was that Raphi was less than 20 minutes late. This gave us enough time to go buy pizza before arriving at the Stadium. I had 2 slices and Raphi had 0, probably a very wise choice. As we were walking to the Stadium, we passed someone selling bags of peanuts on the street. There was one that was salted for $3 and one that was unsalted for $2. The cheaper one was also the much bigger one, so we thought, why not? and bought the unsalted peanuts and took them into the stadium with us. I don’t like to start eating them until at least the end of the first inning, especially because I had just eaten 2 slices of pizza, but we started eating them at 7:25, just as the 2nd inning was beginning. Before long, we had realized what we had just gotten ourselves into. This bag was ginormous, much bigger than any other peanut bag that we had had prior (and some of those were too big to handle). By the time we were a third of the way done, I was already completely sick of them and wanted to throw the rest away, but I could not disrespect the peanuts like that. We had to finish them. During the 7th inning stretch, I looked down at the peanuts and thought that I was finally almost done. The problem was that I felt that way until the top of the 9th inning when we finally finished them. We had been eating them nonstop and we only finished them at 9:45. We had been constantly eating them the whole game and it took us almost two and a half hours to finish them. Raphi deserves a lot of credit for finishing the peanuts, but I deserve to be in the Hall of Fame of peanut eaters for my performance tonight. Here are some pictures to give you an idea of how many peanuts we ate:
Full Bag of Peanuts
Empty Bag of Peanuts
Ripped Peanuts
What a Catastrophe
So Gross
Even though we ate all those peanuts, there was still more food that we ate. As I mentioned before, I ate 2 slices of pizza before the game. Raphi also bought a hot dog midway through the game to get the peanut taste out of his mouth. He should enter a Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating contest. He can compete against Mark Sanchez (it was against the Raiders, by the way).
Also from Mark Sanchez (we need some football in this blog):
Once the game started and I had already eaten many of the peanuts, my mouth longed for something other than the peanuty badness. I decided to go search for a drink. The first drink I saw that didn’t have a huge line and wasn’t water was a lemonade stand. I didn’t really want this, but I had no other options. And it looked bad too. It looked like they just put a lemon in a cup of water. But I was very wrong. It was delicious; maybe the best lemonade I had ever drank. It was so good that Raphi also got one later. Here’s a picture of our almost finished lemonades:
Delicious Lemonades
We have calculated that we must have eaten about 3,500 calories combined tonight. That is 1,750 each, almost the amount that you are supposed to have for a day in 4 hours. When I got home I looked at my stomach in the mirror and it looked bigger than it was before, I’m not lying. And I feel like I have to throw up. Enough about food; on to the game.
The Mets lineup was pretty gross tonight. The 5-9 hitters were Fernando Martinez (also the DH, what a joke), Justin Turner, Josh Thole, Jason Pridie, and Ruben Tejada. How that team beats the Yankees, I have no idea. Justin Turner had a bunt single in his first at-bat and had 3 hits in the game. He also broke a Mets record for the most consecutive games with an RBI for a rookie with 6. Wow, Justin Turner now holds a Mets record. Another surprise was that the only run the Yankees scored the whole game came on a Mark Teixeira first row home run in the third inning. Their offense was pretty disgusting to say the least. Yet another surprise: the Mets bullpen was shockingly good. If you remember my article from a few days ago, Mike O’Connor pitched a great 7th inning and Izzy and K-Rod shut the door for the Yankees. However, Joba and David Robertson pitched well out of the Yankees’ pen.
