The Barrister

Wow. That game was a shit show. Mostly as with respect to me, as I'm pretty sure that I was only semi-conscious of the world around me. Which isn't to say I didn't know what was going on with the game - it was pretty easy to follow, as most baseball games are - but, boy, I must have been a sight to behold stumbling around the outfield concessions area, trying to put a straight face on while buying another beer.

It all started with a boat ride. A wonderful, drunken boat ride.

If you live in New York City, or travel here for baseball games during the summer, the NYC Water Taxi is a freakin' gift from heaven.  The company, which typically runs ferry services/boat trips out of South Street Seaport, has been offering free - FREE!! - trips to all NY baseball game - Yankees and Mets - for a few years now.  I've never taken the Yankee boat, as I'm sure it's filled with "special" fans from Staten Island, and I prefer to avoid those folks as often as I can.  But, the Mets boat, filled with only the classiest of sports fans, has been a favorite of mine for a couple years. So, when Scizz, Apologist and I agreed that we'd check this game out, catching the water taxi was my first choice. Added benefits include forcing me to leave work right at 5 pm, rather than a 6 pm departure to get me to the field via subway, and the $5-$6 beers sold on the boat . While Aps had to opt out of the boat trip due to work, Scizz and I - as well as a dear friend of mine - found our way to the boat for the 5:40 departure.

Sidebar: Incidentally, this friend prefers to remain nameless in this post - which I can certainly appreciate - so, I agreed to find her a suitable nickname from amongst the characters in She-Ra: Princess of Power. I've settled on Madame Razz, who was apparently the witch on the show? Who the fuck knows.  This line from the wikipedia page sealed it: "Madame Razz is very absent-minded, and frequently mispronounces spells or forgets them completely.."  After my friend's performance last night, this seems about right.

Anyway....putting aside by recent obsession with childhood television, back to the details of our night. 

It was a perfect night for a boat trip, and a great way to pregame any baseball game in the City.  Especially since, after consulting with Scizz and Razz, and being the boy scout that I am, I packed for our trip...mini bottles of Crown, Jack and Ketel.  Because, really, what's a boat ride along the East River without shots? Don't anyone tell you that I don't think ahead.  Unless they're referring to the choice to drink two of those bottles during the boat ride, in which case, yes, my forward thinking may need a little tweaking.  But I digress.

Three beers and two shots later, we arrived at Citi. I was in reasonably good shape then - certainly enough to manage a friendly hello to the local fuzz directing traffic, and enough to purchase a couple tickets at the booth.  Tickets in hand we met up with the dear Apologist by the Big Apple outside the park, and walked in.  A special thank you to the wonderful security at Citi Field, by the way.  Concentrating your efforts on guns and bombs, rather than the items actually in my pockets (including two of those aforementioned mini bottles), makes me feel much more positive about this nation's choices with respect to security at large-scale events.  Seriously, good work. 

One of the themes of the night, aptly summed up by the Apologist as we walked out at the end of the game, was that we were going to simply enjoy this game no matter what. As Aps said, baseball is great because you can go to a game, chat freely with your friends while only partly paying attention, but never feel that you're missing anything. Sure, maybe you turn your head or are in the bathroom for a big home run, but - if we're being honest - rarely do you see a home run that is any way materially different from the thousands you've seen before. Baseball, a sport that is, by its nature, repetitive, doesn't ask a lot of the fans that come out to catch a game.  Which may be why I had no problem piling on delicious Goose Island IPA as the game wore on, and why Madame Razz and I had loads of laughs standing on Shea Bridge, discussing the career of Lastings Milledge - who, incidentally, is not on the Pirates anymore, despite our semi-racist, semi-drunk tendency to think that this guy was Mr. Milledge in disguise, some covert effort to re-enter the league free of his reputation for being an all-around fuck-up.  It took Razz a solid 8 innings to be convinced otherwise. 

So, yeah, I went to the game and was much more interested in drinking and laughing with friends than I was about the play happening on the field.  With the Mets these days, though, that's how I roll.

