I was lucky enough (thanks to the rain) to attend back to back games on Sunday Afternoon and Tuesday night (the first official night game at the new stadium) at the NEW Yankee Stadium. Thankfully they won both games putting my 2009 streak (knock on wood) to 2-0 on the season thus far.
I am a huge Yankees fan, die-hard. Not bandwagon dynasty Yankees fan either. I was Danny Tartabull, Jim Abbott, Bernie Williams with the thick glasses and good ol’ Donnie Baseball die-hard Yankees fan. And this is from a guy who grew up in a Mets family. With that being said I was very sad to find out that the Yankees were going to have a new stadium in 2009.
I spent most of the off-season waiting for new pictures of the new stadium to get an idea of what’s ahead for the ’09 season in the ballpark. Bought some tickets (for the 19th & 21st) and was lucky enough to sit in the Moehgan Sun Sports bar (with an awesome view) for the entire 19th game (with my $10 beer) and then sit with the faithful Yankee fans over in Section 202 in right field. Those outside the Yankee fan realm would know those people as the “Bleacher Creatures” and they are by far the best fans in all of sports. Maybe the Raiders black hole is a close 2nd but they do not hold a candle to these guys. They live and breathe Yankee baseball.
So the Moehgan Sun Sports bar was cool despite the overpricing of food and beverages (not neccessarily surprised this is a 1.6 Billion dollar stadium) but the bleachers were a whole nother experience…
There is beer back in the bleachers and after what I saw last night probably won’t be for long. The faithful bleacher creatures (you know the actual fans) behaved themselves didn’t get rowdy and didn’t act like a drunk fool. But then you have the asshole occassional (someone call most likely still in college) fan that can’t hold there beer and they gotta make trouble. From Inning 1 to Inning 8 myself and some of the other Yankee faithful watched a group of what I would call occassional, still in college/possibly out of college fans drink way to much, chant the most un-funny and dumbest shit in the world, butcher the entire Y-R-U-Gay song and start a fight with another group of occassional, still in college/possibly out of college, A’s Fans.
Both of these groups probably knew nothing (maybe a select few) about either team to even one point I heard fan mention something about Tim Hudson being a better pitcher the Andy Pettitte. Hello, Tim Hudson hasn’t played in Oakland for what now 2-3 seasons? They also seemed surprised when a good portion of the Yankee fans got up and applauded Jason Giambi (who they didn’t know was back in Oakland) for his time spent on the Yankees (which is a whole nother blog).
The beers were flowing with both groups and the fine folks at the NYPD came over about 2-3 times asking them to sit down and basically shut the fuck up.
Then came the insults from both groups. I heard the typical “are you GAY” to one of the guys and the “your a pussy” insult. Both clearly original and currently used by a group of 8th graders as we speak.
The beer muscles were kicking in and everyone wanted to be a tough guy. Thankfully the drunk girls with each group got in between slurring their words to stop the mayhem. Every guy knows what i’m talking about the group of girls at a party that get in your face with their beer breath and bloodshot eyes telling you to back off and “STOP IT…SERIOUSLYYYY.”
The joke between all the faithful around me during the game was not the ERA of Chien-Ming Wang but how much longer beer will be served in the bleachers.
Personally I hope the beer lasts forever, but I just don’t see it happening when you let these assholes that come to one-game a year and don’t know who Brett Gardner is (they thought it was Melky Cabrera or Johnny Damon) into the big ballpark in the bronx.
Now that I got my offical fan rant out of the way I’ll talk about the actual stadium itself in my next blog.
- JP
JP is the producer for the podcast “Wheelhouse Radio” that you can listen to LIVE every Sunday – Thursday @ 8pm EST at www.blogtalkradio.com/thewheelhouse
If you would like to check out their homepage and listen to “medium-definition” podcasts you can at http://wheelhouseradio.wordpress.com
You can also subscribe to their show on iTunes for Free by typing in “Wheelhouse Radio!”
