*Me speaking to my grandchildren in 2060*: You know everybody, there was a time, believe it or not, when it was perfectly acceptable to sit in your living room BY YOURSELF and get hammered, so long as there was a web cam on.
I’m of course already dating/aging myself as I don’t think anyone says “web cam” anymore. The need, for the most part, of an external device that provides you with video capability for a meeting/chat is gone. But my point still stands. From the work place to social lives, 2020 was the year of the virtual meeting.
To start, the introduction of quarantine was a huge test of “how much does your company fucking suck?” If you’re like me and have friends whose job satisfaction ranges from apathetic to “I hope I get t-boned on the ride in,” it was fascinating to watch which companies did what. Most did the right thing and just shut down the offices, which for some was a gigantic 180 from their normal stance on working from home. Some tried to avoid that drastic of an action and went to a reduced office presence with different people in on different days. I had one friend whose company just happened to have a half-filled office lying around an hour away and they sent some folk to work there for awhile. No big deal, just that added gas money and commuting time with no kind of stipend for it. For those of us who got to go full remote however, it was mostly for the first time. Do you put on pants? Do you gel your hair? Can you listen to ESPN in the background? So many questions with so little to guide us. I was in a particularly odd position as I actually started my job the first day of Charlie Baker’s lockdown here in MA. Never met a coworker in person, never got to see the office. To make matters even stranger for folks like me, companies have different policies on whether or not to even turn on the damn webcam. So I ended working with a string of mystery men and women like I’m a Charlie’s fucking Angel or something. Bizarre man.
The social scene was a different monster entirely. What happens when such a well oiled machine completely breaks down? When you want to meet up with your friends you go to their house or a bar, if you just are looking for some companionship for the night, the latter of the two. Those simple mechanisms disappeared, literally overnight on March 22nd. Now what? Our generation is arguably the most social yet and suddenly we were barred from being just that. Then video chatting sprang up to save the day. It was always there, but it received little use outside of long distance relationships hell bent on failing or for that one friend that moved to Boulder because “they liked the energy more.” Now Zoom, Google chat, etc. were the only way to share a beverage and a chat with your pals. It was weird at first. I think everyone can admit that. And then it just kind of became normal. Hell, an entire app, House Party, emerged just to facilitate conversations and games between friends who were locked down. Even if we couldn’t be together, we still gonna have a few brewskis, shit talk each other, maybe gossip a little, and if you’re anything like my friends, have food delivered mid fucking conversation. It added such a bizarre layer of disconnect that has been at once sad and entertaining.
On the social end, the video chats dried up back when things started opening up again, only to reappear over the past month or so amid a surge in cases. Who knows if this will remain a thing moving forward when folks just straight up don’t want to leave their houses or when you gather with friends and want to call that one friend who moved to Oregon to “be more with nature” (they work at a coffee shop). Who knows. All I know is what once would have been viewed as halfway to being a page out of a virtual version of “Eyes Wide Shut” is now the way friends stay in touch. And that aint a bad thing.
It’s been a while since I wrote one of these. The main reason is that, as previously noted in Joey’s quarantine blog, I moved to Israel. If you had a balcony in a city bordering the Mediterranean, you’d be writing less too. Now, you may be thinking that because I haven’t been writing WDDN articles, I haven’t been drinking. Is this true?
Unfortunately, the beer scene here is not good. As a matter of fact, it’s bad. Growing, but still bad. Most Israeli brewers seemingly have yet to discover American hops, and almost every Israeli beer I’ve had is sweet to the point of being unbalanced. The best beers here are German pilsners and wheat beers, which get boring quick when you’re used to American craft beer. This isn’t a complaint, just an observation.
So what am I drinking?
With beer now an afterthought, I’ve since turned to vodka. And that, folks, is a sentence I never thought I’d write. It’s super easy to mix, can be added to pretty much anything, is low in calories, and is cheaper than almost any other liquor out there. If you are thinking that I wrote that sentence to somehow justify drinking an alcohol I’ve always looked down upon, then you are correct.
To further that justification, I’ve taken to infusing vodkas with all sorts of different flavors. I usually do my infusions in 500mL batches just because the biggest size they sell here are liter bottles and I like to try multiple flavors at a time.
When infusing, you generally want to wait 2-3 days before drinking, although you can taste along the way to check how the flavor is developing. I would also recommend shaking the bottles a few times a day so the ingredients don’t settle at the bottom and concentrate the flavor too much. Here are some flavors and cocktails I’ve found tasty so far:
Cucumber
What to add: Cut and peel half a cucumber and add to the vodka. Leaving on the peel isn’t the end of the world, but I wouldn’t recommend it because it can give the vodka a pickly flavor.
