Brooklyn, Baseball, and Bumper Cars

I decided not to stay home and brood on the day that my job was closed due to budget cuts. Instead, I took my nephews (Elder Satan, 14; and Satanski, 5) to Brooklyn. I can count on one hand the number of times that I’ve been to Brooklyn, but that’s more due to a lack of any specific reason to go, than to an opposition to the borough. The primary reason for our trip was to see the Brooklyn Cyclones, the Mets’ Short-Season Class A affiliate. I really enjoyed the minor league games I went to when I was going to school in Virginia (Single A Lynchburg Hillcats and Triple A Norfolk Tides), and thought that it would be a fun trip to see with the boys. I didn’t want the first baseball game I took them to to be a MLB game, especially since those tickets cost a lot, and I wasn’t sure if the kids were willing to stay for an entire game.

We arrived in Coney Island about two hours before we needed to get to the stadium, so we grabbed something to eat and then went to an arcade and played air hockey, skee ball, and that basketball game where you see how many baskets you can get in 30 seconds. Elder Satan and I had hoped to compete against each other, but the balls took forever to come back, and we agreed that it would be a waste of time to count the few baskets we were able to get before the time ran out. We did better competing at skee ball and air hockey, and I’m not mentioning them just because I won.

We played bumper cars, too, and it cracked the boys up to see me driving anything. I am awesome at bumper cars, though, and with Satanski by my side, managed to crash into Elder Satan a lot, while avoiding most of the weird strangers who kept trying to ram us. It was harder to find things for Satanski to do, since we learned the hard way that he didn’t have the height for the basketball game or the coordination for skee ball (his balls had the disturbing tendency to end up one or two lanes over from where they’d started). He had a great time on the motorcycle video game, although his brother had to help him steer, and on Dance Dance Revolution, where a helpful little kid stepped on whatever food pad caught his fancy, sometimes even making the correct combination. Although we were excited about seeing the Cyclones, we were all a little sad to leave the arcade when it was time to head over to the stadium.

We shouldn’t have been, because we had a great time at the game. One thing that I love about minor league stadiums (I know, I know: technically, stadia is more correct, but hardly anybody uses that word anymore) is that they try to get and keep your attention in a way that major league ballparks do not. As we walked to the game of MCU Park, people in Carvel shirts gave Carvel Flying Saucers to anybody who cared for one (Satanski declared that he was frightened of these, and did not take one), and after we had our tickets scanned, stadium employees handed out CUNY duffel bags to the first 2,500 fans, so we got some of those, too. It was Thomas the Tank Night last night, so kids who wore Thomas clothing got to take the field (I didn’t dress Satanski in anything related to Thomas, but he did enjoy the Thomas songs and trivia throughout the night). Did you know that Thomas & Co. are 65 years old? I didn’t either.

Satanski made friends with a similarly-aged boy in the row behind us, and they laughed for five innings straight at the beverage vendor in our section, whose call was, “Beer and a bottle of water!” He did have a thick accent (like New Yorkers often sound on tv and not as much in real life), and for some reason the boys just died every time he said that. I didn’t get it, and the joke did grow old with repetition. I didn’t mind it so much when that kid and his family left after the fifth.

Satanski was more into the game than I’d dared to hope he would be, and he got really excited when the Cyclones scored on a two-run double. “Touchdown,” he yelled. It was pretty cute. Even after I explained that there were no touchdowns in baseball (“or cheerleaders, either,” he added), he yelled the same thing the next time the Cyclones scored. Another thing that he enjoyed was when three people dressed as Ketchup, Mustard, and Relish had a race along the left field line. Satanski and I do not like mustard and relish, so we rooted for Ketchup, but he was vanquished the gooey, oddly-textured Relish. I listened to him talking on the phone with his dad, trying to explain how we booed Mustard and Relish, and took the line to explain to my very confused brother that his son and I had not randomly jeered condiments.

My older nephew, who is not as evil as his brother but is nevertheless known as Elder Satan, was not as chatty as his brother during the game. We did share a laugh over a 20-something hipster couple where the guy had an insane handlebar moustache and the woman had fuschia Lee Press On nails.  We spent two innings trying to get a picture of the guy, and I finally was able to get it not too long before we left at the top of the eighth.

It was a long trip back home (an hour on the subway and then a wait at Port Authority, and then traffic at 11 pm on 495), but we had a really great time yesterday.

Beer bad

You’d think that a nickname like “Black Superman” would mean that you were pretty much the most awesome thing ever. You’d be wrong. There’s something so sad about overcoming so much to obtain your dream, only to allow your personal demons to take it away from you.

Yay for Sportsmanship!

Awwww. Maybe it’s an excess of girly hormones or something, but this article definitely made me cry. Not mist, not tear up; just flat out cry. What’s not to love about a well-to-do softball team being willing to forfeit so that they could help a disadvantaged team who’d never play learn the game? Awesomely, every adult featured in the article sounds sane, which isn’t always the case with high school sports. I salute the parenting and teaching skills of the adults in all of these kids’ lives, because they seem to be great people, too.

