El Ladron - or- The Jill Cell Phone Caper

The thief, foreground

We go to the Yanks-Sawx matchup in the Bronx tonight. Bottom 1, Abreu goes deep and Yanks grab a 2-1 lead. Jill jumps out of her seat to celebrate. As the guy sitting in front of us--a Sawx fan, rabid Manny supporter-- inexplicably leaves his seat during the rally. A-Rod follows up with a homer, 3-1 Yanks. Man in front returns to his seat.

After the Yanks are retired to end the first, Jill goes to get some food but finds she can't locate her cell phone. She knows she had it, because she hadn't moved since she arrived at the yard. A frantic search ensues. Under the seats...in the aisle in front of us...under the seats in front of us... we can't find it anywhere.

At this point, I've called the number 5 times, we haven't heard anything and Jill assures me that the phone was left on ring not silent or vibrate. Finally, we begin asking around. The lady in front of Jill mentions that she saw it on the ground and asks the man sitting next to her--the man in front of us--if he had seen the phone.

Sure enough, the guy in front of us has the phone.

"Oh, is this your phone?" he asks, removing it from his pocket and holding it up.

Jill snags the phone, opens it and sees 5 missed calls from me over the last couple minutes. The phone is now set to vibrate.

"You're lucky I was here," the thief proclaims, paradoxically.

"We were lucky?" I wonder to myself. "You're the lucky one. First of all, you're the one that's had a phone vibrating in his pants for the last 7 minutes. Second, if you weren't here, you wouldn't have stolen the phone, taken it to the men's room, set it to vibrate and driven my wife crazy looking for it for the last 10 minutes. That's an f-d up definition of lucky. Nice jacket, by the way....

...Typical Sawx fan. Just don't pee on me. "

We were lucky to retrieve the phone, and Jill lives to tell her first crime tale of the big city.

Only in New York, kiddies, only in the Bronx.

GAME NOTES: Giambi owns Timlin so far--by my unofficial count he's got 2 jacks and a 2-run double off the 42-year-old righty...Glad to see that LaTroy Hawkins gave up my beloved 21 for Clemens' 22...I hate Red Sox fans...It took the Yanks five games to score 15 runs in 2008 and they do it in nine innings tonight... Astronaut Dr. Garrett Reisman threw out the first pitch from the space station, which was cool.