Bottom of the First...
Friday night, at Durham Bulls Athletic Park, and it's mostly stopped raining. Two hours of rain delay was enough; they rolled up the tarps and swept the water right off the field and trotted the teams out there, and Freddy Dolsi wasn't exactly having a good time of it for the Charlotte Knights. Oh, sure, he was hitting 94 on the gun, but his pitches went only two places: low and away from right-handed hitters, and back up through the box at high velocity.
I'm in the stands, in the second deck, almost directly behind home plate. Most of the fans who've stuck out the rain delay have huddled in the covered sections, though there are a few die-hards fortified with Yvengling tallboys trailing down the foul lines. One's over by the Bulls' bullpen, manfully orchestrating a very soggy, pixelated wave. It's cold out, 52 degrees and dropping, so maybe he's got the right idea waving his arms around. But even the "crowded" sections under cover are sparsely populated. Two hours on a cold Friday night will do that to a crowd. I've got a few NC State grad types in the row in front of me, talking Flyers hockey and chakras. I've got a couple to my left more interested in each other than the game. And behind me and over a little is a White Sox fan.
A big White Sox fan, mind you. This guy clearly works out. He works out a lot. He's wearing a Sox hat and a Sox jersey - black, in both cases - and his biceps have literally shoved their way out of the short sleeves. The cold, it would seem, is not bothering him. His wife, on the other hand, is huddled up in a Bears hoodie with a couple of youngsters I take to be their kids. And Sox fan is into it. As in, channeling Hawk Harrelson into it.
Hawk Harrelson, for those of you who haven't had the mitigated joy of listening to a White Sox broadcast, is the play by play guy for Chicago's AL team, and possibly the most unrepentant homer since the original wrote jingles for the Odysseus' Ithacan tourist board. The man's got two catchphrases, which he uses the way a short-order cook at a mall Chinese restaurant uses MSG, which is to say all the damn time. One is "He gone" when a Chicago pitcher strikes out an opposing batter. The other is "You can put it on the booooaaarrrdd" when a Sox batter hits a home run. He hasn't gotten a chance to use either a lot this season.
Giant White Sox fan, on the other hand, is taking every opportunity in the bottom of the first to make up for that. Just because Dolsi wasn't getting the ball anywhere near the plate didn't mean the Bulls weren't swinging at it. And with every strikeout, there's a bark of "He gone!" from the row behind me.
It's kind of cute, and kind of annoying, and the way Dolsi is throwing it's looking like I'd be hearing it a lot. Deep down, a little part of me thinks, "You know, it would be funny if one of the Bulls hit a homer and I could do the other Hawk Harrelson thing right back at him." This, I also think, is about as likely as the Bulls' starting pitcher cracking 92 with his fastball, which needed a still tailwind and a running start to have a prayer of ninety.
Then, suddenly, one of the Bulls catches up to a Dolsi fastball and parks it somewhere in the vicinity of the Tobacco Road Sports Bar, beyond the left field wall. The crowd, what there was of it, goes berserk. The giant bull down the left field like snorts, shoots smoke out its nostrils, and lets its eyes shine a sinister red.
And I turn around and say to Ginormous White Sox Fan, "You can put it on the booooooarrrrrdddd!"
Now, mind you, I have not actually turned around prior to this. I do not know that Giant White Sox Fan is in fact Titanic White Sox Fan. I have maybe one tenth of a second between when i turned around and seeing him and when my mouth actually starts making noise, to stop. And I think, as the words start coming out, "Oh, boy. He's gonna kill me."
He looks at me. Really looks at me. Eyes scrunched tight and everything as the crowd yells and the batter circles the bases and the PA system blares. And then his face just sort of collapses and he says an anguished, "No! That's not how it is!"
A couple more Bulls strike out. He doesn't say anything else when they do. And neither do I.
I'm in the stands, in the second deck, almost directly behind home plate. Most of the fans who've stuck out the rain delay have huddled in the covered sections, though there are a few die-hards fortified with Yvengling tallboys trailing down the foul lines. One's over by the Bulls' bullpen, manfully orchestrating a very soggy, pixelated wave. It's cold out, 52 degrees and dropping, so maybe he's got the right idea waving his arms around. But even the "crowded" sections under cover are sparsely populated. Two hours on a cold Friday night will do that to a crowd. I've got a few NC State grad types in the row in front of me, talking Flyers hockey and chakras. I've got a couple to my left more interested in each other than the game. And behind me and over a little is a White Sox fan.
A big White Sox fan, mind you. This guy clearly works out. He works out a lot. He's wearing a Sox hat and a Sox jersey - black, in both cases - and his biceps have literally shoved their way out of the short sleeves. The cold, it would seem, is not bothering him. His wife, on the other hand, is huddled up in a Bears hoodie with a couple of youngsters I take to be their kids. And Sox fan is into it. As in, channeling Hawk Harrelson into it.
Hawk Harrelson, for those of you who haven't had the mitigated joy of listening to a White Sox broadcast, is the play by play guy for Chicago's AL team, and possibly the most unrepentant homer since the original wrote jingles for the Odysseus' Ithacan tourist board. The man's got two catchphrases, which he uses the way a short-order cook at a mall Chinese restaurant uses MSG, which is to say all the damn time. One is "He gone" when a Chicago pitcher strikes out an opposing batter. The other is "You can put it on the booooaaarrrdd" when a Sox batter hits a home run. He hasn't gotten a chance to use either a lot this season.
Giant White Sox fan, on the other hand, is taking every opportunity in the bottom of the first to make up for that. Just because Dolsi wasn't getting the ball anywhere near the plate didn't mean the Bulls weren't swinging at it. And with every strikeout, there's a bark of "He gone!" from the row behind me.
It's kind of cute, and kind of annoying, and the way Dolsi is throwing it's looking like I'd be hearing it a lot. Deep down, a little part of me thinks, "You know, it would be funny if one of the Bulls hit a homer and I could do the other Hawk Harrelson thing right back at him." This, I also think, is about as likely as the Bulls' starting pitcher cracking 92 with his fastball, which needed a still tailwind and a running start to have a prayer of ninety.
Then, suddenly, one of the Bulls catches up to a Dolsi fastball and parks it somewhere in the vicinity of the Tobacco Road Sports Bar, beyond the left field wall. The crowd, what there was of it, goes berserk. The giant bull down the left field like snorts, shoots smoke out its nostrils, and lets its eyes shine a sinister red.
And I turn around and say to Ginormous White Sox Fan, "You can put it on the booooooarrrrrdddd!"
Now, mind you, I have not actually turned around prior to this. I do not know that Giant White Sox Fan is in fact Titanic White Sox Fan. I have maybe one tenth of a second between when i turned around and seeing him and when my mouth actually starts making noise, to stop. And I think, as the words start coming out, "Oh, boy. He's gonna kill me."
He looks at me. Really looks at me. Eyes scrunched tight and everything as the crowd yells and the batter circles the bases and the PA system blares. And then his face just sort of collapses and he says an anguished, "No! That's not how it is!"
A couple more Bulls strike out. He doesn't say anything else when they do. And neither do I.
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