On Sunday I found myself in a horse box. I know you don’t know what that is and quite frankly, neither do I. While it does sound vaguely erotic – like a device you might find in a whimsical pleasure dungeon – it is not that… much to my chagrin.
The Horse Box simply put, is a no frills, quaint little bar in Manhattan’s east village (13th and A if you must know). I go there very sparingly – usually to watch some terrible sporting event on one of its six TV’s. It’s never very crowded, except when one of said terrible sporting events does in fact draw a crowd. It’s the favorite bar of one of my roommates and it makes sense… it’s the only Baltimore bar in the neighborhood. That’s right. Baltimore.
The coolest thing I ever saw in that city was in 1998 when Mike Mussina took a Sandy Alomar Jr. come backer off the face. My parents and I could hear his nose and eye socket break from our seats down the left field line. To his credit, the Moose didn’t scream… because he was unconscious face down on the mound. If memory serves me correctly, that same night Boog Powell signed a free hat I was given at the gate, which I promptly lost the next day on the log flume at Busch Gardens. Good night. Great ballpark.
But I digress… So here I was with both of my roommates. One from Baltimore, screaming about the virtues of all things B-Mo: The Ravens, The O’s, The Wire, the USS Constellation, yada, yada, yada.
The other, a gentleman born in western Canada and raised in Boston of all places. As irony and misplaced/uncalled for racism would have it, I guess that makes him a Canadian Beaner… Of course he’s a huge Sox, Pats, Bruins fan with an obligatory Tom Brady Fat Head behind his bedroom door, so you know he’s cool.
Both men, proudly and without concern for judgment, wore long sleeve shirts of their respective football teams. I on the other hand, a Jets fan, wore a casual sweater…because Jets fans are sweater people now.
As we drank beers, played darts and watched the Knicks/Heat game, I realized that these few weeks between the Super Bowl and Opening Day is the only time of the year that the three of us don’t have any good AFC/AL East material to rag on each other about. It’s the calm before the storm.
One of the TV’s showed the Phillies/Blue Jays spring training game. We watched as Aaron Cook tossed three lazy fastballs to Jose Bautista, reaching a 2-1 count. Almost simultaneously, we all said, “He’s going yard this at bat.” Sure enough on the next pitch, Cook threw a fat batting practice fastball right down the middle, which Bautista promptly parked in the left field seats.
The three of us, Yankees, Orioles and Red Sox fans respectively, looked at each other, mouths agape.
Our differences momentarily put aside. Our collective enemy in the AL East, found.
Stay tuned for next time when the other guys weigh in… And Angry Ward tomorrow, of course.
