Beautiful Bronx Bomber Beat Down

Hello everybody. My apologies for the delay in blog posts. It has been a busy week for me. On Sunday, the fam and I went to the Tribe game against the Blue Jays. At the time, the Indians were 0-5. But they pulled off the victory in front of about twenty fans in the stadium. That's an exaggeration, but it was Easter Sunday, so the stadium was mostly empty.

The Indians sure are playing well lately, though. They went 1-2 against the Royals, but the offense showed signs of life, and, except for one bad inning from the bullpen, they were within reach of all three games. Then yesterday came: Opening Day at the new Yankee Stadium. The best stadium $1.5 billion can buy (Yes, billion). The epitome of American capitalism and gluttony. A cathedral for the religion of baseball. The home of the nation's winningest sports franchise ever. And what's even better than that? The seats are so expensive, the excessively rowdy New York fans who made the old Yankee Stadium such a hostile environment can no longer afford to attend games. So, teams get to spend three or four days living in the lap of luxury, playing on the national stage in front of a sell-out crowd, and only have the rich elite rooting against them, who, let's face it, are more respectful and orderly than some of the others. It's a win-win.

But yesterday, for the Tribe, was a win-win-win, because they won the game. Not only did they beat the Bronx Bombers, they slaughtered them 10-2. Cliff Lee looked more like the Cy Young Award winner that he is. Even C.C. looked great. The Yank's undoing came after C.C. left the game, and the bullpen took over. When C.C. left, it was 1-1. The next inning, our boys exploded for a 9-run seventh inning, including a grand slam by Grady Sizemore and a solo shot by Victor Martinez. It was glorious.

In between Tribe games, I have been exclusively catching up on seven days of missed class. Somehow, I was able to get completely caught up on homework assignments in just three days. It helps that I could probably pass the Chem 101 final right now with just the knowledge I remember from sophomore-year chemistry. But the other two classes, calculus with analytical geometry III and an introduction to constructing mathematical proofs, are certainly not "fluff" courses. I still have a great deal of studying to do for my calc III course (I got a 4/15 on the quiz yesterday ... not the lowest grade in the class. Not even the second lowest grade in the class. The median was an 8). But with such nice weather scheduled for today and tomorrow, I think I'll push the studying back to Sunday.

My stomach has felt pretty ok the last few days (relatively, of course.), and I haven't had any kidney-like pain since last Friday, so that's good news. With any luck, the stone will stay put until June. But, of course, lady luck has not been on my side for a while.

But I think a few good things ought to be mentioned:

Season Tickets. My Uncle Bill bought season tickets to the Tribe, as I've said before, to be split among the Five Families (name it!). Four seats, fourth row, on the aisle, right-centerfield. The view is absolutely fantastic. We had so much fun on Easter Sunday, I can't wait to go to the next game I will be home for: Monday, May 25, against the defending American League Champions, Tampa Bay Rays. It is "I am IN the Tribe" grill apron give-away day. And Shellster's birthday.

Two words: Aero ... wait for it ... Smith. Coming to Blossom Music Center on Thursday, September 10. Suby and I will be in attendance. Even better: they aren't coming alone. They're bringing ZZ Top along. This will be my third Aerosmith show. It's going to be awesome.

Anyway, I have a few things to look forward to. But of course, I am looking forward to nothing more than Friday, June 12th, the day after my last exam, and, therefore, my first day being home for good. Now that is going to be awesome.

Tribe v. Yankees, Part II starts in twenty minutes, so I think I need to mentally prepare. Later gators. -IW