Yankee Stadium
161st Street & River Avenue
Bronx, NY 10451
July 21, 2008
During this time frame, we had hit games at Shea Stadium and YankeesStadium within a matter of weeks. We actually went to Yankees Stadium twice in July and once to Shea Stadium. This may cause you to think that for us, money grows on trees. It doesn’t. We’re just stupid and do not plan accordingly. Of the two July Yankees games, we chose to blog about this one because it was the last game we attended together at Yankee Stadium. The Yankees’ opponent was the Twins.
When we arrived at the stadium, we headed down to field level as per our usual tradition to watch batting practice and attempt to meet players from the opposing team (more specifically Justin Morneau) because the players on our own teams have no desire to talk to us. We’d like to blame David Wright for this one again. He has clearly blacklisted us in the New York baseball market.
We stood by the right field wall, minding our own business when a ball suddenly shot off of a player’s bat and made a bee line for our direction. We squealed in terror (sorry, folks, when Serena played softball, she was armed with a mitt to catch line drives. Handling one of those with her bare hand is simply not an option) and ducked. Unfortunately, not everyone in our section followed our lead. We were swarmed by dozens of crazed baseball fans all gunning for that stupid ball. Serena hugged the padded wall and watched in horror as Lisa was swept away from her by the insane crowd. The manner in which she was shuffled between the men vying for this ball made her look like a dolphin performing tricks at Sea World. Serena is pretty sure she saw Lisa’s feet actually leave the ground.
Thankfully, one of the idiots abruptly stood in triumph, proudly holding the ball over his head. Lisa made her way back to Serena. This was clearly a dangerous situation so we agreed that it was safer to head to our seats where we could eat our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in safety.
We would’ve liked to partake in an Italian sausage sandwich, but thanks to our poor planning, we didn’t have enough money to buy one. We also didn’t have enough money to buy water bottles, so we brought our own. Sadly, we didn’t bring enough water into the stadium with us either. The temperature was over 90 degrees. Combine that with the high humidity and that equals a dehydrated and unsexy mess. Yup. We’re f*cking awesome.
The cast of characters that joined us in our section were pretty fascinating. To our right, Serena’s neighbors were a group of Alabama boys who flew into New York to catch a game at Yankee Stadium in its final season. One of them claimed that he knew one of the Twins’ relief pitcher, but he couldn’t produce a name and besides that, why didn’t he have better seats? Normally, we don’t have any problems with tourists. Come to New York, have a good time, tell your friends. Great. However, we do have a problem when tourists spend 90% of the game telling you how much they hate your city, hate your baseball team, trash Shea Stadium when they’ve never been there, and talk about how crappy Yankees Stadium is. Dude, then why are you here??? To make matters worse, they talked to Serena so much that she couldn’t even watch the game! Who goes to a sporting event to spend the entire time talking to strangers and zero time watching the game? Her immediate neighbor in particular kept trying to convince her how great the Miami Dolphins were and how terrible the New York Giants were. First of all, you live in Alabama. Where did the Dolphins come from? Second of all, no. The Dolphins are not better than the Giants. If you think that, you must be an avid crack smoker. Lisa blatantly turned her back on the conversation and left Serena to deal with this alone. Literally. Lisa turned in her seat so that her back faced us. She basically watched the game with her peripheral view. Serena would’ve told the guy off, but he already hated New York (“this is the dirtiest city I’ve ever been to in my entire life.” Really, bro? Have you been to Los Angeles?) and she didn’t want him to return to Alabama and bash the state’s inhabitants too!
On top of this nonsense, by the 5th inning, we were completely parched, our water bottles were empty, and our new “friends” had to have imbibed at least 2 cases of beer without showing any signs of stopping. As they continued to hassle every single beer vendor that passed us by, all we wanted to do was ask them to throw one water bottle our way. We felt that we deserved it considering the amount of effort it required just to sit near them.
At around the 7th inning, we opened our wallets and pooled our money. We discovered that we had just enough money to buy ourselves cups of Minute Maid Lemonade ices and still get ourselves home. Thank god! We called the next vendor over and bought our happiness.
After we bought our ices, we cut our losses. It was clear the ‘Bama Boys were not going to do us any favors and Serena was sick of missing the game’s action in order to be polite. Let those a-holes bash New Yorkers. They already hated New York. What difference did it make? The Yankees were finally beating down on someone (instead of the other way around) and we wanted to watch at least one inning without our ears being chewed off. Eventually, the ‘Bama Boys took a hint and left us alone.
At this time, we were finally truly able to take in the game and our surroundings. Unfortunately, our surroundings didn’t offer us anything more inspiring than the ‘Bama Boys. At Lisa’s left, we were greeted by a side boob. No, it wasn’t Peter Griffin’s. It was a side boob belonging to a young lady watching the game with her father. She decided to wear a backless shirt (and obviously no bra since the shirt was backless) and a mini skirt. We’re embarrassed to admit that for a good portion of an inning, we stared at this girl, fearing that at any moment, the wrong movement would produce an entire boob. It seemed that she received guidance from Alyssa Milano regarding appropriate fashion for sporting events. In retrospect, we probably should’ve taken a picture of this girl for you to see, but it’s probably considered rude to post a picture of a stranger’s boob. We’re not that mean. Mean. But not that mean.
Before leaving the stadium (for Lisa, it would be the last time), we got our final picture taken at Yankee Stadium. Aren’t we charming after an evening of sitting in sweat?
We close things out in honor of a man who claims to be a Mets fan, but clearly is a closet Yankees fan because we see him at every Yankees game, fist pumping in the upper deck. In the fine words of everyone’s favorite Guido anthem (and by this point, you should all be aware of how much Lisa loves her Guidos), “Don’t you know, pump it up. You’ve got to pump it up!” Here’s to you, Dino.
A side note completely unrelated to this game’s blog post, since we’re complete idiots and never showed you what the original Yankee Stadium looked like, here’s an extra photo from an earlier game from this particular season. Please disregard the construction going on in the background.
