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 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.

NYY Star Wars Day 2019

May 4, 2019

May the Fourth be with you. The game started at 1pm, so Serena limited her work day to only three clients so that we could be on the road by 10am. The CC Sabathia Jedi bobblehead was a must have for our collection. At this stage, we feel like we're bobblehead connoisseurs. In turns out that we were way too proactive about getting to the game early because we flew through the line and got our free giveaway without breaking a sweat. Though we did manage to miss getting our bobblehead from a Yoda-dressed CC.

It is also noteworthy that it was rainy and cold AF. In the month of May.

 

During Star Wars games, our first priority is always the free giveaway. Our second priority is getting photos taken with the characters. According to sources, the characters would not be available until after the pre-game parade and ceremonial first pitch, so we had time. Therefore, we searched for food. Since Opening Day, Lisa has had a hankering for the bacon cheeseburger fried dumplings. We found them at the Noodle Bowl (not exactly the most logical location, but it doesn't matter since we found it) stand in the food court. They were three for $11.99 and served topped with a pickle.  We also ordered the General Tso Crispy Chicken sandwich for $11.99. As we type these numbers out, we're realizing that this seems very lopsided and it's quite possible that the Yankees have pulled one over on us. 

 

The dumplings tasted like Hamburger Helper, which is totally fine, but not really worth writing home about. Or paying $12 for. The G.T. Crispy Chicken tasted more like sweet n sour chicken and came topped with coleslaw, which we found extremely baffling because not a single Asian restaurant that we've been to has ever served us coleslaw. Serena scraped hers off and struggled not to dry heave because mayo is revolting.

After food, we watched the parade celebrating Star Wars and all of its galactic wonder and then headed off to stand on line to meet the characters. Like at Disney World. Only there's no fast pass available.

 

Notice Serena's stance in the photo with Lord Vader below. Upon jumping into this photo, Serena immediately grabbed the point position by his side and asked him if he would be willing to take a prom photo with her. How he knew what she was talking about will forever be a mystery, but he obliged and offered her his arm. Hence, Lisa looks like she is the third wheel on this extremely bizarre date. 

 

 

We finally made it to our seats and apparently entered the Twilight Zone because it was suddenly very sunny without a single cloud in the sky and 4 billion degrees. Lisa had about five layers of clothing on that needed to come off. All of our layers were shoved between us on the seats and between our feet. We also rolled our sleeves up to really complete this charming vision of trailer park trash.

 

Our neighbors had bladder control issues or something because they had to get up to leave our row every 10 minutes, which means we kept having to gather all of our sweat inducing shit in order to stand up over and over again.

As usual, the Star Wars details were adorable, but for some god forsaken reason, they replayed the video from last year where they asked the players who their favorite Star Wars character is. This was such a disaster, why on earth would they replay this stupid thing? Why wouldn't they reshoot this video and make it less embarrassing for all of us? For starters, one asshole (if memory serves us correctly, it was that tits on a bull, Greg Bird) claimed that he was more of a Star Trek fan. Countless infants on that team have apparently never seen the movies and actually admitted this fact on camera like a bunch of buffoons. Why wasn't there someone feeding them lines? Or editing these idiots out of the video entirely? Furthermore, where is the common sense that dictates that on Star Wars Day, you're clearly supposed to lie about this shit? No one cares that you like Star Trek, Greg!

The Yankees played like ass hats, so in the 7th inning, we decided that it was finally hot enough to try one of those specialty milkshakes. Unfortunately, we weren't the only ones to have this genius idea. The line was so long that we basically got our shakes as the final Yankees' hitter stepped into the batter's box. The shakes were $15.99 each. Lisa ordered the Celebration and Serena got the All Star.

The shakes were worth the wait and the price. Our photo also briefly made us Insta-famous when @major_league_chefs reposted it to their account. They post a lot of fun food pictures from around the league, so if you're interested in stadium touring, we'd highly recommend checking them out so that you can get some inspiration while you're road tripping.

