5.2.01 ROCHESTER
RED WINGS vs BUFFALO BISONS
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A hot Wednesday afternoon, and the first of a planned seven games in seven days for me. Walking around the concourse to my seat, I spotted a group of people I recognized from the day before. They were, near as I could tell, students from the Eastman School of Music, and I’d had the misfortune of walking into a downtown deli just after them. Loud, boistrous, and annoyingly theatrical in a way that brought to mind the most insufferable members my high school’s drama club, their self-important prattle had me grinding my teeth all the way out the door.
Ah, but here they were at the ballpark! Perhaps I shouldn’t be such a judgmental a-hole, I thought to myself. They can’t be all bad, right?
Then their friend sang the national anthem.
Can I ask a question? As someone who hears the national anthem with about the same regularity that a part-time magician hears “Happy Birthday,” I mean? What’s the deal with all these people who treat minor-league ballgames like their own personal audition for Star Search? This jackass gets up there with his ridiculously affected tenor, slinging vibrato all over the place, thinking he’s putting on a clinic for all the rubes in the audience who, you know, just sing, without knowing any better. Meanwhile he’s flubbing the words—really!—mixing up vowels, landing on notes completely wrong, and basically embarrassing everybody in the stadium except his own oblivious self and his four utterly enthralled friends. Ugh.
And while we’re on the subject of ritual ballpark song, there’s something else that’s been driving me nuts at Frontier. During “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” the scoreboard displays the generic lyrics, “So let’s root, root, root for the home team,” and the crowd invariably sings along, verbatim. As if there were no home team to speak of! Attention Rochesterians: You have a home team! They are called the Red Wings, and their two-syllable name fits quite nicely into the meter of the song!
Anyway, the Cleveland Indians’ Jaret Wright, rehabbing from shoulder surgery, started the game this day for the Bisons. Wright struggled early, giving up two runs in the second, but once he got rolling nobody could touch him; at one point he retired 18 batters in a row. Still, things were looking good for the hapless Red Wings, with two runs across and their man Calvin Maduro carrying a shut-out into the ninth. Their luck was not to last, however. Maduro gave up a pair of hits to begin the inning, allowed a run to score on a wild pitch, then grooved one to Bisons third baseman Mark Lewis, which resulted in a game-tying RBI double. Leslie Brea took over in relief and was immediately tagged for a double himself, and that was pretty much the game right there.
It was the seventh consecutive loss for the last-place Red Wings, especially painful coming in a game they’d all but won against the first-place Bisons, and a bona fide major league pitcher to boot.
FINAL SCORE: BISONS 4, RED WINGS 2
FOOD CONSUMED: A Zweigle’s red hot (the Hebrew National cart wasn’t yet open, and I was hungry), some peanuts, a Genny.