What I wore to Wednesday night's Yankee game (Game time starting temperature 38 - don't know what the wind chill was, but it was blustery. Take my word for it): my snow coat, long underwear, a scarf, a long-sleeved shirt, a wool sweater, gloves and a blanket. Because, for some reason, the second game of the season was one of the bonus midweek games we get with our Friday package, when our first Friday game isn't till next week (I certainly wouldn't have picked a night game on APRIL THIRD voluntarily. I've had all hope of decent, want-to-sit-outside weather this time of year beaten out of me). This is intriguing because it was a Red Sox game, which we've NEVVVVVER gotten as a "bonus" game before. I don't know if the brass thought regular ticket-buyers would be turned off by the almost always crazy early April conditions and thus decided to throw a "premium" game at us, or if they sensed the bandwagon has been emptying and would want to put fannies in seats the best way possible. Either way. It was cold. And sort of empty (and almost completely empty by the 8th inning). Which is sad only if you haven't suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous bandwagoners. Don't let the door hit you on the way out, kiddies.
Anyway, the game was the meh-est of meh, but man, Ichiro? Was the MVP of between-inning segments. Awesomely, the "language lesson" now includes players trying to pronounce foreign baseball-related phrases. Wednesday's Japanese word, seemingly 20 letters long and made up of all As and Ks, was the English equivalent of "not warm" (nice touch, there, scoreboard operators). Ichiro pronounces it correctly then patiently waits for his tongue-tied teammates to say it — which, I think Thumper and OMJ may have come the closest, but still missed by like forty syllables. This leads to Ichiro shaking his head a few times then literally face-palming in response to the failure. Awesome. Then, later, the most amazing question ever posed to Yankees in human times, "What's your favorite karaoke song"(!!!!!), comes up and while I couldn't hear a lot of them (something with the wind makes scoreboard audibleness impossible) I did make out that OMJ is partial to "Purple Rain" (WHAT?!), and Kevin Youkilis sang part of his song that I didn't recognize, so it was probably country or death metal, and Ichiro, our hero, being all "Snoooop Dooggggggg". I mean.
Also, we had to greet the new guys. Which means Steph gave Youkilis a tepid applause, I nicknamed Lyle Overbay "Lyle, Lyle Crocodile" and we had to sing "Ben" to Ben Francisco. We slide right back into the important things without missing a beat, you guys.
Food related observation: While I was delighted to see that the chicken sliders vendors have been moved closer to our seating area, Steph was miffed to see the popcorn stalls, her game-day staple, to be shuttered. I don't know what the reasoning there is considering popcorn is an all-weather food... and yet the ice cream stall was open when it probably could've snowed. Also, since Bloomberg's giant soda ban didn't go into effect, I probably could've gotten an enormous Coke in celebration, but opted for a water instead, which barely got drank... because I didn't want to have to get up too much and go to the bathroom with its ICE COLD water for washing hands. No, that was painful. But compare this to late July, when I've been known to go through two bottles of water at a game to keep from keeling over with dehydration.
Weather extremes, man.