"Dirty South" Saturday at Sox Park

Ozzie Curses Out Contreras in Two Languages
Originally uploaded by bridgeportseasoning.

We occasionally get free tickets to Sox games at work. I mentioned to someone in an e-mail that I thought about attending the game last Saturday and she was all "IWANNAGOTOTHEGAMETOO!!" As luck would have it, tickets to Saturday's game became available and we met up at Bernice's for pre-game drinks that included an introduction to a Lithuanian liqueur called "starka" that tasted like scorched caramel, but in a good way.

Incidentally, I started off the evening with a shot of Malort.

So we're at the game settling into our seats and sitting next to me are two young girls who managed to smuggle beer into the game. But only one can each. One can each? Why go through the effort?

Carlos Quentin comes to the plate and the girl to my right screams, "You're an asshole, Carlos!" Apparently they were Annie Savoys in training and didn't take kindly to Quentin's rebuffing of their advances. Then Quentin stroked a double and they're cheering his ass. We looked at them and said, "Must be hell to have such conflicting emotions about someone."

It wasn't an invitation to start dishing about their experiences with White Sox players, but they used it as such, anyway. One of them said, "I'd love to have Joe Crede's baby. I'd tell my boyfriend it's his." Crede and AJ were their favorites, for those of you who are curious.

The highlight for me was when Alexi Ramirez came to the plate and the PA folks started playing some salsa. And not some weak-ass Desi Arnaz stuff, but some bone-raising salsa dura the likes of which we used to book at HotHouse.

When the music ended, the Annie Savoy closest to me screams, "What's with that salsa crap?" in her best Southwest suburban sneer. I told her that Ramirez was from Cuba. I wished I'd had taken the question to be rhetorical.

She said, "He's Cuban? I thought he was black!" Try as we might, we could not close the floodgates. She as rolling about how her fiance was Mexican, "but he has a brown ass. My fiance's a brownie!" She then said that she was going to marry her fiance and move to Mexico with him, with one reason for marriage being that she's "never been anywhere. I've never even seen the ocean."

It was the kind of ignorance that comes from not having been anywhere, although I suspect that she could probably travel the world and still ask why the Sox play salsa for Ramirez.

My friend asked her why she needed to get married to see the ocean, but this one didn't have an answer. Eventually, she and her friend worked their way down to the Sox dugout to tempt Crede and AJ, apparently. We leave our seats to grab food and beer, come back to find Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn and his family in our seats. Lt. Gov. Quinn got my boss started many years ago. I also think he appreciated my "Winning Ugly" white Sox logo Obama t-shirt. But he didn't say.

We didn't mind. The floor show was over by then.