'12 MLB Fan Cave dweller RICARDO MARQUEZ hails from Anaheim, but can’t get enough of the Big Apple this season. The seven cave dwellers never miss an at bat from the Fan Cave in N.Y.'s Greenwich Village, but the participants only just saw their first live game this week when MLB surprised the housemates and flew them all to the All-Star Game in K.C. Marquez talks about the cave dwellers’ ferocious appetites, the group's "ski-ball master" and the various guests that come to visit.
HALO EFFECT: I’m an Angels fans so when the team is down I kind of do different things to start a rally. I’ll have a rally jersey. … I’m actually all over the place. I’m kind of one of the people that just likes to walk around. If I sit for a game it’s not going to happen for very long because I get way too excited. … I’m a rabid fan in there, so it’s been pretty insane. … The Angels actually sent me a care package, so that was pretty awesome. They sent me a bunch of jerseys, they sent me some autographs, memorabilia. They sent me the ThunderStix we had in the 2002 World Series. So I’ve been cranking those out. Some of my friends just brought me these new (Angels CF) MIKE TROUT hats that the stadium’s just going nuts over.
NO SLEEP 'TIL BROOKLYN: We don’t actually live in the Cave. We have separate housing down in SoHo. We just kind of report here in the mornings and go back home just for bed. … This is my first time in New York, so if I wake up on time before the game I’ll try and tour the city as much as I can. Just cause I’ve never had this opportunity before so I will try to sleep in and catch up on it, but other than that I’m out and about trying to hang out.
GET YOUR CRACKER JACKS! We don’t have a kitchen here so we actually order online through this app on our phones called Seamless. It just has a listing of all these restaurants in the area. We just order our food through there or we’ll cook stuff at our house beforehand and just bring it in for the game. … We started a Wing Sunday. That was started by one of the other dwellers, KYLE THOMPSON. We order chicken wings from various places. We try to mix it up a bit but we’re starting to figure out what our favorites are. It’s been pretty hilarious to see what everyone’s taste buds are. I actually get this chipotle chicken wing mix. I’ve never had that kind of mix before back in California. So having it here has been insanely good.
SEVENTH INNING STRETCH: My workout routine on the weekends is pretty much picking up a pizza box over and over again. Other than that, I just try to go up and down the stairs as many times as I can. … We’ll kind of just run around the stairs and down the slide, cause we actually have the home run slide in here. That’s in the second level of the space and we kind of go up there since all the Taco Bell that we’ve been eating is absolutely insane. I just found out that you can get a Doritos taco and mix it with the Cheesy Gordita, so it’s like this Cheesy Gordita Dorito crunch thing that we kind of made up.
EXTRA INNINGS: This weekend I think the first game starts at 2:00pm, so we don’t really have to report to the game until then unless a player comes in. So if (former MLBer) DAVID WELLS comes in at 10, we’ll just show up at like 9:30 in the morning and we’re there all the way until the games end. So we’re there from first pitch to the very last out of the day. It’s long hours but it’s fantastic. I couldn’t ask for anything more.
PUT IT IN THE BOOKS: I try to do as much reading as I can. The cool thing is that we actually had JOEL STEIN (as a guest). He wrote a book that’s pretty hilarious so I’ve been trying to keep up with my reading that way. Joel Stein wrote this book where he is trying to do all these manly things in a quest to show his son how to become a man. The book is a phenomenal read, “Man Made: A Stupid Quest For Masculinity.”
STAR STRUCK: We can’t attend any live games. So the first time we actually saw a live game was at the All-Star Game a couple days ago. We were surprised last week by (MLB CMO) JACQUELINE PARKES that all of us would be attending the festivities in Kansas City. It was the first time we’ve flown out of New York together and got to watch a game together. So we saw the Home Run Derby, saw the All Star Game. I had a couple ultimate fan experiences that I probably will never happen to have again. It was truly unreal.
