99 and 20 on

The mind wanders as it is wont to do and we find ourselves thinking 20 summers back, the summer of '99.  For us the summer of 70's retro, The Phantom Menace - the summer of greens and grays, the summer at CNN Inside Politics. 

The summer of one kickass 26th birthday party in which we had everyone we knew over and knocked back a case and half of beer and a bottle and 3/4s of whisky with our childhood friend.

We lived in Northern Virginia and took the Metro into Union Station. Boy was it hot. Thinking back we think of AC. DC* is hot anyway but this was an especially hot summer. We recall watching some Orioles games played in 100 degree weather. 

For that matter for father's day we took our dad to a Yankees-Orioles game, his first (and only) at Camden Yards. This was the summer we obsessed about the Yankees. They won 114 games the year before. This was our first taste of generational Yankee glory and we wanted a repeat bad. Obsessed, unhealthily so, and worried the worry of the powerless, much like we do about politics now. The 1999 Yankees remain our favorite team of the Joe Torre Era. They won 98 games and the World Series.

We went to a CNN outing at Camden Yards, they played the Twins. By then we were a gofer for CNN's chief pollster, Keating Holland. A very nice man, fellow baseball geek and Delawarean as is Mrs. Stroock. He liked to use a keyboard rather than a mouse and told us how he used to work with punch cards. Keating took the time to explain how polling works and we spent a summer collating polls for him and learning how they were written and organized.

We went to a half dozen other Orioles games that year and saw the Yankees clinch the division at Camden Yards. When some Orioles fan yahoo shouted Derek Jeter sucks we turned around and said, 'It is 12-3. Why are you still here?!' Paul O'Neill hit a bases loaded double in the 8th, still the most exciting baseball play we've ever seen in person.

*See what I did there?