Posts Tagged ‘Freddy Garcia’

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!

Tonight the Mets head up to Yankee Stadium to take on the Yankees in Game 1 of the Subway Series, and your KHH bloggers will be in attendance. The pitching matchup is more disgusting than usual, featuring R.A. Dickey (who we will be seeing for a shocking 4th time) and Freddy Garcia (who we will be seeing for the second time in 2 Yankee games that we have went t0). Both teams are relatively hot right now with the Mets blanking the Nationals in 2 straight games at home and the Yankees winning 3 straight on the road in Tampa and Baltimore, including a 13 run outburst last night. I expect the high scoring to continue for the Yankees who should destroy the Dick. Freddy Garcia should be fine against a Mets lineup that is mostly on the disabled list and has scored 5 runs in the last 3 games. My prediction is Yankees 7, Mets 4. Coming up on KHH, look for a post comparing each player on the Nets with a similar player on the Mets. It should be fun.

This game featured no surprises at all. The Yankees won easily 3-1 and the game never seemed to be in question. Even though the pitching turned out to be better than I thought it would be, Chris Getz and the Royals offense just was not good enough to compete with the Yankees. First of all, the only run that the Royals scored in the game was a solo homer by former Yankee Melky Cabrera. And he’s barely a Royal. In fact, I consider him more to be a Yankee than a Royal, so the Yankees actually won 4-0. And this was against Freddy Garcia. Imagine how terribly the Royals would do against a real pitcher, like C.C. Sabathia. On the bright side for the Royals, Kyle Davies was better than I thought he would be. He only gave up 3 runs. Tim Collins (I was hoping for Tim Redding) was also solid for Kansas City in relief and the Yankees only had 7 hits in the game. But that was all they needed in an easy victory, with Mariano Rivera picking up the save.

Now on to the jokes from the game:

  • In one of the earlier innings of the game, two Royals got caught stealing. The sequence was hit, caught stealing, hit, caught stealing. Pretty terrible, but not surprising from Kansas City.
  • The Yankee Stadium peanuts were thousands of times better than the Shea peanuts. We got a total of 2 in the whole bag and they did not all taste like salt in a shell. And we did not get sick of them after having two or three. I actually enjoyed almost the whole bag. There was another peanut disaster under our seats.

Before

After

  • In the 7th inning, with David Robertson on the mound and the bases loaded and two outs, Chris Getz refused to strike out. With everyone in the stadium standing because it was an important batter in the game, Chris Getz fouled off 4 David Robertson pitches before finally striking out. Everyone groaned after every foul because everyone hates Chris Getz.

Chris Getz

  • The Budweiser Fan of the Game was a hilarious guy with a mustache. He was on the screen earlier during the French’s Mustard Smile Cam. Unfortunately, the Yankees do not have a 1800flowers.com Kiss Cam. I was disappointed about that, but happy that the guy with the mustache won.
  • Justin Tuck of the New York Giants was at the game tonight. We have also seen him multiple times this year at Nets games. He actually goes a lot. And it’s kind of creepy. My guess is that he is really cheap and doesn’t want to pay for Knicks tickets so he just goes courtside at Nets games for 10 bucks. But then why would he go to a Yankee game instead of a Mets game? Maybe he is following us around? If we see him again, we will keep you updated.

Justin Tuck sitting courtside at a Nets game

  • On the train ride home, Raphi convinced me to take the C train. What a disaster it was. It looked like it was made in 1940 (ok, maybe 1989), but still. It was so old and creepy. And it took me like 15 or 20 minutes to walk home from the Museum of Natural History train station. I am definitely never doing that again.

The 1940's C Train. Yes, it actually looked like this.

  • By going to one Yankee game, we have seen as many wins by the home team as we have by going to 6 Mets games. That is pretty sad. The Mets are awful. And Ike Davis crashed into David Wright on an infield popup tonight. The video will be posted here on KHH as soon as someone puts it on youtube.
  • Some other pictures from the game:

Our Moved-Up Seats

A Rod

Jeter and Cano

Rivera

Raphi and I will journey on the 2 and 4 trains tonight for the first time as we make our first trip of the year to Yankee Stadium. The Yankees will be taking on the Royals and this is one reason why we will be attending. Another reason is the pitching matchup: Kyle Davies vs. Freddy Garcia. I am excited. Two terrible pitchers battling it out in the easiest park to hit a home run in the majors. If you think that Garcia isn’t that bad, well his ERA hasn’t been under 4 since 2005. He is frankly not very good. On the other hand, Davies currently is 1-4 with an ERA over 7. Expect many long balls tonight from both sides, but especially the Yankees. My prediction is Yankees 8, Kansas City 5.

Yankee Stadium