ASG Lasting Impressions: Aw, Memories

Chris Mottram spent the past five days in New York City blogging from the MLB All-Star Game. This is the last of his posts recapping the experience.

The plan was to do one more of these "lasting impressions" posts today (something about moving the Derby and game to daytime events during the weekend), but this is a blog, and the All-Star game is already, like, 10 days old in blog years, so I'll post this and move on.

So, without further ado, let's queue the Sarah McLachlan because here come my favorite moments/memories from my time in New York. Well, at least the moments that we have photographic evidence of, which means my bone-in ribeye at Bobby Van's will not be included here, despite that being one of the top three highlights of the trip.

Bleacher mosh pit. This photo, featuring a fan upside-down in the bleachers, is a small sample of the chaos Josh Hamilton caused during the Derby. Every ball that landed in the bleachers resulting in a near-riot. We also witnessed a fan take a homer directly off his chin and another get arrested for jumping into that black, restricted area in dead center to retrieve a ball. All-in-all, Hamilton's first round, and the insanity it caused in the stadium, was the highlight of the entire trip.

Brian Wilson is awesome. Just about every player who showed up for the media session on Monday wore a suit, or a button up, or something GQ-ish. But not Brian Wilson. He showed up with a faux-hawk, a flavor savor, some fashionable-male t-shirt, designer jeans and a gold necklace with a huge cross dangling from the end. In a room full of legit All-Stars, Wilson is the one guy I'll remember most.

Cattle, waiting for the barn doors to open so they may feed. If for some reason you think being a reporter is glamorous, this photo should help ensure you that it is not. This image shows a small portion of the hundreds of media members waiting for door "C" to open so they may rush in and be the first to ask Derek Jeter how special it is to play in the last All-Star game at Yankee Stadium. Jeter, and every other All-Star, will subsequently hear this question 4,937 times over the next two days.

Manny being Manny. I don't blame him for not wanting to be there (see cattle photo above).

The Phillie fraud. We already documented the misleadings of Mr. Yaeger at the FanFest, but this photo of him signing a Pepsi bottle just tops the whole story off nicely. 

I'm lucky. As much as I may hate the Yankees, and the stadium, I can still appreciate how fortunate I am to have been able to walk down this narrow tunnel, into the Yankees dugout and up onto the field.

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.