Which isn't to say that I didn't watch, particularly as the night wore on. The Mets' bats were pretty quiet all night. Continuing a recent trend, the team got a small-ball run in the first inning, but failed to put any more guys across, leaving Dickey high and dry as he battled hard and kept the Pirates scoreless through 7 innings.  In short, Dickey pitched a fucking gem, and I can't much fault Terry Collins for leaving him in for the 8th inning - he was NASTY all night, and I can only assume that Dickey thought his stuff was still good.  Though, why Dickey remained in after giving up the tying run was a weird move.  Knuckleballers are hard to manage, I'm sure, since you don't necessarily see the drop off in velocity in late innings - or, at least, any decrease in speed would be pretty irrelevant, since the speed isn't how he's getting guys out anyway.  So, again, I can't really blame Collins for keeping him in for the 8th...but, things got real wacky during that inning - a tough hit batsman call, an inexplicable throw from Carlos Beltran which allowed a runner to advance, and then a center field single that put the game away.  These things were typical Mets baseball, and it was bizarre to see Dickey - who's also been dealing with foot issues - stay in there through it all, if only because the previous seven innings might have earned him the right to take a seat and not suffer through any more of the disaster playing out on the field. 

That being said, I don't blame Collins, and I don't blame Dickey, for what went down last night.  The Mets need to score more than one run to win a game, and they didn't do it.  Pure and simple. If the score is 4 or 5 going into the 8th inning, maybe Dickey doesn't need to stay in, maybe the Pirates don't bother showing some late fire, and maybe I feel a little better about the lingering hangover I still have.  I know that, right now, this team is full of rookies and call-ups, but they still have some decent hitters in the lineup, and those guys have to step up against teams like the Pirates. 

So, there you have it.  Next trip to Citi will, with any luck, include the Yachtsman as well, and maybe even Megsie, so we're hoping for a more complete DGWU Crew later this summer. If you follow us on twitter, you know that I was none too kind with the Yachter last night, and was definitely lacking in sympathy for the fact that he had just moved, was working, and didn't want to hear my shit about him not coming to the game. Sorry, bud.  Such is life when your friends drink too much and resort to twitter during the boring moments of a ballgame.  Next time, show up and tell me to eff myself to my face. We'll all be better off. 

The plan was to leave you with my theme song of the night - "Sunglasses at Night" by Corey Hart - but I just watched the video on YouTube and it really fucking blows.  I may have been a douche and worn my sunglasses throughout the entire evening, but that's no excuse to subject all of you to such a crap song. So, instead, I give you some Buffalo Expat hip-hop from Rabbi Darkside, alum of City Honors, now hailing from Brooklyn. Enjoy.

The Scizz

First things first. Read the Apologist's post from earlier today on this whole Sabres team/playoff run/7-game series/future.  There may be a few minor opinions that differ with the DGWU crew, but overall I think it wraps up what we are all feeling quite nicely.  It really is a great read.

Since Aps covered it, there is no need to keep rehashing the hockey talk.  Excuse the cheesiness that follows, but the shaving of my playoff beard was therapeutic and now it is time to vent. I decided to share two experiences/epiphanies I had on Tuesday night.  First, at about 11:45 pm I was walking the last block towards my apartment in Hoboken, NJ when I saw a big guy walking towards me.  I mean Yeti big.  As I got closer, there was no mistaking the huge B on his chest with a Sabre through it.  He was rockin' the same shirt I had on under my Pommers jersey.  We made eye contact and both of us just nodded and kept walking. No actual words were said.  But with that nod, we communicated a lifetime of love and despair that our Buffalo teams often bring us.  There was no need to stop and talk about it or even say "another tough break, huh?"  All that was needed was a simple nod, and we both immediately knew what the other was thinking.

