7.13.01 ROCHESTER RED WINGS vs SYRACUSE SKYCHIEFS
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The announcer related the story over the P.A. about five minutes before game time. Before the game last night, as the players were warming up on the field, a young boy was hurt when an errant ball hit him in the head. There was some concern that the injury was serious, but that evaporated as quickly as the boy’s tears when no less a figure than Deion Sanders went over and presented him with an autographed ball, and then brought the kid down onto the field for what was surely the thrill of a lifetime, the chance to play catch with an aging, once-great football player. Good grief. So we should all give a warm welcome, the announcer went on, to Deion Sanders, a real class act.
Not like the crowd needed any encouragement. An almost unbelievable 12,121 turned out to see the International League’s current main attraction, and while Deion worked his audience masterfully, high-fiving fans at every opportunity and even giving the batboy the handle of his broken bat after a harmless ground-out—practically bestowing it upon him in a gesture of regal benevolence—he proved less adept at the actual business of baseball, failing to reach base in any of his five lead-off at-bats.
No matter. The crowd that had turned out for Neon Deion got treated to a pitcher’s duel instead. Sean Douglass, the Red Wings’ six-foot, six-inch, 22-year-old righthander, turned in his best performance of an already pretty good season, scattering three hits over eight full innings, striking out nine and walking none. His one mistake came in the sixth, and Skychiefs catcher Izzy Molina tagged it for a home run.
The Red Wings got that back in the seventh, though, when right fielder Larry Bigbie, making a brief stop in Rochester on his way up to the majors, managed an RBI single off Syracuse’s Willie Banks, the only run Banks would allow in his seven innings.
It was around this time that a peculiar couple came down and took a pair of seats near me. Peculiar because they were both short. Tiny short. He looked to be in his late thirties, with close-cropped red hair and a thin, scruffy beard. She, maybe a little younger, and kind of mousy looking. Both of them curiously compelling, in their oddly-proportioned, absurdly-short-people way. Heartening. I felt flush with the conviction that there is indeed someone for everyone. Then he opened his mouth.
The guy sounded like he’d been chain smoking continuously since he was nine years old, and had during that time gargled hourly with a mixture of gasoline and sand. This little pipsqueak voice rendered monstrous by the ravages of tar, alcohol, and, for all anyone could tell, very likely a steady diet of razor blades. He sounded like a death metal singer who’d swallowed a cannister of helium. And when I say that every other word that came out of his mouth was fuck, I don’t mean it in the expected, figurative sense. I mean it literally.
“Deion fucking Sanders. I fucking like that fucking guy. I’ll fucking tell you the fuck why, too. He’s got fucking class. That’s fuckin’ right. Guy’s got fucking class.”
He lit up a cigarette.
Now, okay. Smoking in public in western New York doesn’t have quite the same stigma attached to it that it does in southern California. People smoke here. It’s not a big deal. However. Even in western New York, smoking in the stands at a ballgame—especially a sold-out ballgame on a Friday night that’s packed to the gills with families and young kids—is the kind of behavior that is hard to interpret as anything other than downright sociopathic. Nevertheless, a nearby fatherly type attempted to engage him. “Excuse me, sir,” he plaintively beseeched, “smoking isn’t allowed in the stands.”
“You know what the fuck I fucking hate?” This, loudly, to his helpless, brow-beaten girlfriend. “I fucking hate some fucking asshole who fucking can’t mind his own fucking business and fucking thinks he can fuckin’ tell me the fuck what to fuckin’ do.” He continued smoking, taking somewhat more furtive drags on the cigarette.
This went on for a while, until Dad asked him again, this time less mincingly, to put out the cigarette. Now our little friend was pissed. Pissed! “Now I’m fucking pissed!” he said over and over. “I’m fuckin’ gonna go the fuck up there and fuckin’ hurt that fuckin’ asshole. I’m fuckin’ gonna punch him right the fuck in his fucking face.” The girlfriend just sat there. You got the feeling she’d seen this before.
The game was headed to the eleventh inning when Napolean menacingly instructed his companion to meet him in the parking lot. It was feeling a lot like some serious ugliness was imminent, and I confess I was rather looking forward to the sight of Dad, who stood probably six-one or six-two, holding his palm atop the head of his would-be assailant while the latter flailed about harmlessly. Shorty must have chickened out, though, because when next I looked over he was gone, and he wouldn’t return. (Maybe he found someone else to fight on the concourse.)
Shortstop Felipe Lopez put the SkyChiefs ahead in the top of the eleventh with a solo home run off Anthony Shumaker, and former Atlanta Brave Brian Hunter touched up Derek Brown with a solo shot of his own moments later. The Red Wings got one of those runs back in the bottom of the inning, but Eddy Martinez couldn’t score Bigbie from third to keep the game going.
Incidentally, about the Friday-night postgame fireworks: as someone who had never in his life thought critically about fireworks before—like, ever—this was without question the most artless, and needlessly, pointlessly, annoyingly noisy fireworks display I’d ever seen. Awful. And I like fireworks!
FINAL SCORE: SKYCHIEFS 3, RED WINGS 2
FOOD CONSUMED: Chicken fingers and fries. No beer tonight. Trying to economize.