Take it out on the opposition

It sounds like Mets closer K-Rod nearly got into a fight with bullpen coach Randy Niemann on Sunday night. That would be the same Sunday where K-Rod came in and struggled, and then struck out A-Rod on a 3 – 2 count to end the game. On deck was Robinson Cano, who has turned into an alarmingly (if you’re not a Yankees fan, anyway) awesome baseball player lately, although he’s not putting up the numbers he did in April and the Mets were able to shut him down this weekend. He’d slumped so much during the series that if he had come up, I’m sure he would have wanted to redeem himself by putting his team ahead. Anyways, I suggest that K-Rod spend less time getting into heated arguments with old guys and more time actually doing his damn job. Sure, K-Rod and Niemann made up later, but K-Rod has to learn control. A lot of control.

Los Suns will come out tomorrow

I think it’s pretty great that the Phoenix Suns will wear jerseys that say “Los Suns” tomorrow, Cinco de Mayo, in light of the awful immigration law that just went into effect in Arizona. I still don’t care who wins that game, but at least now I will remember to look on Thursday to see who won.

You’re out!

Sorry, I couldn’t resist making a bad pun about the totally awesome news that MLB finally fired some not-so-great umpires. Of course, I’m sure that more went into this decision than their penchant for blowing calls, or else C. B. Bucknor and Angel Hernandez (who somehow wasn’t even mentioned in this article) would have been gone a long time ago. Still, I hope this makes umpires think twice and consult with one another before they start guessing at calls. It’s hard enough to defend baseball to those who think it’s a boring game that goes on for too long, without having to add a disclaimer that umpire errors are expected in baseball. At least, the commissioner thinks so.

I love the smell of schadenfreude in the morning

More Olympics silliness. Dutch speed skater Sven Kramer won the gold medal in the Mens’ 5000 meter race. Yippee! That part is pretty awesome. But then he acted like a jerk to a reporter who wanted to interview him afterward.

She asked him to identify himself and his country, and he refused, asking her, “Are you stupid?” Not nice, Sven, not nice, especially since she said it was for tape identification. I understand that he just won a gold medal and is supremely important in his own country, but we don’t really care about that stuff in the US. Sorry. I can identify two speed skaters on sight, and can only tell them apart because they’re both cute. If Sven could find a way to incorporate touchdowns or homeruns into speed skating, he would definitely increase his odds of being recognized by the average American.

Still, I can understand how he’d be frustrated that a reporter covering the event he just won would ask him who he was. So maybe a bit of sarcasm would have been in order, but “Are you stupid?” is never a nice thing to say to somebody. And karma is a bitch. So I smirked a bit when I read that Kramer would have set a record and won gold in the 10,000 meter race, but followed incorrect instructions from his coach and crossed into the wrong lane, resulting in his disqualification. That sucks, and he still had to give interviews afterward.

I wonder if he was nicer to this batch of reporters.

Evgeni Plushenko: The gift that keeps on giving

As if the whole Evgeni Plushenko thing wasn’t funny enough on its own (and it is), the matter has become even more bizarre, what with the involvement of Russian president Vladimir Putin (his public message to Plushenko said “Your silver is as good as gold.“), and Plushenko posting on his web site that he actually won a platinum medal. Oh. My. God. This guy is like the king of all sore losers, even going so far as to create an entirely new medal to commemorate his imagined awesomeness. (via Virginia & Josh)

The Figure Skating equivalent of the Internet Tough Guy

There are a few accepted pursuits that will allow a man to be considered manly whilst wearing spandex. They are: superhero, cyclist, swimmer (yes, please). Figure skating is not considered to be a very manly pursuit. It’s aimed at female audiences, and pretty much every guy I know will give at least a token grumble when it’s put on tv. So I can’t even explain how much I love what a baby Evgeni Plushenko is being about not having won the gold medal. He refused to shake the hand of Evan Lysacek, who did win the gold, and then made the following remarks:

“I was positive that I won. But I saw that Evan needs a medal more than I do. Maybe because I already have one.”

and

“If the Olympic champion doesn’t know how to jump a quad, I don’t know,” Plushenko said. “Now it’s not men’s figure skating. It’s dancing. Maybe figure skating needs a new name.”

Let’s consider this: a disgruntled figure skater is talking smack? I do not question the athleticism required by figure skating, but seriously?? You are not that hardcore, buddy.

Blah blah blah…Ginger

I hadn’t heard anybody gossiping like fishwives lately, so I turned on Sunday Night Baseball. I enjoy the broadcasts because Joe Morgan and Jon Miller are totally in love with one another, and there’s nothing more satisfying than watching a couple’s love deepen. The addition of Steve Phillips ups the hotness factor by infinity, and the more he talks, the less we have to hear Joe. Their tangents are usually irrelevant and not interesting besides, but every now and then they reveal something so intensely personal about a player, coach, or other baseball staffer that you wonder why anybody still talks to them.