My favorite A-Roid story:

Da Ace and I only had one rule about ballgames, never spend money on tickets. We knew people. We spent a lot of summers together up in row X, with nosebleeds…

One day we got field-level seats, right behind the third base line, between third base and the outfield. Great seats, close enough to chat with the legend, Hideki Matsui. Not sure he ever understood what we said, his English wasn’t that great. We called him Godzilla, a clutch hitting, balls to the wall, sweat and blood and body contact ball player.

Fifty feet away, stood, looking pretty and not sweating at all, da Roid. I’m not saying he coined it, but da Ace was calling Rodriguez, “da Roid,” years before anyone else.

To my left, sat this guy, who looked and sounded like Tom Waits. Getting himself happily drunk on fourteen dollar beers. This guy admitted he snuck down here from the cheap seats up on top, I knew he was one of us, a brother from up in row X. I said we got ours for free too, a gift from someone. Probably Ellen Friedman and Victor Dasaro.

I explained to Tom Waits look-alike-guy about our rule on paying for seats. He agreed as he bought another beer. He seemed to feel a sense of elegance in having beers delivered to him, down here in the good seats.

Mid-seventh inning a fancy, pretty lady in a dress, and her husband, in a clean white polo shirt sat down in front of us. Obviously their first time at the legendary ball yard.

Me, da Ace and Tom sat there. Waving at Godzilla, flipping off da Roid, watching baseball. A good day in da Bronx.

Mid-ninth inning, a game against Seattle, a critical game in the late summer pennant race, this little dribbler comes down the third base line, right between the legs of da Roid. He didn’t even bend down. Godzilla scooped it up and threw a fastball to first so hard I thought he’d dislocate his arm. The Seattle hitter got on base. The dribbler eventually cost us the game. Da Roid stood there hands and glove on hips, not sweating.

Drunk Tom, da Ace and me were on our feet screaming a stream of obscenities, some actully unique and I was sure, upon reflection, created just for that particular moment of A-Roid hatred, and to this day must be some sort of record. Maybe like number of vile obscenities screamed in under five seconds at a ballgame, in the summer of 2008, in da Bronx.

The fancy lady and her white polo-shirt wearing husband looked back at us, she looked nervous, I swear to god, drunk Tom said to the woman, “Oh lady, we are fucking sorry!” That made it a little worse. The fancy lady and the clean shirt got up and left. They never came back.

We felt bad, it was A-Roids fault. We yelled some more shit at him and flipped him off again. Drunk Tom could kind of wave his finger at third base like he was drilling it into da Roids ass! The only word that came to mind was elegance.

I miss da Ace and the old ballyard. Somedays when I read about that pendejo that wasted ten seasons at third base, I remember drunk Tom Waits and that perfect summer day in da Bronx.

“Oh lady, we are fucking sorry!”