Last night while Cole Hamels, Ryan Howard, and Jayson Werth were taking care of beating up of the Boston Red Sox during the first Inter-league game of the season, I headed up to New York City to take in the last night of Pearl Jam's 2010 North American tour at "The World's Most Famous Arena", Madison Square Garden, with Mr. ChickPhilA.
Mr. ChickPhilA was lucky enough to go to Thursday's show as well, and kept texting me with highlights from the set - "State of Love and Trust", "Porch", "Leash", etc... - I hoped that they would have enough awesomeness left for Friday night's set.
After a lovely dinner of Tater Tots and grilled cheese while being serenaded by old Elvis videos at Trailer Park, we headed over to the Garden.
We picked up our tickets and were excited to find these in the envelope too:
Woo Hoooo aftershow!!
We spent the time before Pearl Jam's set trying to guess what they would open with. Mr. ChickPhilA FTW with Corduroy. Complete set list was as follows:
Main Set:
Corduroy, Hail Hail, Do the Evolution, Worldwide Suicide, Got Some, Breath, Nothingman, I'm Open (Dedicated to Howard Zinn), Unthought Known, Grievance, Amongst the Waves, Present Tense, Not For You/Modern Girl, Push Me Pull Me, Rats, Daughter/WMA, The Fixer, Why Go
Encore 1:
The End (w/ string quartet), Just Breathe (w/ string quartet), Slow Lukin (w/ strings), Black Red Yellow, Sweet Lew, Given to Fly, Spin the Black Circle, Rearviewmirror
Encore 2:
Wasted Reprise, Betterman, Black/We Belong Together, The Real Me, Hunger Strike, Alive, Kick Out the Jams, Yellow Ledbetter/Star Spangled Banner
So yah, the set was amazing. The crowd was out of control. The entire first verse and chorus of Betterman was sung just with the crowd and Eddie's guitar. I didn't think that the show could be any better than the last night of the Spectrum, but this one came close.
Afterwards we slapped on our passes and went across the arena to wait for the aftershow. As we stood waiting to go backstage, we heard a familiar voice coming from the next section over. We looked over to see non other than Fox Sports own Joe Buck (with an all access laminate no less).
I remember Buck blabbing about the PJ concerts happening at the Spectrum during the World Series, and I know that the band came over to Nov 1 game at the Bank. And we know that Eddie is a big baseball fan. So it did make sense that Buck, in town for the Yankees/Mets series, was at the show too. In any case, it became my mission to say something to him before we left the Garden.
People with laminates got led backstage first, then the rest of us with the stickies. We made our way into the hospitality rooms to grab some drinks and try to find other people we knew. (The rooms, btw - visiting team locker rooms with black drapes over the lockers....pretty neat.) We ended up right smack dab next to Buck and the people he was with.
Some guy was talking to him about Justin Bieber and the possibility of doing something in St. Louis with Albert Pujols (just hearing grown men talk about Justin Bieber was amusing).
Then when there was a break in the conversation, we happened to be right next to Buck, so Mr. ChickPhilA turned to him, held out his hand, and said "Hi Joe, I'm Mr. ChickPhilA, just wanted to say hi, introduce myself."
I then stuck my hand out and introduced myself as a huge baseball fan, so I had heard a lot of his work over the years.
A guy behind Buck then said "Oh not his football work though?" to which I laughed and said, "Sorry Joe, I have to listen to Merrill Reese call the Eagles games, the TV goes down and the radio goes up."
He laughed and said he was glad I at least listened to 50% of his work, to which I then said (and I actually can't believe I said this to him when I thought about it afterwards) - "Well, I can tolerate you on the baseball".
I told Joe Buck I tolerate him as a baseball announcer. Not that I am a fan of his work, not that I like to listen to his work on baseball, that I merely tolerate it.
He laughed and was a good sport. We all chatted about the games that had gone on that night, how my one friend was sneaking glances during the show of a TV showing the Yankees/Mets game, how I kept checking MLB at bat for Phillies updates - he actually was a pretty nice and chatty. I then asked if we could get a photo with him and he was more than happy to oblige.
Me, Joe Buck, and Mr. ChickPhilA - backstage @ Pearl Jam, MSG
So all in all a great night.
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Getting ready to head over to the Phills/Sox game in a few minutes. Meeting up with an old friend of mine who I haven't seen in like 10 years at the game. He's a Red Sox fan (he's at least from Vermont, so it's his natural team to like). Should be a good time. We have SRO tickets today so we'll be wandering - anyone else going to the game?
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