An acoustic night with Bruce Springsteen

Last night I went to see Bruce Springsteen.
The truley awesome Lynn Pettypiece and Shawn Hebb managed to get the ticketmaster box for the show so huge thanks to them.
The show was great.
When we first arrived we were presented with a list of "Rules" for the evening. No leaving once the show has started, no seating during songs, all concession stands close 15 minutes before show, etc. Not very rock n roll but I think that was the point. It wasn't going to be a rock show so Bruce didn't want piss heads ruining the show by shouting for Born in the USA every 5 minutes.
It was just Bruce on his own, a sparse stage with a grand piano, a little pump organ (much like the one Neil Young uses alot) and some soft back lighting.
He opened up with Into the Fire played on the organ which gently rose to a crescendo of noise. That was followed by Reason to Believe for which he stood stomping his feet for percussion and blowing some mean bluesy harmonica, the vocals twisted through the mike to sound a bit distorted.
The set was had a lot from his new album Devils and Dust, which is a great album and people already cheered in recognition of the new ones. He stayed away from the main stay hits of the 80's and instead picked some real gems from the early stuff. For You played on the piano was breathtaking as was Lost in the Flood. He brought the electric guitar out to do State Trooper and came back for the encore with an almost rocking Darlington County which prompted a charge towards the stage before the ushers battled them back.
I was enthralled for the whole set and by the end was hanging over the box perched on the edge of my seat. Goosebumps more than once.
The only negative thing about the night, which on another night might have really pissed me off, was the guys in the box next to us.
These guys were apparantley huge fans (they had already seen him in Detroit and Ottawa on this tour), but everytime he played an old classic they started high fiving and going "woooo, yeah, woooo ...... I can't believe he f-ing played this!!!!". This would usually go on for the first half of the song and really I don't think they actually listened to much of the set, they were to busy congratulating themselves on the fact he played a certain song.
Like I say on another night it might have really got to me but last night I was too taken in by the set to really notice.
Here is the set list:

Into The Fire
Reason To Believe
Devils & Dust
Empty Sky
Long Time Coming
Highway 29
For You
Two Faces
State Trooper
All I'm Thinkin' About Is You
Brilliant Disguise
Reno
Wreck On The Highway
Lost In The Flood
The Rising
Further On (Up The Road)
Jesus Was An Only Son
This Hard Land
The Hitter
Matamoras Banks
(encore)

Darlington County
Bobby Jean
Wild Billy's Circus Story
The Promised Land
Dream Baby Dream

The continuing adventures of the Babe

So in the end Babe himself decided to give up pitching. He actually had a bit of a fight with the Red Sox manager about it (he had lots and lots of fights with managers) but in the end he settled into left field and became one of the greatest hitters of all time.
The trade to the Yankees was purely about money. The Red Sox owner sent him to the Yankees for $40,000 and a loan agreement worth $300, 000.
As for Babe well he pretty much built the Yankees. In his first year there they broke the league attendance record, in his 3rd won their first World Series and eventually had to build Yankee Stadium to keep up with the attendance. It really was the house that Ruth built. The Yankees owner also insisted they play in pinstripes to make Ruth look slimmer. Without him the franchise might never have become half of what it is today.
The Red Sox on the otherhand finished in last place in 7 of the next 11 seasons.
The numbers on Ruth are always amazing. For a player today to hit the same percentage total of league home runs that Ruth did, they would need to hit more than 300 in a season. He only had 300 homers when he was 32, so hit 400 at the end of his career when many thought he was done.
He also got suspended alot, mostly for breaking team or league rules about curfews or extra curricular money making. In one season he was suspended 4 seperate times.
I have to say I'm a fan. I watched the baseball all-star game last night and the home-run derby the night before. In the derby Bobby Abreau hit 24 homers in the 1st round to beat the old record by 7. The whole time I was thinking that Ruth would have smoked em all, just like he always did.

The Babe

I've been on a bit of a baseball kick recentley.
There's something about baseball in a sort of Field of Dreams way. Not being from America I can't really appreciate the history of the game fully but even I felt something special last year when the Red Sox came back from 0-3 down to the Yankees to win 4-3 and then break the curse of the bambino by beating St. Louis 4-0 in the world series.
I decided to do a bit of reading and started with David Wells autobiography. This is a bit of a funny place to start as Wells is a 300lb beer swilling, motorbiking pitcher. Wells started life with the Blue Jays, won a world series here and pretty much hated every minute of it. He hated the fans, the city, the press, everything. Eventually he got traded to his boyhood hero Yankees where he pitched a perfect game, won the world series and then got traded back to Toronto (which off course he hated). The book was a great read and Wells makes for a colourful anti-hero. In the book Wells makes alot of references to Babe Ruth, who is his hero, and I was intregued. Off course I'd heard of Ruth but Wells really paints him as this larger than life bad boy of baseball so I decided the next book would be about Ruth.
I'm only about half way through the Ruth book but already I'm amazed. Ruth hit more than 700 home runs in his career and sits 2nd in the all time list. The amazing thing is the guy started out as a pitcher. In fact in his first 4 years in the league he only hit 6 home runs total. He did win the world series in each of his first 2 years in the league with the Boston Red Sox and was in fact one of the best pitchers in the league. In1915 he won 24 games and pitched 35 complete games out of 38 starts. That is incredible. The current leader for complete games in the American league is Roy Halliday of the Blue jays and he has 5.
You might think that things have changed alot and baseball is a very different game today than it was then but really it's not the case. Apart from a few steroids here and there it's the same game, the same stadiums (at least the Red Sox are still at Fenway) and the same rules.
I'm just on the brink of the famous trade that sent Ruth to the Yankees and cursed the Red Sox to 80 years without a world series. Ruth is about to quit pitching (which seems astonishing considering how good he was) and become a home run machine. I can't wait.