After attending this game, I feel the need to rant at Mets fans. First, I want to take you back to a few days ago on Wednesday. There must have been less than 1,000 people at Shea to watch the Mets take on the Nationals, and the fans that were there were very unspirited. There was not much cheering. Heck, I was able to distract Gorzy to make a terrible pick off throw. Now fast forward to today. There were probably at least 10,000 Mets fans at Yankee Stadium. And most of them didn’t honestly care about the Mets. They just want the Yankees to lose. They want to prove to all the Yankees fans that their team is bad because they lost to the lowly Mets. They don’t even think that their own team is good. They only want to annoy Yankees fans. They know that their team has no chance at the playoffs, so they might as well try to ruin the Yankees’ chance. That is all. Now it’s time for a few more pictures:
Random Fernando Martinez Stat
Yankees
The Field
Our Seats
K-Rod
In other baseball news, after the Nationals were blanked 2 nights in a row against the Mets, they scored 17 tonight against the Orioles. Typical. Blue Jays pitcher Jo-Jo Reyes pitched 7 innings and had a 2-0 lead, but the bullpen could not hang on and the Blue Jays still lost. Of note is that Jo-Jo Reyes has not gotten a win in 26 straight starts. That’s 26. Reyes is 5-18 for his career in 45 starts and his last win came on June 13, 2008 against you guessed it, the Mets (just kidding, the Angels, but I wish it was the Mets). Did you think that Jason Giambi’s power streak was just good for one game? Well it wasn’t. The Giambino went yard again tonight in Milwaukee. Keep it going big fella!
Last night, Jason Giambi entered the game against the Phillies with 3 hits on the year, 1 home run, and a .115 batting average (approaching the Hu). To make it worse, his last hit came against the Pirates on April 10th. However, he was not concerned with his terrible numbers last night as he hit a home run in each of his first 3 at-bats. He had 7 RBIs in the game and the Rockies won 7-1. When we saw him play against the Mets he was terrible and disgusting, and he still is, but he just randomly hit 3 home runs last night. He should have done that against the Mets instead. I hope to see the Giambino continue this homer-hitting trend.
The Giambino at Shea Against the Mets
The Giambino last night in his home run trot. This is disgusting.
For the first time since last Wednesday, tomorrow the Mets will play a singleheader. That’s pretty amazing when you think about it. Hopefully for the Mets, the singleheader will bring them more luck than doubleheaders have. Since Thursday, they have lost 4 straight games, all coming in 2 doubleheaders. Teams rarely get swept in doubleheaders, and the Mets have had it done to them twice in three days. I bet that has never been done in baseball history. If someone wants to look it up and post it in comments, that would be cool. I am too lazy. Anyway, they only had 2 hits in the second game today and they looked pretty bored and uncaring. Even though we are still in April, the Mets seem to have already given up. This is part of the difference between the Mets and Nets. The Nets tried in every game I could remember this year while the Mets have given up in the first month of the season. The Nets also have much more likable players. The Mets’ players are just washed up all-stars and random no-names. Plus, the Rock beats Shea any day. On Tuesday, the Mets will return to Shea to take on the Astros and I plan on embarking on a 7 train journey to at least one of the games.
I am exhausted. What a day. After leaving seminar at lunch, Raphi and I embarked on a 7 train journey to Queens to see the Mets take on the Rockies. Twice. Our first baseball game(s) of the season tested our patience and stamina. We saw home runs, errors, and everything in between. I will start at the beginning. (Note: All pictures and videos were taken by us; they are not from the internet).
We arrive at the game and I have already cheated the Mets out of their money before I have stepped inside Citi Field (from now on, we will refer to Citi field as either Shea or Shitty Field. I prefer Shea because it is what I am used to, but Raphi may decide otherwise). Like I do to Nets games, I brought fake tickets, payed for 10 buck upper deck seats, and sat in the third row behind the Rockies dugout. First I will talk about the plot of each game.
We arrived in the 4th inning of the first game and the score was 2-0 Mets. I assume that they got a few lucky runs and the game was probably boring until this point. In the 5th inning, Colorado finally got on the board by scoring 1 run and in the 6th inning, Jose Morales (ew) had a 2 RBI double to give the Rockies the lead. The Giambino also made his presence felt, scoring a run.
