New York has Not Been Kind

That headline has nothing really to do with the Astros opening loss in the series with the Mets in which the New Yorkers were held to only three scattered singles, but still beat the Astros 2-1 on Friday night. No, it pertains to my experiences in the big city.

It STARTED with the Astros loss. After the game my duties on Astros road games is to do an on field interview if the club wins, but also go inside the clubhouse with a free lance cameraman to hear from Manager Mills plus two or three key players. After losses sometimes the availability of the key players takes awhile.

Since the Astros Live Post game show runs approximately 30 minutes and "sound" from the manager won't be available at least 15 minutes into the show, things can be a bit rough.

For instance we employ "runners" to carry the tapes from the Astros clubhouse to the production truck. In Philadelphia the truck is almost closer to Pittsburgh. Fortunately at Citi Field in New York it is a much shorter run. That meant last night we could wait later than in some parks. But wait we did. Starting pitcher Nelson Figueroa was tardy in arriving at his locker to meet with the media. A New York area native, he had a good excuse. He had talk with and say good-bye to the Little League team he works with when he is in the area.

We got some of his comments and told our runner to really run and get the material to the truck before the show back in Houston was over. After that my job is done. This night, however, due to Figueroa's tardiness I missed the first of two busses the Astros had going back to the hotel. That meant I had to wait another 25 minutes. Now please remember the stadium and hotel are about 30 minutes apart even at 11pm.

Once we got back to the hotel I knew something was wrong with this trip. When I got on the elevator in the hotel I stepped in something that should not be in an elevator. I will give whoever did it the benefit of the doubt. Maybe an uncontrollable illness? You can imagine what I stepped in. It was not vomit. Once I got to my floor I decided to try and hop to the room since only one shoe was contaminated. That is not easy to do when also pulling a rolling bag. Once I got into the room I spent the next 20 minutes cleaning my shoe. That pretty much killed my thoughts of going out to grab something to eat. End of my Adventures with Excrement?

No, not at all. Eating breakfast at Lindy's at 54th and 7th I unwisely made the decision to eat outside instead of inside. It was a nice sunny morning with the temperature in the low 70s. What could be wrong with that? If I had elected to sit at a table with an umbrella nothing at all. I didn't. As you probably know there are a lot of pigeons in New York.....