Worlds Crossing in Queens

Thanks to a work friend who was suddenly called back to Chicago, I scored two tickets to the Mets/Brewers game on Sunday. Granted I am not a baseball fan by any means (most of the time I just get drunk and play mounds or cups) but going to a Mets game and a Yankees game are on my “NYC to do” check list. I took my former college roommate Jordan Steele (yes that is his real name) to the game. We timed the long train ride perfectly and arrived at the stadium just as the National Anthem was being sung. We stopped to wait out the song (USA, USA, USA all the way!) before heading over to our seats. While waiting I checked out the person standing next to me. Turns out it was Emily Emerson! She was a good friend back in college who moved to London after graduating. I had not seen her in six years! Turns out she still lives in London but was visiting NYC that weekend. Although her seat was near ours, I doubt we would have made the connection. She is super nice and even had her own radio show in college called crazy naked redheads or something. How random was that!

We tried to sit next to Emily’s group just to catch up blah blah blah, but the ticket Nazis stopped by and kicked us out of the section. When Jordan and I returned to our actual seats, we found a pair of shady characters sitting in them. We told them to move over since they were in our seats. Boozy Bob (the nickname I christened him with) was annoying and trying to pick fights with the opposing team even though we were no way within ear shot of the players. I told Jordan I would cough up the bail money if he wanted to pound the two wankers. Luckily for us, a group of long island guys showed up at the 3rd inning to kick them out. Turns out the annoying guys’ tickets were for a completely different section and they were trying to upgrade or something. He kept saying, “naw man, this is section N, these are our f-ing seats”. To which the Long Island boys replied “dude, can’t you read, see that, that is a B, get our of mother f-ing seats”. Ah ha ha ha! The two long island men (think blue collar ‘king of queens’ sort) were hilarious. Turns out they had so much fun drinking in the parking lot that they were late. Lenny the Locksmith (yes, his name was Lenny…and I had never met a Lenny before…and he was a locksmith) confessed that he is really a Yankee’s fan but would never turn down cheap tickets and an excuse to drink in public. He shared stories about accidentally letting ex-wives into the husband’s house and then the scorned woman would clean the place out. Oops! He was such a good time that he got peanuts just so the group of us could throw them at people who annoyed us. Jordan told about a misfortunate bag of peanut toss that happened the previous week at Yankee Stadium. Evidently the peanut vender guy was short on his throw and the bag ended up smacking an unsuspecting woman whole in the face!

Not being a baseball fan, I spent most of the time listening to Lenny’s crazy stories and scanning the crowd. One guy a few rows in front of us must have thought he was the official Mets cheerleader! Seriously, the guy would jump up and down, rip off his Mets jersey and wave it in the air, and try to start chants or the wave. He was yelling at the top of his lungs and even repeatedly flipped off the opposing team. Making fun of this guy was verbal catnip for Lenny. First off, the cheerleader was bald with a chin patch facial hair thing. Lenny said “hey you know he reminds me of that American idol guy, yeah he is Chris Daughtry”. From there on, when ever the cheer leader would do something warranting ridicule, Lenny would stand up and yell/sing “it’s not oooooover”. The guy would turn around and look at us and Lenny would be like “Daughtry…you were robbed…F Talyor Hicks!”. Ah ha ha ha, I never laughed so hard at a ball game before.

Although we parted ways with Lenny after the game, the amusement did not stop on the long train ride home. A Queen’s type family (man, wife, two small children) were sitting across from us. The two kids had souvenir mini baseball bats. They kept waking each other and their parents with them. One random guy kept getting the back swing from one of the kids. I thought he was going to snatch the bat and bend the kid over his knee and see if he likes getting smacked. Finally the mom took the bats away. With nothing to hold their attention, the kids tried to sleep on the bench. I guess this was annoying the mom because she took the bats and gave them a few good smacks with them. She made them sit properly and corrected any of the slouching or tucking the feet to the side with sharp whacks (like a nun or school teacher) to the back and knees. Jordan and I kept raising our eyebrows at it but decided it wasn’t our problem.