Ugg, A. Busch IV, Youk's Goatee and Other Mistakes From the All-Star Game

Last night's game alternated hot and cold, slow and fast, excruciating and really excruciating.

I live vicariously through my boyfriend for major sporting events. (Oh, sh*t, it's a girl writing, and she's dating, I'm out.) The festivities started out the night before with a call from him at Yankee stadium. 

He got pretty much crushed at the derby—both literally by other fans and figuratively with his giant cups of beer. I did manage to find him on my tivo.

Actually, you can't really see him, but you can see his Yankees hat slapping his best friend, affectionately named "Big Nugs," as the camera focuses on the kid in the row in front of them who caught one of Hamilton's 28. 

Night two, he gave in and bought a single ticket off Craig’s list and went with his binoculars to a seat that from the picture he sent me on Blackberry Messenger. 

It looks like he was about six rows back on the side of right field. First, he commented on the crowd; I told him that I could hear how loud it was, especially the boos for Red Sox manager Francona. I'm sure he was a part of that.

As the game wore on though, both of us tired of the dramatics and just wanted to see the AL win (although I didn't want to see the loss chalked up to a Cubs pitcher—I do live in the Windy City). 

When you've been with someone for a while or when you've been in the same job for too long, it's easy to focus on all the bad things you didn't notice when you were so infatuated the flaws were easy to overlook. 

No, not my boyfriend—that's when I started focusing on all the things I didn't like about the game.

1. Uggla. I wanted the crowd to start the chant "UGLY, UGLY" from Nickelodeon’s "Salute Your Shorts." The counselor’s name was Ug Lee, for anyone that didn't get chicken pox in the 1980s. Even worse was that despite all his errors, the AL still couldn't pull out a win until the bottom of the 15th. Again—Ugg.
2. The Anheuser-Busch adds. That's fine if InBev wants to keep sponsoring MLB and the All-Star weekend, but don't put August Busch IV on an ad telling us that Bud is different because it's a family company, unless you mention that it's now a family company for Brazilians and Belgium.
3. Kevin Youkilis' goatee. This is not specific to the All-Star game, but damn if he isn't the ugliest man to walk the planet. Making his chin look like a crotch isn't helping things.

So when the game ended with the pop fly, all I could think was—I'm glad I didn't have time to dwell on Josh Hamilton's tats for long because I'm really starting to like him.