Sunday, April 15, 2012

What a Week

Unless you live under a rock, you know that Andy Pettitte was assigned to the Tampa Yankees to pitch in his first minor league games on his way to making his comeback after retiring after the 2010 season. I went to Clearwater to watch him pitch on Monday even though I spent the 2 hours previous, in the walk in clinic with an ear infection. I sped to the field and got there in time to see his 3 innings. In the first inning, Andy only needed 8 pitches, all strikes, to retire the first 3 Thresher batters. He allowed a double and then a wild pitch and a sac fly later his first and only run scored. I tried to get some pictures of him but the light was terrible and they didn't turn out as well as I wanted. At the time I didn't think that I would get another chance to see him pitch but thankfully, he pitched again on Sunday afternoon at GMS field which I will get to in just a bit.


Andy signing autographs after his outing in Clearwater

I have so far, gone to 8 TY games. I went to the first 2 home games and then to Lakeland. They had an off day that Sunday and then went to Clearwater on Monday. For a while, I was thinking that I was cursing them because they lost the first 3 games I went to and then won 2 in a row in Clearwater that I did not go to. When they got back to Tampa on Thursday they won 5-4. They spent most of the game behind but luckily JR Murphy was on that night. JR hit a huge home run to left field to bring the TY within one and lead off the 8th inning with a triple off the right center field wall. He scored on a sac fly by Neil Medchill. The end of the game got a bit shaky after Regoberto Arrebato walked 2 but he struck out the final batter to seal the win. 





Today was the team meet and greet that they have at the beginning of each season for the season ticket holders. Last season they held the meet and greet before the season started which was kind of awkward because we hadn't seen any games and hadn't seen an official roster. This time we had 10 games to see who our new team was before the meet and greet. We were all hoping that Andy would come, they told him about our meet and greet but he didn't show. I don't really blame him because I doubt I would want to deal with 80+ season ticket holders. I was about 10 people away from getting his autograph after he pitched too but I thought it was just a big mob of people and there was no way I stood a chance in a mob of autograph hawkers, I walked over eventually and saw that it was a line which I promptly jumped into, he left about 10 people away. Darn. 

The game itself today was really good. Andy pitched 4 innings and gave up 2 hits while walking none and he turned a pretty nice 1-4-3 double play. I would say that he has conquered high A and is ready to move on. Sadly. Mikey O'Brien pitched the final 5 innings and allowed just 1 run. Neil Medchill had a heck of a game scoring the first run and then hit a home run that could have been foul but we will never know. He singled 2 home later in the game as well.



Here is the fake Jeter(Eduardo Sosa) and better than Arod(Kelvin Castro) standing on deck during a Daytona pitching change. They are the in the 1-2 spots in the lineup.


After the game was over(which we won 6-1) We headed over to the new Yankees Pavilion for our meet and greet. The pavilion is very big and very nice and overlooks the field that the pitchers use in spring training. We sat at a table which we promptly filled up with TY Boosters. As the players trickled in, we realized that some may not have a seat. One of our boosters stood up and offered his seat to a TY player who turned out to be Kelvin Castro. We let him enjoy his pizza and made small talk with him and informed him of how much we prefer him as the number 13 over the "real" number 13. His English was pretty good and we commended him for his bravery after sitting down at a table full of boosters alone. He told us that he didn't mind and liked to be social, I said sometime to the effect of "oh, so then you wont mind walking us around to tell us who is who so we can get autographs". He said, no that he didn't mind and as a soon as he finished his pizza, he stood up and said "Let's go" so we followed him around the room while he told us who was who and we collected autographs. I was able to get a lineup signed and some of the cards I got from my trip to Charleston. Eventually Kelvin had to leave as he was the ride for some of the other guys and they were obviously ready to go.

It was a pretty good day. I am looking forward to our first TY Booster Club lunch where we will get to be closer with all the players as there will just be booster members. 

Ill end this post with a few pictures of Andy.

Andy walking back to the dugout after his outing in Clearwater














And I end the post on a signature Andy pose. One we will hopefully be seeing in NY very soon.


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