Baseball Buddy

Waiting for friends in the city last night, I decided to look for a place to eat that was showing baseball but wasn't too crowded. I had sort of resigned myself to a bar-n-grill type establishment, so I sort of lucked out when I stumbled across a sort of a hippie fusion place. They were out of the ostrich curry, but the catfish tacos proved a fine choice.

The Yankees were on, and I was sort of annoyingly asking the bartender to change it to the Mets game, forgetting that of course A-Rod was shooting for number 300. But the bartender, himself a Yankees fan, was very accommodating and changed it back and forth throughout the evening. The only other person interested in either game was this guy sitting next to me, who was very friendly. He was also a Yankees fan, and talked a bit of anti-Mets trash, but with both New York teams winning, nobody was really upset. He was from Belize, told me he was a sports fan, an alcoholic, and a marijuana dealer, and he showed me pictures of his 7-day-old daughter on his ESPN-branded phone.

Anyway, no real point to this story. I guess I've had plenty of similar conversations with total strangers...you're hanging out alone and you just start talking to someone about something. Sports is just another hook on which to hang a temporary hat of friendship. Which is fine. And the Mets won.