Nothing else to report regarding the game because the Yankees were terrible. We had breast and armpit sweat and our stomachs were distended from all of the disgusting food that we inhaled. That is all.

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.

Yankees Opening Day

April 10, 2017

Have you ever played Never Have I Ever? Well, we're going to today. Never have we ever experienced a beautiful day for both teams' opening days. We did this season. Never have we ever experienced wins for both home teams. We did this season. Never have we ever missed both teams' opening ceremonies. We did this season.

Based on our experience at Mets' Opening Day, we chose to get to Yankee Stadium super early. Or so we thought. We got to the ballpark so early that not only did we make a pit stop at Target to buy Funk Pop Mystery Minis, but we also drank wine.

We started walking over to the stadium from the car at 12:15 (for a 1:05 start time). The lines to get into the stadium wrapped around the building. Confident that only the gate closest to the subway lines had the greatest crowd, we circled the circumference of the stadium in search of a shorter line. There was none.

By the time we reached our seats, we were sweaty, tired, cranky, and had missed the top of the first inning. As well as the opening ceremony. No, we don't know who threw out the first pitch or who sang the National Anthem. Sure, we could Google it, but what's the point? So can you.

 

 

 

Like our new socks?

We didn't want to miss a chunk of the game like we had at Citi Field, so we chose to wait on food. Another mistake.

In the 6th inning, we decided to check out the new kids' fun zone and get food. Lisa wanted to try some of the newer menu items that she'd researched. She talked incessantly of a sandwich called, "The Classy Pig."She also convinced Serena that what she needed was the traditional Chinese BBQ dish found in the Toyota Terrace. The kids' zone was located right near our seats in the 300 level near right field. We were so excited to play and take stupid photos. Unfortunately, as soon as got in there, we were c*ck blocked. "Sorry, you can't come in unless you have kids." Which is totally prejudiced. We fell prey to ageism.  And lack of childrenism! We'd call our lawyer about it, but we're no longer talking to him because he's an ass clown. At least she let us take photos of the set up. We're going to need to steal Lisa's niece for the next game. And then make her take photos of us crawling all over the playground. She's very smart. She'll take good photos.

 

 

 

 

The concourses were so crowded that navigating the area proved difficult. Instead of searching for the Toyota Terrace and the location of the Classy Pig, we decided to settle for the ole' reliable sausage sandwich. Luckily, there was a stand right near our seats. AND the line wasn't very long. Only three people ahead of us! What good fortune!

Then we found out why the line was so short. Ageism was alive and well in the kids' zone, but there was no ageism to be found anywhere else in the ballpark. No one thought that allowing senior citizens to man the concession stands on opening day might possibly be a bad idea. Never have we ever witnessed such slow service in our lives. It was like watching the sloth DMV scene in Zootopia. Only we weren't watching it. We were living it. When we finally reached the cashier, we stood there for several minutes before she took our order. We ordered two sausage sandwiches each. Her reply? "No."
What? What did she say?
"Oh, no. You're not having that today."
What? Is this lady putting us on a diet? We didn't think that we had let ourselves go that badly. 
"There are only hot dogs left."
How is this even possible? It's a sausage stand. That's like Taco Bell running out of beef or a bar running out of booze. Whatever. It's not what we wanted, but we'll settle for it. We're hungry. And so, we agreed on hot dogs.
"Only foot longs."
Jesus Christ. Fine. We agreed on foot long hot dogs.
Twenty minutes later, she brought us our unwanted foot long hot dogs. By the time we got back to our seats again, it was the middle of the 8th inning and the Yankees were winning.

Normally, we can't complain about the food at our home ballparks, but for two straight games, our teams disappointed us. Our hot dogs were pretty pitiful.

 

The positive? The Yankees won 8-1. Afterwards, we went home, ate Chipotle, and took a nap.