Tag: fenway park

Patriots Day

Happy Patriots Day. No, we don’t have a holiday for a shitty football team. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has a state holiday to remember the start of the American Revolution. Fucking irony, eh?

Today is Marathon Monday in Boston. As a result, it is also the day we have the weirdness known as the 11:00am Red Sox game. The game starts early so that it ends at about the same time the Marathon runners are reaching Kenmore Square. You go to Fenway Park, watch the Red Sox, leave Fenway Park and head for the Green Line station and catch the leaders as they fly by. I’ve only participated in this once but it was a really cool experience.

Every year when Patriots Day comes around I go to work like it’s a normal Monday but I promise myself, I full on swear to myself, that next year… next year I am going to go to the North Bridge re-enactment of the first shots of the American Revolution in Minuteman National Park in Concord, MA and then I am going to go to the Red Sox game and then I am going to watch a bit of the Boston Marathon and then I will still be home before dinner.

And then every year I forget all about it until I wake up and realize it is Patriots Day again and I forgot about all of it. Oh well.

So the Pope died on Easter Sunday, eh? Wouldn’t it have been more on brand if he had died on Good Friday? Sorry… too soon?

I can’t help but be flippant about everything on Earth today. On top of the continuing collapse of American Democracy, I watched season two episode two of The Last of Us last night and it absolutely destroyed me. I knew from talking to a gamer player a few years ago that last night’s twist was coming, but I didn’t know when. I figured it would be late in the season, maybe in the finale. Nope. Episode two. On top of the twist, the whole thing going on in the town (no spoilers!) was maybe the most intense episode of television I’ve ever sat through. Damn. Just… damn.

In an attempt to calm myself down after watching that show last night, here’s a cat.

233/365

That didn’t fix me so here’s another cat.

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MLB Post Season

I suppose it’s time for me to acknowledge the fact that the Red Sox season has come to an end. My father and I talked about it in depth before the season started. We both expected them to have another catastrophic last place in the division finish with piles and piles of gruesome losses. We didn’t get that, which was nice. We also didn’t get into the wildcard race, though we were on the bubble for much of the season.

No, they finished at .500 on the nose. 81 wins and 81 losses. Not even remotely good, but a third place finish in the American League East feels pretty fantastic when we expected to be solidly in fifth place when all was said and done. Of course the fucking Yankees finishing in first place took whatever happiness we may have felt at not sucking as bad as expected and flushed it right down the toilet. Fucking Yankees.

On to the playoffs and the best of three wild card round. I am not going to make any predictions. I am more trying to decide which teams to root for now that my Red Sox are out of it. I hate the Astros more than I hate the Tigers, I hate the Orioles more than I hate the Royals. Hell, there once was a time when I considered myself a Royals fan. I don’t really hate the Brewers but I loathe the friggin Mets (great, the Yankees and the Mets both made the post season. Fucking New York). Atlanta and San Diego… I am supposed to like Atlanta because the Braves franchise originated in Boston and therefore Red Sox fans are expected to root for the Braves in the NL. Not me. They’re fine and all, but if there were a National League team that I would want to back it would probably be the San Diego Padres. Why? Because if I had to move to any city in the United States that isn’t Boston, Massachusetts, it would absolutely be San Diego, California and you bet your sweet ass I would get Padres season tickets. Mostly because Red Sox season tickets cost a literal fortune and Padres season tickets do not. Also, I’ve been to their stadium and it was wonderful. Fenway Park is a magical place. Unfortunately it’s also a pit that was designed when the average human being was a ton shorter than I am. I was actually able to sit comfortably on my one visit to Petco Park. As a (former) Fenway regular, that was unbelievably amazing to me.

So I guess in the Wild Card round I am a Padres fan this year. They won the first game of their three game series last night. Game two is tonight at 8:38pm Eastern time. Here’s hoping for a sweep, folks. A Wild Card round win would match the Padres up with the Los Angeles Dodgers who will undoubtably nuke them back to the stone age (baseball-ily speaking) and send them home for the winter. Oh well. If that happens then I guess I will just root for whoever is playing against the Yankees. The fucking Yankees.

The Red Sox Win

Yesterday I wrote a post about how the Red Sox can’t seem to win at home this year.

Today, one day later, they beat the Cubbies at Fenway Park 17-0.

Do I have a baseball super power? Did I make today’s win happen? I think I might have. You’re welcome, Red Sox Nation. You’re so very welcome.

On an unrelated note, Jen and I cooked a Dinnerly.com meal for dinner. One of the side dishes was rice. Jen put salt in the water the rice boiled in. In truth, she put a bit too much salt. I dished out a little for myself, as I can only eat a little of anything in these post-gastric bypass days. I had no idea that overly salted rice was a freakin’ DELICACY! Oh my goodness it was so freakin’ delicious! What a culinary revelation! Granted I had to stop eating after 3-4 forks full because the saltiness started bothering me, but before that happened? Holy shit! I am putting extra salt in the rice water forever now! WOW!

Happy Home Opening Day

Finally

Today at a little after 2:00pm Eastern Daylight Savings time, the Boston Red Sox will play a home game.

Finally.

Happy Fenway Opening Day, everyone. Happy we finally will have a string of games we can actually watch on TV or listen to on the radio without sacrificing an entire night’s worth of sleep.

Finally.

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2008-07-27 Yankees at Red Sox 218
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The pictures are old because I haven’t been to Fenway Park in about a decade. Maybe I’ll sneak to a game this year. Maybe I’ll grab a standing room only ticket to some random night game. Standing room only, of course, because Fenway Park is not friendly to tall people. Leg room apparently wasn’t a thing in 1912 when the park first opened.

Mostly Missed

The Red Sox game started a little after 2:00pm this afternoon. I had planned to listen to it on the radio while I worked. I got pulled into a critical meeting at 2:00 and didn’t get out to around 3:15. I had a few things to clear up after the meeting but I was just turning the game on at around 3:30 when I got pulled into a critical meeting for a different customer and didn’t get out until almost 5:30 when the game was over.

They lost to the Orioles, 9-8.

One game down. 161 to go. The statistical probability of losing 162 games this year is small, but really not small enough.

Go Red Sox!

Oh, and just for the record, the Bruins are tied at 1-1 with the Blue Jackets after two periods. Just so you know.

The Winter Classic at Fenway Park 2: The Reckoning

It was announced today that the 2023 NHL Winter Classic will be held at Fenway Park… again. Fenway Park was the home of the game in 2010 when the Bruins beat the Flyers 2-1 on a legendary (to Bruins fans at least) overtime goal by Marco Sturm. Massachusetts also hosted the Winter Classic one other time, at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, but we won’t be talking about that shit of a game.

I will watch the game if I can. January 1st… we may be in Disney World, though that probably won’t happen until a couple of days later? I wonder if we’ll be on a plane. Hmmmmm. If we are visiting The Mouse, maybe I will watch the game from the hotel room (he said kiddingly).

The tweet doesn’t say who we’ll be playing, but given that the guy who owns the Red Sox and Fenway Park now owns the Pittsburgh Penguins, how much do you wanna bet we will play the Pittsburgh Penguins?

Opening Day: Take Two

Which title is funnier:

  • Opening Day: Take Two
  • Opening Day: The Next Generation
  • Opening Day 2: Electric Boogaloo

You’re right… none of them are funny.

The forecast for our second attempt at an opening day calls for partly cloudy skies and temps in the high 30’s with a moderate to high chance of fans catching Covid-19.

Play Ball!

Also…

They can’t be any worse than last season!

Go Red Sox!