Yankees suck! Yankees suck!

A while back I was out with this guy and we were talking about class reunions. I told him I'd skipped my ten year high school reunion to go to a Red Sox game, and he leaned across the table and kissed me. It was one of those perfect moments that made me glow at the time and still makes me smile when I think about it.

I wish I had a similarly kissworthy story about the hoops I jumped through to watch the Sox season opener yesterday, but one can't jump through hoops that don't exist. There's one channel in Europe that shows baseball games (NASN, North American Sports Network), and it also shows basketball, hockey, American football, and NASCAR. Maybe golf, too, I dunno. NASN was at least showing baseball yesterday, but it was showing the Mets vs. Nationals and then the Braves vs. Dodgers. Hello? American League? Don't know how they picked those two--maybe just because New York and LA are such big cities? But why not show the Yankees? Not that I want to watch the Yankees, but you've gotta figure there are more Yankees fans than Mets fans wherever you go, with the possible exception of Shea Stadium. [Okay scratch that, just realized the Yankees played a night game.] And the Braves are popular all over the US because of Ted Turner, but I don't think that counts for much here, since probably no one gets WTBS. Anyway, not really games I care about, but baseball games nonetheless. The English and Irish bars here show a lot of sports, so this afternoon I called this Irish bar I'd heard of to make sure they'd be showing the games. The nice Irish guy who answered the phone didn't seem to understand my accent very well and kept thinking I was talking about basketball, but finally he did confirm that they would be showing BASEball tonight.

So I went to the Irish bar. I walked in to find the TV turned off and about five people sitting around the bar, looking like they were having some kind of private meeting. I asked the friendliest face among them if she knew whether they'd be showing baseball, and she said "You should ask the bartender, but he's not here right now." Okay. To occupy myself until the bartender got back from wherever he was, I texted my friend who had thankfully agreed to meet me there even though she doesn't really like baseball, saying "The Dubliner is so fucked up." It really is a weird place. (And texting is such a good way to look a little less clueless when you'd otherwise be standing there like an idiot.) So finally the bartender showed up and turned the game on. I felt a little bad that it might ruin the vibe of whatever private club I had interrupted, but whatever. I called and they said they were showing baseball and I was watching baseball, dammit. Thank god my friend showed up though, because we were the only ones on the TV side of the bar all night; I don't think I would have lasted long by myself.

Like I said, I didn't care about either game that much, but the Atlanta-LA game definitely brought back some old Red Sox memories. Nomar injured on the sidelines, D-Lowe allowing four runs in the first inning, Grady Little. Good times.