The Giambino
In the 7th, CarGo and Tulo hit back to back home runs and it looked like the game was over. Fans were bored and nobody thought that the Mets would come back against Huston Street. But everyone was wrong. Before Street came in, in the 8th, Jose Reyes hit a home run over the right field fence. In the 9th, Scott Hairston, who is the Stephen Graham of the Mets (however, I think there is more than one Stephen Graham on the Mets) hit a 2-run shot over the left field fence to make it a 1 run game.
Mets Home Run Apple
After some questionable pinch running decisions by Terry Collins, the Mets still have a chance in the game. With the bases loaded in the bottom of the 9th and 2 outs on a 3-2 pitch down by 1 run, David Wright was up at the plate. See what happened next below:
It was a heartbreaking loss for the Mets and Mets fans, but people soon forgot about it as the second game was starting. After both teams went back into their locker rooms and changed their uniforms (the Mets went from cream and pinstripes to white and the Rockies went from purple to gray), the teams were ready to return to the field for a second game. The Mets started off the game nicely with a 2nd inning 2-run double by Mike Nickeas (who??) but Colorado soon answered by scoring 2 quick runs in the 3rd. The Mets added 2 more in the 4th and had a lead, but things were about to go horribly wrong. The 6th inning started off for the Rockies with a homer by Tulo and finished with a 3 run homer by Jonathan Herrera (really Mets?). Colorado scored 6 runs total in the inning. Of note, Brad Emaus made a terrible play on a double play ball hit by the Rockies’ pitcher that would have ended the inning, but instead let it continue. The Rockies added 1 more run in the 9th and won easily 9-4. By the end of the game, everyone was sick of baseball and desperately wanted to go home. Not that the games were so heavily attended anyway, but by the end of the second game there were probably not more that 1,000 people at Shea. The Mets are now 4-9.
Brad Emaus
Next, I will talk the pitching in the games. The matchup in the first game was between R.A. Dickey and Greg Reynolds. A pretty disgusting pitching matchup. When we arrived at Shea, R.A. had not given up a run, but by the end of his day he had given up 5. A pretty disgusting performance to say the least. He blew the lead for the Mets and they suffered because of it. Greg Reynolds on the other hand pitched the minimum 5 innings to get the win. He was not very good, but I guess he was good enough. The bullpen for the Mets featured surprise scoreless innings by Ryota Igarashi (from now on will be referred to as either Iggy or Toyota) and Tim Byrdak (who?). Huston Street was close to blowing the save for Colorado, but Matt Lindstrom, former Marlins great, was able to save Street as well as the game.
The Dick
In the second game, the pitching matchup pitted Chris Capuano (Cappuccino or just Coffee, if you like) against Jorge de la Rosa (hip hip Jorge). Neither pitcher was very special. De la Rosa gave up 4 runs and Cappuccino gave up 7. Special shoutout to Iggy who pitched in both games, giving up 0 total runs. The Rockies bullpen was good as it did not give up a run.
Hip Hip Jorge
For Met fans, this was a terrible day. Just think about it. You had to either skip school or work to see your horrible team get swept in a doubleheader. If you came at the beginning and stayed until the end, you were at Shitty Field for over 7 1/2 hours. It became unbearable and I’m not sure it is something that I would ever want to experience again. Luckily for me, I was rooting for the Rockies to win both games; however, if we go to more Met games I plan on eventually rooting for the Mets.
Now on to some of the more hilarious jokes from the game, in order of occurrence:
The Rockies have two Morales’s on their team, Franklin and Jose. We saw both of them today and they are both pretty disgusting. I don’t know which one is worse. They also have two Reynolds’s. Greg started the first game and Matt was a reliever in the second.
The play of the day goes to a combo of Jason Giambi, Franklin Morales, and Willie Harris. Harris hit a hard ball to Giambi who clumsily bobbled it. The pitcher, Morales, went over to cover the base and Giambi threw the ball to him. As he was catching the ball and stepping on the base, his shoe fell off and the runner was called safe, even though it looked like he should have been out. Rockies manager Jim Tracy went out to argue the call, but failed. Tracy then took out Morales who left the game with an apparent injury because his shoe fell off. During the next batter’s at bat, Willie Harris was promptly caught stealing. This was a play for the ages.
