Yankees v Indians 9-18-21

Well, it's the middle of September already. Not that you'd know that from the sweaty gym balls-style weather that we've been having. We were looking forward to a pleasant outdoor experience during a late season baseball game. Instead, we've left the game with sun burns and suffering from dehydration. Probably didn't help that we started our afternoon off with wine instead of water, but that is not our fault. It should have been mid-70's at most and the Yankees shouldn't be selling souvenir carafes and wine glasses. It just spells trouble. 

Also, as you can see in this photo, we totally crushed the Don Mattingly bobblehead giveaway. This is largely thanks to Clear. That line was super quick compared to the rest of the security lines around the stadium AND due to an unwarranted amount of traffic for a mid-Saturday, we were totally late getting to the ballpark. So, anyone that tells you that the annual fee for Clear isn't worth it is a big, fat liar. They're lying to you and to themselves. Clear, we're ready for our paid sponsorship/advertising contract. Hit us up. 

We actually watched 4 innings of the game from this view because it was shaded and the temperature was much cooler here. Then we got hungry and foolishly decided to head up to our seats, thinking that the upper deck "always gets such a nice breeze." We got no such nice breeze, but we did go old school with our food selection - a nice, reliable spicy sausage and peppers sandwich. We've learned a few things over the years and the number 1, most important thing we learned is to not photograph yourself eating a sausage or a hot dog. Ever. It's horrifying. 

The Yankees took a giant sh*t on the field and called it a baseball game. They chose not to play today. Unfortunately, they didn't give us the option to not pay for our tickets. At least we got our bobbleheads. We received several offers from people requesting to buy it from us, but Serena felt that since it was Don Mattingly, it was a priceless artifact and Lisa's asking price was too high. The highest offer we got was $10, but Lisa held out for a Louis Vuitton bag. 

We decided that we needed ice cream, so we went in search of a Ben & Jerry's. The line at the stand in our section was personally offensive, so we decided to go downstairs to the main concourse, thinking we'd have more stands to choose from. We did not. The line in the food court was even worse, so we ended up on the Grand Slam Shake stand because no one was there. 

While tasty, it wasn't what we wanted, so it didn't really satisfy our cravings. Lisa got the cereal one and Serena got the celebration one. It was too hot to go back to our seats, so we ended up watching the rest of the sh*t show standing around the main concourse. Bunch of clowns. 

Yankees Opening Day 2021

 April 8, 2021

We hit hardly any traffic and parking was ample when we arrived for opening day at "Yankee Stadium."  When was the last time you heard anyone say that there was hardly any traffic in the Bronx? Never. There'll be an apocalypse before that actually happens. 

New York State has limited sports' venues to 20% capacity. Tickets to both opening days went to season ticket holders first and then it became a "Welcome to the First Annual Hunger Games" type of event in order to get your hands on tickets. As if getting tickets to opening day wasn't hard enough in past years. A quick check on StubHub put standing room only tickets at roughly $1,500/each. We have to emphasize this fact too: this price does not include a seat for your ass to sit in. And that's without taxes and service fees and all that junk. We tried. We really did. We tried and tried and tried to think of something that we loved enough to pay $2,000 for and it turns out, there's nothing. That's more than the cost of our 5-day vacation to San Francisco and Sonoma in June and that's including airfare, accommodations, and a private driver. Unless we're sitting in the dugout during the game and then going home with one of the players to have a slumber party afterwards, $2,000/each for one game is too much. Go to hell. And have a lovely day. 

This is the first opening day that we've missed in over 10 years. Again, why is there no bronze statue dedicated to us somewhere?

So, here we are. Faux-Yankee Stadium. Truthfully, we didn't hate it. Serena made ribs for the first time ever and she f*cking crushed it. She also prepared grass-fed burgers and grass-fed beef hot dogs. There was quite the spread and truthfully, we probably spent less on food and alcohol and we got way more than we typically do out of it. Unfortunately, we tried to eat all of it, but that's a different issue entirely. 

Another bonus was there were no bathroom lines or concession lines to deal with. Which also led to more drinking than usual. 

The view from our seats were unobstructed for the most part and ideal because we could see the field and the Yankees lose from every angle. 

Baby Emma was charming fellow fan. She kept to herself, remained quiet, and required cuddles occasionally, which we were happy to give her because look at her. She's the f*cking cutest. 

Unfortunately, there were a few rowdy fans in the "audience" and we had to put them in their place. 

Anyhoo, the Yankees lost  their home opener as usual. They did it in extra innings, so we're thankful that they wasted more of our time like that. The Mets didn't play because the Nationals decided they wanted to be a pack of COVID babies. 

And so brings us to the end of our baseball pandemic home opening week story. Stay tuned next week for the Mets' home opener. 