Recipe: I stole this recipe from a sushi restaurant we used to frequent in Arlington. Stir together 1 part cucumber vodka, 1/2 part lime juice, 3 parts Cava (sparkling wine). Sprinkle cracked black pepper over the top and garnish with a cucumber slice.
Blood Orange-Pomelo
What to add: 1/2 teaspoon of each fruit zest.
Recipe: This one is good neat, but also works well in a Bloody Mary or Screwdriver.
Ginger-Pomegranate
What to add: 1 teaspoon of ginger zest and add 1-2 dozen slightly crushed pomegranate arils. You want the juice from the arils to get into the vodka without making a mess. You can also substitute a lot of other red fruits instead of the pomegranate.
Recipe: Perfect for a Moscow Mule because of the ginger.
Orange-Honey-Cinnamon
What to add: 1 teaspoon of orange test, 1 teaspoon of honey, 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon. If you feel like you want more cinnamon flavor after the first day, you can add more. Just be cautious because there is a fine line between subtly and overdoing it.
Recipe: This one is by far my favorite and is very easy to sip on it’s own. The orange flavor hits you right up front, the sweetness from the honey masks the alcohol burn, and the cinnamon on the finish ties everything together.
Time to drink up!
The best thing about vodka infusions is you can do them with pretty much anything you have around the house. Just get creative and remember that less is more. Cheers!
Since you can only do so many sit ups in your living room, the at-home workouts have fallen off precipitously. Meaning the majority of my exercise comes from walking the dog or a quick (read: slow) mile jog around the neighborhood while I gasp for air behind a mask. So the inactivity has shot way up while physical exercise has taken a nosedive. It also doesn’t help that my iPhone reminds me every other day how big of a piece of shit I am for taking less steps than normal, working out less than normal, and also using my phone for like 7 hours a day.
You would think not working out and lifting heavy weights and hopelessly trying to look respectable for bikini season would mean *less* injuries, but nope. As I often like to say I am aging in dog years and I seem to be physically falling apart due to all the inactivity. I somehow injured my shoulder getting *into* bed a couple weeks ago and I’m pretty sure I just have that now.
Doing some research into why it has become a conscious effort to open a heavy door without destroying my shoulder, the best self diagnosis I could come up with was Bursitis. And now I can’t stop laughing because I never even knew what Bursitis really was when Johnny Knoxville claimed to have it all those years ago.
So thats it for me folks, when the gyms finally do reopen in Boston and they tell us to jump back into our old workout routines, I’ll be sitting here like (old) Steve Rogers at the end of Endgame.
It’s week 4 of quarantine. I think. Maybe. Time is sort of relative at this point, no? I know I’ve personally been unable to enter any business that isn’t a grocery store or liquor store in now going on four weeks so that’s how I’m gauging it.
If you scroll through social media or the internet in general you’ll see people clinging to varying degrees of sanity. A lot of folks are blaming this on lack of social interaction or inability to go outside their homes in general as free as they once could. That is probably it, to a large extent. However I don’t think you can rule out the pure and simple fact that we as a society by and large don’t know how to live without a destination/obligations. We simply cease to know how to exist when we have nowhere to be. Just my two cents.
Anyway I reached out to my brethren in blogs and asked them how they were holding up, and got a variety of responses. With that said, enjoy, empathize, and commiserate below.
Red:It’s Week 4 (Week 5?) of the new norm that is social distancing and quarantine SZN. Some are taking it more seriously than others, but as someone who refused to touch the railings on the T before all this, I am taking it quite seriously. Didn’t even bother with a flimsy mask either, straight up ordered a balaclava, which I’m pretty sure you’d only know what that is if you played massive amounts of first person shooters growing up or were in the Spetsnaz. The quarantine is taking its toll though as my office chair officially called it a career and took its own inanimate life last week. So now I’m working from the couch for 8-16 hours a day as the health of my spine is in a race against the clock with Amazon Prime to deliver my new office chair before I develop spinal stenosis. This is fun. Dom: (Blogger’s Note: Fuck Dom). My quarantine is different in the sense that I’m in Israel and have a balcony that overlooks the Mediterranean. It’s dope, I’m not gonna lie. But that balcony is also the only thing keeping my sanity intact. You can only spend so many hours doing puzzles and listening to audiobooks. I’ve been playing a good amount of The Show with my star 3rd basemen Rusty Weiner and lefty ace Rube Waddell. Oh yeah, I have a mustache now.