Second, as the title of the post says, it has been a wild ride.  Three months ago when we decided to get this blog back off the ground, it just so happened to coincide with the Sabres starting to get their shit together.  As they became came one, the DGWU crew did too.  Many nights out drinking instead of sitting home watching this team alone and absolutely insane conversations that people wouldn't believe happened. We bonded like the Sabres bonded (OK maybe it was totally different, and ours involved A LOT of beer and whiskey, but you get the point).  

Last night after the dust had settled and some extreme vitriol had heaved from all of our collectives mouths, something happened.  We were angry, sad, frustrated, confused.....but about 30 minutes after the game we were happy.  The Apologist grabbed Yachtsman and I (and Grandpa Tim), gave a little speech about how fun our bender had been and we embraced.  Grown men in a packed bar....hugging and laughing. Re-fucking-diculous. And of course we start right back up again on Thursday night when our beloved Buffalo Bills draft 3rd overall (PLEASE LET CAM NEWTON FALL!).
Somehow Nathan Gerbe's peskiness and Tyler Myers' new found bad-assery made us closer.  I have said it before but I'll say it again.  These teams bring people together. THIS team brought THESE guy back together. We used the word "warpath" many times this series to represent the Sabres, but it has become much more.  We are one fellas.  WARPATH.

The Scizz



Oops. With all of the craziness of this playoff series and the busy work week that everyone in the DGWU Crew have (and the raging hangover I was dealing with yesterday), nobody noticed that yesterday was the two year anniversary of this ludicrous blog.  You might be asking yourself, "two years? I thought you just started this scribble page?". False. We actually got together and started this website two years ago with a live NFL draft blog and went on to post quite regularly.  Of course we didn't even have remotely the following we have now and would sometimes go entire weeks without posting if we happened to be on a benderrrrrrrrrrrrr I mean working really hard at our day jobs. Eventually we just stopped altogether.  About a year later the three of us were out in a bar for yours truly's birthday when in a drunken haze I said "we should get the blog going again". And BOOM, here we are to help you waste time at work and give you fits from the stupidity that we type.

So alas, we all missed the big day.  But after licking my wounds Monday (emotionally and emotionally), I figured I'd jump on here and if give you a little journey into the past before the big game seven tonight.  I for one am confident that the Buffalo Sabres are going to pull this out, but am still nervous as hell.  So much like my past compilations to keep your mind off of the game, here is a little celebration of some of the crap we've posted. Happy Anniversary!

-First thing first, read Yachtsman's semi-expose and "discussion" of Larry Quinn from April 2009.  Now that Leisure Suit Larry is out of the organization I enjoyed reading it even more. Note: It is epic-ly long so be prepared to take a bathroom break somewhere around the point he goes on a tirade about the LaFontaine trade.

-Then take a quick stroll over to May 2009 for a quick write-up on Bills fullback Corey McIntyre. Nothing groundbreaking there, but when it went down we were one of the first blogs/websites to pick it up and got some attention for it, including a shout out from Deadspin.

-Also check out the Apologist's post from May 2009 in which he ties up some loose ends.  Pay most attention to that first loose end because now he is destroying anyone who comes near his goalie.

-This one made me chuckle. Yachtsman on a tear again in June 2009.

-How about some old Sabres news on our youngsters to bring back some memories?

-I enjoyed writing this fictional tale of the Buffalo Metro.  It is amazingly stupid and if you don't know the movie it will probably be painful to read, but you know what? I ENJOYED IT!!!!!! WHY CAN'T I BE HAPPY FOR ONCE??????? Sorry about that.

-Finally, we move to February 2011 right after my birthday.  Yachtsman on why we get the band back together.  Naturally, we have not stuck to the schedule presented there one bit, but I say fuck it. We're having a good time on this blog and thats all that matters. That and the return of Derek Roy with a Royigame seven victory tonight.

Check back later for some pre-game thoughts and possibly some other rambling posts.  And I know we have cross-promoted a ton with the guys over at Black & Blue & Gold, but you have to read Phil's post on Richards' hit on Connolly.  Amazing read.