Yankees v Athletics 8-31-19

Lisa chose this game because the free giveaway was a lightweight hoodie. We assumed that the hoodie would be given to the first 40,000 guests, but unfortunately it was 18,000 and Serena worked way too late for us to get a free giveaway. The only reason Lisa isn't disappointed by this is the fact that the hoodie was a little too lightweight for her taste.

Thanks to Clear, we flew through the security line again. The feeling of power and superiority that goes with passing all of the peasants on the regular security line is truly intoxicating. We got through so quickly that despite leaving Serena's house one hour prior to game time, we managed to get into the stadium and to our food choice prior to first pitch. It was amazing.

We had a hard time choosing food this time around because we've pretty much eaten everything by this point, so we ended up at Mighty Quinn's BBQ again because it's so reliable and they had the shortest line. Lisa ordered baby back ribs and Serena ordered the Burnt Ends sandwich and a side of french fries. With our water bottles, we spent a total of $58. This seems to be a pattern with us lately.We grabbed a table and ate at the nearby AT&T Sports Lounge.

 

 

After our meal, we grabbed beers and headed to our seats.

 

 

The game was very exciting. It even went into extra innings.

We realize that we are the Traveling Baseball Babes and you probably tune into this blog and expect to read baseball-related items once in awhile, but you're not going to find that here today. What you're going to find is an entire blog post ripping apart our seat neighbors because we were surrounded by a-holes. It all began with the couple sitting behind us. Someone came up the stairs looking for his seats, but he had a difficult time. Instead of helping him, the wife started yelling at him to sit down. The husband loudly claimed, "you can't stand there the whole game!" For starters, he was there for maybe two minutes before these two started screaming at him. Secondly, if they wanted him to move so badly, they should've offered him assistance instead of being d*cks about the situation. As the man headed back down the stairs to find an usher to help him, the husband muttered a racist remark that we're not going to repeat here. That's the kind of people we were dealing with.

An elderly man with a cane accidentally tripped on a step and fell into the husband and his platter of chicken fingers. Instead of being concerned for this man's safety, the couple acted outraged. As if this man wanted to land in a plate of chicken fingers. After the old man collected himself and continued his way up the stairs, we heard the wife say, "we almost lost the chicken fingers." Really?

Then he started sh*t with us and that simply would not do because we cannot let anything go. We hold grudges for lifetimes and beat dead horses. We're dogs with a bone. The worst part is the fact that we're both exactly the same in this department so when one of us has a raging fire going, instead of helping to put the fire out, the other simple throws gasoline on top of the fire and watches it spread. Our seats had a railing in front of us and blocked the view of home plate. In order to see anything, we had to lean forward and look over the railing, which is exactly what Serena was doing when the man decided to yell at her. "You need to sit back. I can't see anything." Really? You're a foot taller than Serena and you're sitting in the row above us. How is that possible? From that point on, we made it a point to stand for everything. Are you sitting 20 seats away and need to get by for the bathroom? No problem. We'll stand the entire time and wait for you to reach us. Lisa will even encourage you. "Take your time. We're in no rush." Is there a wave about to go down? We're so down. In fact, let's start the wave. Every single play, we stood and high fived one another. To anyone who lingered in the aisle looking for their seats, we warned them loudly, "Oh, you better watch out. The seat police are going to yell at you." During the seventh inning stretch, they moved onto the stairs because they couldn't see around us. Couldn't see what? We're not sure because what exactly is so exciting on the field during the seventh inning stretch?

By the time Lisa returned from getting us ice cream in a helmet cup ($18 total) in the 8th inning, they had left.

Lisa was forced to get this pink helmets because that's all they had. Which is odd. They also had no change so Lisa was forced to use her card to pay for them. Also odd.

Anyway, back to our seat neighbors.The people in the row next to us were sitting in our actual seats but since there were two empty seats at the end of the aisle, we didn't complain. There was about seven people total in this group and we didn't interact with all of them. Most of the nonsense came from the two men directly next to us. One was an older gentleman wearing a Mets jacket, but complained loudly about the Mets the entire time. And also about the Yankees. He was very angry but seemed to be somewhat supportive of the A's. The one next to him was a young guy wearing full Athletics' attire. He complained about Yankee Stadium, but had never been to Oakland (if he'd had, there's no way he would've complained about our stadium because Oscar the Grouch's garbage can is nicer than the Coliseum). He knew all of the players' specific cheers that only an A's fan would know, but spoke with a New York accent. It's okay to root against the home team (even though the seventh inning stretch song specifically says you shouldn't), but don't be an a-hole about it. They were simply over the top about their anti-Yankee-ness. Finally, Serena had to ask the question. "Did you fly in from San Jose or San Francisco?" They laughed. They were from the Bronx. They were Mets fans who just hated the Yankees. So Serena asked why the whole A's outfit for a team they don't care about. The old man laughed and basically called the young kid an idiot. Somehow we mentioned that we went to all thirty ballparks, which is something we tend to blurt out a lot. To anyone who'll listen really. And to some who don't really want to talk to us at all. The old man got so excited by this and he introduced us to one of his friends at the other end of the aisle. This man had been to over 7,000 baseball games and had a spreadsheet tabulating all of the ballparks he'd been to, the date of the games, the score, etc. It was pretty incredible. Our thirty ballparks didn't seem so fancy after checking out this spreadsheet.