Big Z: Last week was bulky waste pick up day in my town. The show must go on, right? It was the most exciting event at my house in weeks. I call it the purge. I threw away a ton of shit, some even left behind by the previous owner of my house. Even better, I got rid of a busted TV. (Don’t buy Westinghouse TVs, friends.) Now, my town was not picking up TVs that day. I lucked out when some young men found this TV in the box, with the stand and remote control included, and took it off my hands. I wonder how disappointed they were when they got it home and realized that it had no picture.
Papa G: I’ve been writing lots of music (varying degrees of quality), reading James Bond novels, busted out Rosetta Stone for about an hour and brushed up on my Spanish 101. A few naps. Lots of anxiety.
Lippa:Pros: Sleeping in, exercising more saving money, started binging this little known show called “The Sopranos” Attempting to prove to my bosses that working from home CAN be effective. Remember these things called jeans? My wardrobe is just a mix of sweatpants and mesh shorts depending on the temperature
Cons: Would love to watch a sports game, I don’t already know the outcome to. We’d be in the middle of the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs today (but who’s keeping track) You can only go on so many walks in a day. Remember bars? I think I’m approaching the end screen of Netflix.
Joey B: I like Red suffered a casualty of war this week as one of my pair of slippers, an integral part of my at-home life, was lost in battle. Up to that point I considered this whole viral episode to be my Shackleton’s Expedition – as long as we (myself and all my possessions) all made it out alive I’d declare it a victory. I think Shackleton and his men survived like, a year and a half living on the Antarctic sea. My slippers made it under four weeks. Other than that I am keeping my wits through a cornucopia of TV, a lack of haircuts, booze, video chats featuring said booze, and Uber Eats. We’ll get through this together.
Quarantining for weeks on end to help slow the spread of a global pandemic does not offer too many unique benefits. Especially in a time without the normalcy of the sports world and the much-needed escape it always provides. HOWEVER (Stephen A. Smith voice) you can’t help but discover classic sports games being shown all over your TV right now, ranging from every sport over the past 30 years or so. And re-watching some of these games obviously is not equivalent to enjoying the 2020 Sweet Sixteen/Elite Eight of March Madness or Major League Baseball’s Opening Day, but alas it’s something! Last weekend, for example, I found myself glued to watching the entire classic 1992 regional final game between Kentucky and Duke for the first time. And then Friday afternoon on MLB Network I stumbled across Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS between my beloved New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox. Being that it was one of my favorite games in 30 years of being a Yankees fan and nearly 17 years since I’d seen all 13 innings in full, needless to say I was locked in on my couch for the next three and a half hours. And for all my fellow Yankees fans who read The 300’s… so can you!
To quickly bring us all back to October 2003, the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry was at a fever pitch (no pun intended) and the ALCS had already included one of the more surreal moments I’ll ever remember as a sports fan (please don’t click the below clip if you have difficulty watching senior citizens being assaulted).
I still remember 13-year-old me being FUMING mad at Pedro Martinez as he pointed to his head while Jorge Posada was screaming at him from the steps of the dugout. Pedro had just drilled Karim Garcia in the back and following a Manny Ramirez over-reaction to a Clemens high pitch the next thing you knew the benches were cleared and a 72 year old Don Zimmer was charging at and taking a swing at none other than Pedro himself. Pedro proceeded to casually toss him to the ground. Just an insane scene all around. God, I miss hating a team as much as I hated that Boston Red Sox team. What a rivalry man. As good as both teams were from 2017-2018, Tyler Austin charging the mound against Joe Kelly just wasn’t quite the same as those ’03-’05 days.
So that brings us to October 16, 2003 and Game 7 of the ALCS. The Red Sox had just won Game 6 in the Bronx to force a decisive Game 7 and to try and continue their run to win their first World Series in 85 years. The starting pitching match up? Some guys named Roger Clemens and Pedro Martinez; not too shabby. The setting? The old Yankee Stadium (RIP). Now obviously 17 years later that game is mainly remembered for its last pitch and how Aaron F. Boone earned his middle name in Boston. But the beauty of re-watching some of these old games is all of the great stuff and critical plays in between that even some of the more die-hard Yankees and Sox fans would be hard pressed to remember. All of that was a long way of saying this game was deemed the sixth greatest game in the history of baseball by MLB Network for a reason…
First observation in re-watching is that unmistakable big-game feeling back in the old Yankee Stadium which was second to none and you could feel it through the screen big time as the game started. The early years of the new Yankee Stadium felt like a morgue in comparison. There was something about the old place on 161st Street and River avenue.
