On Opening Up All of the Bronx
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| New Yankee Stadium, 2012 |
Friday, June 25, 2021
New Yankee Stadium
MLB, American League
Bronx, NY
7:00 PM
Outside the Game:
I'm not claiming to be uber-woke, or whatever the hell the kids are calling it these days, but I knew what "Juneteenth" was before last year. In college, I took a class on Reconstruction, which included reading Jubilee, a historical novel that rather prominently features the holiday. Why that piece of information hasn't drained out of my long-term memory like everything else is a question for greater powers than myself. But here we are.
My new company had the day off before Biden went nuclear and made it a national holiday at the last minute this year, and--frankly--for anyone arguing against it, exactly how racist do you have to be to oppose a new Friday holiday in June? There are guys in the Klan who have no problem with this.
At any rate, I had a day off work and nothing to do, and the Yankees were at home, so I decided to grab a ticket. This was made easier by a trick of fate that had today as the day that the Yankees would be opening up the stadium to full capacity. The hasty transfer over to 100% open had gummed up the works on the Website, and the phone lines at Ticketmaster were similarly down. I whittled away the morning and afternoon with some cooking, laundry, and chores before checking one last time before resigning myself to buying a ticket at the stadium.
Right before I was to head out at 3 PM, the Website started working again, I grabbed my online ticket, and I headed out to the light rail. The light rail took me to the PATH and then to the subway, with nothing much in the way. It was a little surreal to take this trip again, as with most things this year, in a way both completely familiar and alien at the same time. I was super early, but I had nothing else to do, and I half-consciously bounced along on my trip out the Bronx.
I emerged into the high summer afternoon with some time to spend. I walked around the stadium to check out the Covid setup before heading out the park they had built on the site of Yankee Stadium. In the intervening years, I've never actually had a chance to go there, so I walked out to the old Bat by the renovated LIRR Station and took in Ruppert Plaza, with its already weathered cobblestones of historic dates related to the old stadium, and Elston Howard Field on the site of the old diamond.
After some leisurely walking around, it was getting close to gate open time, so I made the short walk back over to the stadium, and placed myself on one of the socially distanced entry lines. There were no vaccination checks here, just standing in the baking summer sun until the trip through the metal detectors was over. The only excitement during the wait was allowing an older gentleman through to the front of the line, which mercifully provoked no outrage. And in I went.
At the end of the game, the crowd dispersed groggily into the night. The subway situation was crowded, but not packed, and I had an uneventful public transportation ride home, facilitated by being able to take the light rail home instead of a Lyft since it was still technically a weekday.
The Stadium & Fans:
New Yankee Stadium hadn't changed all that much since my last visit. Obviously, the Covid testing tents outside and the socially distanced entrance set-ups were different, but the facility itself hadn't changed much at all. While it was later on in the summer, and this night was the first where the stadium was at 100% capacity, there were a lot of the protocols that the Mets had in place (removing all tables and chairs, zip-tying unoccupied seats, etc) that weren't still in use, but I wasn't sure if it was because the Yankees had taken them away or had never implemented them in the first place.
The stadium wasn't close to full capacity, but that no doubt had to do with the fully opened seats being only available for purchase for a day or so. It was the most crowded game I had been to yet in two years, though, and the crowd, as with most Yankees games, were into the contest, even as the Yankees were going through a rough patch for the season.
New Yankee Stadium remains a pale shadow of what it replaced, and its windowless museum and the dead zone of concrete hallways sacrificed in the name of exclusive seating areas behind home plate are even more disappointing in fresh review. I hope they find a way of doing something useful with it.
At the Game with Oogie:
Thanks to this being the first completely open game and the decision being made essentially within a day, there was a dearth of people who made advanced purchases of seats. My same-day purchase of a seat in the upper deck right behind first base was the only one sold in my (no doubt) newly opened row, as what I suppose to be the socially distanced seats in the rows in front and behind me were occupied. It was nice to have a row to myself, though not as nice as pod seating, but what can one do?
I wandered around the park right when gates opened, and I was able to hit both Monument Park and the museum with no lines. I got to see the most recent inductees to Monument Park since my last visit, as well as the half-hearted Pride flower arrangement that someone in corporate thought would be sufficient support for the LGBT community. I grabbed some fries in a helmet at some point, along with chicken tenders or the like. After hitting the team store, I just parked in my seat until the start of the game.
In keeping with my baseball this season, Jomboy Media was in attendance in a luxury suite down the third base side. I was able to pick them out with the zoom on my camera and send a photo to an amused Jimmy. The group of college-aged kids in front of me were talking about one his recent Breakdowns or other. I doubt they would have believed me if I told them I was messaging with him during the game.
The Game:
The Yankees were fighting to get back into the playoff race against one of their primary Wild Card antagonists, the Oakland Athletics. As seemed to be the regular this year, there was inclement weather earlier, but we looked set for gametime.
The A's got on the board early, with a two-out solo homer to right, putting them up 1-0, while New York went down in order in their half. Things cooled off in the second, with both sides sitting back down in order, but Oakland got back to work in the third, scratching in a run off a back-to-back double and single, extending their lead to 2-0. But in the bottom the third, the Yankees tied it up at two with a walk and a homer to right of their own, leaving us with a fresh game a third of the way in.
The A's stranded two runners in the top of the fourth, while New York went in order. Oakland wasted a walk at the start of the fifth, while the Yankees grabbed their first lead quickly in the bottom of the frame with a solo shot to right. They also just as quickly lost that lead in the top of the sixth, as the A's strung together two singles and a homer to bring across three runs and regain a 5-3 lead. New York stranded a runner on third after a single and a wild pitch for their part of the sixth.
Oakland threatened again in the top of the seventh, with runners on second and third and no outs after a single, hit by pitch, and wild pitch, but they left them on the vine to wilt. The Yankees squandered a single in the bottom of the inning. Both sides went in order in the eighth, and the A's left a single on the bases in the top of the ninth. Perhaps true to their form this year, New York ended the game by grounding into a one-out double-play to seal Oakland's 5-3 victory.
The Scorecard:
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| Yankees vs. A's, 5/25/21. A's win, 5-3 |
Since this was my first time back at the parks after a couple of years, I decided to use the home scorecards again, which in this case is a one-page insert in the league's most expensive $10 program.
The scorecard is split with the visitors on top and the home Yankees on the bottom, with a Yankees rosters along the top left and an Umpires roster on the bottom left. Pitching lines for both teams are in the center. Player lines are for 11 innings with a pre-printed diamond in each square. There are lines for ten players and replacements, with each player line ending in at bats, runs, hits, RBIs, and errors, and each inning column ending in runs and hits per inning. The six pitching lines track innings pitched, hits, runs, earned runs, walks, and strikeouts. It is functional and compact, as you'd expect from the marquee franchise in the sport.
There wasn't a lot out of the ordinary from a scoring perspective beyond some weird stats. There were a ton of strikeouts (19 total) for a game that really wasn't a pitcher's duel. All but one of the eight runs came on home runs. The only particularly interesting play of note was a 5-3 putout in the top of the second that got a gem (!) by virtue of Gio Urshella going to the tarp to nab and throw out the runner at first.
The Accommodations:
Back at my socially-distanced apartment in Jersey City
