A few nights ago, my brother and I made the trip to Yankee Stadium. After scouring Stub Hub a week ago for reasonable tickets, and moving him into his new apartment we were ready to go in our Orioles' gear. In the end we were able to get cheap tickets, about $15 a piece including fees for decent seats behind the 3rd base dugout in the highest level. But overall we had a good view of the field. Maybe it was because it was a Tuesday night, maybe it's because the Orioles were playing, but we definitely got reasonable tickets at a very reasonable price.
We arrived at the stadium and saw it was littered with Orioles fans. Little orange dots amongst a sea of blue and white and pinstripes. It was nice to see some friendly faces. And actually, most of the fans were pretty nice to us. A few rowdy obnoxious Yankee fans got kicked out of our section. But they were quickly bored of taunting the Orioles fans and moved on to fighting amongst themselves. I have to hand it to the stadium officials, because they had no problem kicking out the idiots who were fighting or even the guys going overboard on the taunting.
Sadly, I think one of the reasons all the O's fans were able to handle the "you sucks," to the point the Yankees fans got bored and turned on each other is that it's the truth. Yeah, we know our team has been bad for over a decade. Yeah, you telling us is old news. We have to live the pain of cheering for a losing team. But we know when they finally do turn this ship around we'll be better for it. We stick with our team no matter what. So what if we've been losing for a decade, any sign of promise or hope is enough to excite us. I'll be ecstatic if we can finally have a winning season, a feat that is looking further and further away each game. Yankees fans are upset if they don't win a championship. There's something to be said for the happiness that comes with lowered expectations and hope.
After Brad Bergesen pitched a great game through the 6th inning, only letting up one two run home run in the first and pitching masterfully. At that point the game was still close, 2-1. We began to get excited at still being in the game against Sabathia in the 7th inning. But that was when all hell broke lose. The Yankees scored seven runs that inning off of three different pitchers including most off of reliever Chris Ray. When the inning finally ended, the guy sitting next to us, who had been very pleasant all game, turned and told us that his 10 year old son said he felt sorry for us. That it must be hard to watch your team blow it like that. We quickly responded that he shouldn't feel bad. We were used to it. If anything, I brought away from that game the Bergesen is a reasonable starting pitcher. And that makes me happy. Sure, it does suck to watch your team get blown out. But I also got to see Adam Jones make and incredible diving catch that topped the Sports Center highlights the next day. I got to see some great pitching for a while. And I got to see Yankees Stadium. All in all it was good trip.
It was a beautiful stadium and I'd be happy to go back and see another game there. I didn't really eat at the restaurants or special bars. Mostly it was a good game worth watching, spent drinking expensive domestic beers and eating some overpriced french fries. Maybe I'll go back to watch a team I care less about and actually do some exploring of the stadium. But what I saw of it, I enjoyed.
Photo: I didn't get around to uploading the pictures we took and now they are with my brother, still on his camera. So I borrowed a picture from someone else.