The palpable buzz in the Stadium didn’t last too long as Trot Nixon, a long-time notorious Yankee killer in those days, crushed a two-run homer off Clemens into the right field bleachers in the top of the second inning. A Kevin Millar blast to lead off the fourth gave the Red Sox a 4-0 lead and left a silent Stadium and a bleak outlook for the Yanks World Series chances. That Pedro guy was pretty good and he was absolutely dealing to that point.
I had completely forgotten that Roger Clemens had said that 2003 was going to be his last season pitching. Until it wasn’t and he ended up being Brett Favre before Brett Favre when it came to his retirement. Anyways, in what was thought at the time to very possibly be his last professional start, Clemens was pulled by Joe Torre in the top of the fourth inning with base runners on first and third and nobody out. Enter Mike Mussina. Making his very first relief appearance of his 13-year career. Mussina was already 0-2 in that ALCS and was being asked to keep the deficit right there at 4-0. And that’s exactly what he did, and then some.
The Class of 2019 Hall of Famer kept his team alive and in the game at a time when they needed it the most. But coming back from four runs down against the greatest starting pitcher of his generation remained a pretty daunting task. A couple of solo homeruns by Mike Francesa’s favorite Yankee Jason Giambi brought the Yankees to within two entering the 8th inning. That was until David Ortiz stepped to the plate against David Wells and sent a hanging curveball to the moon. An absolute back-breaking homerun that extended the Red Sox lead to 5-2. Little did Yankees fan know at the time but 2003 was just a preview of the endless seasons that David Ortiz would torture our lives by hitting clutch home run after clutch home run. That season, his first in Boston, Ortiz hit eight home runs against the Yankees (regular season and post) and he didn’t stop doing just that until the day he retired in 2016.
But that brings us to the bottom of the eighth (also known as my favorite half inning in all my years of being a Yankees fan) and thanks to Grady Little, Pedro was still on the mound.
The Fox broadcast showed a sign in the crowd at the beginning of the inning that said “Mystique Don’t Fail me Now’. It’s hard to describe (or remember for younger Yankees fans) but at this point in 2003, coming off the dynasty of winning four championships in five years from ’96-‘00 and even winning all three home games in the epic 2001 World Series, Yankee Stadium mystique was very much a thing and it was the ONLY thing giving me hope down three runs and five outs away from losing to our biggest rival.
To be fair to Grady Little, high pitch counts were not as much of a death sentence for a starter back in 2003 and Pedro’s was right around 100 entering the inning. Especially in a do or die Game 7 in which you’re attempting to break an 85-year drought. Also, from a Yankees fan perspective, I remember wanting Little to take the ball from the future first ballot Hall of Famer and hand it to the likes of Alan Embree or Mike Timlin. But no matter where you stood on whether or not Pedro should’ve started the inning, there’s absolutely no defending leaving him in after he consecutively gave up a one-out double to Jeter and line drive single to Bernie Williams, cutting the lead to 5-3. Thankfully he did just that and Hideki Matsui proceeded to rip a double down the line to set up second and third before Jorge Posada hit a bloop double to tie the game at five and send Yankee Stadium into an absolute euphoric frenzy.
We all know how the game ends but this would be the worst 2003 ALCS Game 7 blog of all time if I didn’t mention or include the first pitch of the top of the 13th inning…
It really couldn’t have been a more unlikely player to hit one of the biggest and most memorable home runs in Yankee history. The Yankees acquired Boone at the trade deadline and he hit a pedestrian .254 for the Yanks in the regular season before going 2-16 in the ALCS prior to that at-bat. Believe it or not he didn’t even start the game! The starting third basemen that night was of course the immortal (and proclaimed ‘Pedro killer’) Enrique Wilson. And then who could forget following the ’03 season Boone famously broke his leg in a pickup basketball game and would never again put on the Yankee pinstripes (as a player anyways).
The epilogue to this classic of a championship series game was the Yankees losing to the Marlins in six games. I’d love to delve further into breaking down that World Series but this blog is solely a Game 7 ALCS recap. Sorry folks!
Final Re-watch thoughts: Looking back 17 years later it was nice to watch a game during a time when the Yankees still dominated the rivalry with the Red Sox. If you were lucky enough to live under a rock during the next 17 years of the rivalry, let’s just say things have changed a bit in who has had the upper hand and let’s leave it at that. But there were definitely worse ways to spend three plus hours in the midst of a Coronavirus quarantine world than to re-watch the last game when the Yankees were on top of the rivalry and “1918” chants were still a thing.
The 300s 