5/6/07 - Seattle Mariners vs New York Yankees

I forgot to bring my camera to the game today, but it was quite a game!

First off, the fielding of the Mariners was horrible. LF Raul Ibanez lost at least two fly balls in the sun, with them dropping in for hits / scoring plays. They had at least one or two additional fielding muffs such as the catcher dropping a foul pop up and the third baseman throwing away a ground ball.

SP Darrell Rasner was pretty good today, much better than when I saw him last month. I was a little bummed out when I realized Phillip Hughes would have pitched today were it not for the pulled hamstring. It was also too bad I missed Chien-Ming Wang's near perfect game yesterday.

Josh Phelps ran into the catcher unnecessarily at one point in the game and got hit by a pitch his next time up. Both teams were warned. Later in the game, reliever Scott Proctor threw an inside pitch to a Seattle player who went crazy, pointing and yelling. There was some back and forth but no fight. It was pretty ridiculous, the pitch didn't even hit the Seattle player! Even more ridiculous was the sight of both bullpens emptying. The players came out and there was nothing going on. It was kind of funny I suppose, but the last thing the Yankees need is another pulled hamstring because of jogging out from the bullpen.

Finally in the seventh inning stretch, the biggest news of the day. After they played "God Bless America," they began to play "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" as usual. Suddenly after the first line of the song, public address announcer Bob Sheppard says, "Please direct your attention to the owner's box and the jumbotron screen for an important announcement." At this point, I thought something awful had happened outside. Instead, it's Roger Clemens from the owners box, and he said something like, "...got me out of Texas" and "see you guys real soon." It doesn't really matter, we all knew it meant he was coming back. Totally ridiculous, theatrical and awesome! I have tickets to a game in June and am secretly hoping he will be back that day.