Oh, and the Yankees won in extra innings thanks to back to back Brett Gardner and Mike Ford solo home runs.

 

The End.

Yankees' Star Wars Night 8-25-17

We could not miss getting this free giveaway. It was a Darth Vader pom pom knit hat. Missing the Thor bobblehead was bad enough. To miss Vader would be a travesty. Therefore, we arrived two hours early and stood on this asinine line:

We were concerned. This was feeling a little bit like Thor day. Fortune finally favored us because once the gates opened, the stadium security started funneling us into shorter corals. We scored our hats and were immediately greeted by the Jedi and Sith.

 

 

 

From here, we went to the section where we had met Chewbacca and sure enough:

Han Solo isn't looking at the camera as you can see.. We took five photos. Han wasn't looking at the camera in any of them. Because he spent the entire time yelling at Serena for her tank top. It featured a graphic of Darth Vader and Baby Luke Skywalker and Jengo Fett and Baby Boba. On the bottom it says, "my dad is cooler than your dad." Han insisted that he was a better father than both of those dads, but let's be serious. He was murdered by his son. Who is an a-hole. Which Serena told him. Hence, this photo.

The characters headed toward the field shortly after, so we chose to get food. First, we started with garlic french fries. Then we stood on line for Mighty Quinn's barbecue. While waiting, we ate all of them.

After which, we proceeded to order a burnt ends sandwich, mac and cheese, and a crispy spicy chicken sandwich ($14, $8.50, and $13). Serena was going to order the brontosaurus rib because what the f*ck is that? But then we saw the price. $38. Um, no.

We ate our food and watched the Star Wars festivities from the upper deck.

Then we met a jawa. Which was awesome.

Views from our seats:

 

Some more fun tid bits:

 

Now for the constructive criticism:
* Why does Darth Vader hang out in the suites? Why can he not mingle with us riff raff? Change this immediately, Yankees. Immediately.
* Why were players permitted to choose their music for this game? At bat music should've been from the Star Wars soundtrack.
* The rally video montage should've included the Millennium Falcon hovering over the stadium instead of the Yankees doing baseball activities in slow motion.
* Kylo Ren should not be permitted on the field, in the building, or anywhere near the building. He should be forced to walk through the streets of the Bronx by himself.
* Also, no Rogue One characters. That was a bullshit movie.
* The players should make it their business to learn something about the movie franchise because far too many of the players questioned about Star Wars Night didn't know what the hell they were talking about, which is borderline offensive. 
* The Yankees should make more of an effort to win on Star Wars Night.

Yankees vs. Reds 7-25-17

There wasn't much of a game to watch. Don't get us wrong. A game was played. We just didn't see much of it. Funny story why.

It all started when Sal and Serena picked Brother and Lisa up at their office. They got all the way there only to discover that they didn't have the tickets, so we had to drive all the way back home in rush hour traffic to retrieve them. Thankfully, we were able to use the HOV lane, but it was still pretty shitty. Then we sat in the same rush hour back toward Yankee Stadium. How we managed to get there before the game started is a mystery.

Alas, it didn't matter that we arrived before game time. Do you know why? Because the lines to get into the stadium were wrapped around the venue like the Yankees were passing out gold nuggets free of charge at the door. What caused these heinous lines? Also a great mystery. By the time we got into the ballpark, it was the top of the 2nd inning.

Since we'd already missed the start of the game, we all decided to get food. We wanted our favorite mac and cheese, so we dragged Brother to the Toyota Terrace while Sal went in search of a sausage stand. We stood on line at the Toyota Terrace for about 15 minutes before the bartender confessed that they were an hour behind and if we really wanted food, we should seek it elsewhere. We texted Sal to meet us at our seats and headed to our section to find food there.

Upon arriving at our section, we witnessed total mayhem. The lines were outrageous and moving slower than tree sap. Another mystery. We really should've called Scooby and the gang to solve it. By the time we reached our seats, it was the 6th inning. Repeat. The 6th. This is all of the shit that we ordered:

 

It should be noted that we ordered chicken sliders, not tenders and that our cashier chose not to give any of us peppers or onions on our sausage sandwiches. So, don't confuse this photo as being a photo of hot dogs. It is in fact a photo of sausage sandwiches.

We got our tickets off of a Mastercard Monday deal. This view cost us $25/each (fees included). Not too shabby, eh?

 

The Yankees won the game. Based on the three innings that we saw, we were extremely satisfied with the outcome. And our bucket of french fries.