R.A. Dickey was terrible. We brought bad luck to The Dick and he gave up 5 runs in only 2 and a third innings while we were in attendance.
A noteworthy moment came in the first game when CarGo and Tulo hit back-to-back bombs. This 3-4 combo is why the Rockies should be a powerful team for years to come.
Also in the first game, I caught a Mets T-Shirt launch shirt (even though Raphi may say that he caught it, it was definitely mostly me). The shirt was nicer than I thought it would be knowing the Mets and the Wilpons. It is orange with Mets script on the front and seems to be made from fairly nice material. I had my hopes up after I saw this, but of course there is an advertisement for Pepsi Max (which is disgusting, by the way) on the back. You just can’t expect the Mets to give you an ad free t-shirt. The funniest part about this shirt was that it was tied with a balloon. Though it is debatable that a balloon may be nicer than Johan Petro’s wrapping tape, a balloon is still a ridiculous way to tie a shirt. Why not just use normal tape??? The balloon was surprisingly hard to take off and it took us a few minutes to get it.
One of the almost-disaster plays of the first game was a hesitation by one of the Mets relievers (I can’t remember which one) to throw Hip Hip Jorge out at first on a sacrifice bunt. The pitcher thought about throwing down to third base to get a runner going there and it nearly cost him. However, de la Rosa was called out and a disaster was avoided.
I had a surprising 3 psychic moments in this game (they are all true, you can ask Raphi). The first came in the 8th inning of the first game. At the beginning of the game, I told Raphi that whenever I go to Mets games, Jose Reyes always hits home runs, which are usually pretty rare for him. I did not call a home run from him until the 8th inning when the Mets were doing nothing offensively. I called a Jose Reyes homer to right, and it happened. Psychic. My second psychic moment came in the 6th inning of the second game. Before the inning started, the Rockies were down by 2. I called that it would be a (and I quote) “big inning” for the Rockies. Tulo started off the inning hitting a home run and the Rockies scored 6 runs total in the inning. Psychic. Later in the inning with 2 outs, 2 runners on, and Jonathan Herrera at the plate, Herrera hit a ball just foul down the first base line that would have been caught by Ike Davis and ended the inning. I predicted a homer on the next pitch and it happened. Psychic. All of this is true. Ask Raphi.
Psychic
The last hilarious moment from the first game was when I bought a Shea Stadium pretzel. It costed $6.50 so I thought that it would be good. I will now describe it. It came wrapped in tin foil and not shaped like a normal pretzel. It was more shaped like a challah (for all you Jews out there). The tin foil was covered in mustard and it was difficult to open without getting mustard on your hands. The pretzel itself was damp and slimy and felt as if it had been in the tin foil for days. When I picked it up out of the tin foil, there was still some tin foil left on the bottom of it that I again had to pick off. I did not want to touch the pretzel, so I had to hold it with a napkin. The napkin then attached itself to the pretzel and the pretzel became fuzzy and disgusting. I don’t think you want to hear any more descriptions.
Now, on to the second game. In the second inning, Scott Hairston hit a shot off the wall in left field that needed to be reviewed as to whether or not it was a home run. One of the umpires of the game was Jim Joyce, the umpire who blew the famous Armando Gallaraga perfect game call, and all the fans booed him when he decided that it was not a home run.
A noteworthy moment from the second game happened when Mike Nickeas and Brad Emaus were on base at the same time. I do not need to say any more.
Emaus is a shithead. This is from Raphi and I do not need to say any more.
One of the funnier plays of the games came when Scott Hairston hit a pop-up in the infield that fell and Hairston ended up at second base. Did you learn anything at Spring Training guys? Call for the ball!
Matt Reynolds, a leftly specialist for Colorado, had his first career at-bat in the game according to yahoo, and promptly struck out. The Rockies were ahead by too many runs that they didn’t think they needed to pinch hit for him and they were right.
Toward the end of the game, only Jews were left in the crowd. Really. Probably about 80% Jews. And they were so annoying as most religious Jews are. And they were all kids. They don’t have any parents. And they were calling each other Jewish names like Chaim and Shmuel. And they were sitting in the first row and annoying the security guard. Yes, I appreciate your concern (and I don’t care) and I know that I am an anti-semite. Go talk about it in seminar.
I have discovered that we were at Shitty Field from 1:15 until 7:30. That is 6 hours and 15 minutes. That is a whole lot of shitiness. This is not an experience that I would want to repeat.
To cap off the day, at the end of the game, I was standing behind the Rockies dugout as players were leaving. One of the players gave me a ball. It is not my first ball at a baseball game, but I will still cherish it forever (awww).
Now that the NJ Nets’ season has ended, the KHH trio will change its focus to the New York Mets. We are switching from one terrible team to another. Some might ask: why do we put ourselves through this torture?
Because the games are cheap and we don’t have to bankrupt our parents in order to go to them.
Besides, it’s not really torture. I think it’s really fun to support bad professional teams. I can’t really articulate why.
Perhaps I enjoy watching bad pro teams because I have a sarcastic sense of humor and I can feast on experiencing failure. Obviously, failure is much more enjoyable when it doesn’t matter – at all. Relatively, the Nets and Mets don’t matter. They serve as an escape from other aspects of life.
So I hereby invite you to escape into the recess of absolute failure that is NY Mets fandom. Their season has already begun and we’ve already missed out on a ton of hilarious happenings. Tomorrow, they will play in a double header against the Colorado Rockies. A double header of awfulness. Jonah and I will be there for one half of it. We will post a recap and other thoughts on the game tomorrow.
It is now 3:30 A.M. My sleep schedule is completely screwed over because I pulled an all-nighter at my school’s sleepover. I actually have school tomorrow so I would be best suited to not pull another all-nighter tonight. If I don’t go to sleep though, you can rely on me to post a Mets – Rockies preview.
Tonight’s sleepover at Heschel has featured zero surprises. Long, forced sitting sessions in the Beit Midrash. Grade bonding activities in the Gym. Basketball. Nintendo 64. Couldn’t you see this all coming?
My KHH colleagues are no-shows at the sleepover event. They are not missing out on anything unexpected. In fact, I would venture to say that perhaps they made a smart decision to skip the sleepover. Yet, going to a Mets – Rockies game just to find out that the game has been rained out: sucks.
I apologize about this post because it is way too negative. Maybe even more negative than some of my worst Nets posts. However, I promise (to myself) to be somewhat optimistic in all my posts. So get ready for a hopeful paragraph.
This evening’s catastrophes may be a sign of good things to come. The Mets – Rockies game was rained out. The result: there is a Mets – Rockies doubleheader on Thursday that Jonah and I can go to. Tomorrow there is no school because they are giving us a day off to rest after the sleepover: The result: Sam and I can go together to the Rangers – Capitals game in Washington. If this works out, it will likely be a ton of fun. Tuesday night hasn’t been great, but Wednesday and Thursday night? Euphoria.
The Mets-Rockies game that was supposed to be played tonight has been rained out and rescheduled as a double-header for Thursday. Unfortunately for me, I bought good tickets for this game and planned on going. I took the 7 train to the game and arrived at 7:05 when it was drizzling. Just as I was arriving to my seats, the announcement was made that the game was rained out and I had to go back home. The train back to Manhattan then got delayed and I had to switch trains and it was just a mess. 3 hours of wasted time right there. At least I wasn’t at the Newark train station.
On an unrelated note, I’m watching the Knicks game right now and Carmelo Anthony just got called for a questionable offensive foul and then started smiling. Why does he always smile when he dislikes the call??? I just noticed that he always does this. Stop smiling. You are annoying and you look like a girl. Please go away.
Kim Had Humps 