Sunday, September 21, 2008
My First Visit to Yankee Stadium
Despite spending several years of my youth in Brooklyn, I didn’t end up becoming a Yankee fan until the mid 1980s, By then my family lived about six hours away in Western New York (Lakewood represent!) and hadn’t really ever had a chance to actually go see the Yankees live at their home ballpark. I lived about two hrs away from Cleveland and about three hours away from Toronto so I’d gone and seen the Yankees play there quite a bit, but it’s not really the same.
In 1993 the Yankees were starting to emerge out of a dark time that saw them post losing records from 1989 through 1992. On August 13, the Yankees were tied for first place and for the first time in a while Yankee fans could show their faces in public. My buddy Shayne and I were at a party talking about how great the Yankees were to a bunch of Mets fans. Mike Stanley was the best-hitting catcher in the AL. Pat Kelly was an up and coming superstar, Jimmy Key was awesome, Dion James was a .330 hitter, Spike Owen’s glove made up for his bat, etc., We hadn’t discovered real baseball analysis so all of that made sense to us, although in hindsight some of it looks silly.
So, we’re at this party bragging about how awesome the Yankee are and what big fans we were, and someone asked us if we’d ever been to Yankee Stadium. Our answer was no. So the next question was ‘How can you claim to be such a big Yankee fan when you’ve NEVER EVEN BEEN TO THEIR STADIUM?’ Unfortunately, we had no retort for that and started getting grief about it for the next 10 minutes. It was around 2 am and we were rather intoxicated, so we decided that the only way to shut these people up was obviously to go to Yankee Stadium right then and there. I’m not proud of the fact that I was intoxicated and ready to hit the road for a 350 mile drive, but I’m not proud of a lot of stuff I did back in my youth.
So we drove to Yankee Stadium with maybe $50 between us, leaving at about 3 in the morning and rolling in at about 9 am. We parked in one of the parking ramps next to the stadium and pulled out our Coors Lights and started walking around the outside of the Stadium, just trying to soak it all in. It turned out to be Reggie Jackson day, so even though it was early the place was packed and the crowd was jumping. We obviously didn’t have tickets but scored a couple of nice upper deck seats behind home plate from a scalper for $20 a pop. They honored Jackson with a pre-game ceremony where his #44 was retired. Michael Kay was still doing radio back then and was the MC for the ceremonies and was actually working the crowd well.
Domingo Jean, who’d come over from the White Sox as part of the Steve Sax deal, was the scheduled starting pitcher that day and despite being late to the game due to traffic he started and pitched well over five innings. The Yankees rallied back from a 2-0 deficit in the fifth to tie the game, spurred on by back to back walks by Kelly and Mike Gallego, a bunt by Randy Velarde and then a RBI single by Donnie Baseball. They then scored two more in the sixth to take the lead on a two-out rally spurred on by Owen, Kelly, and Gallego. The Yankee relievers (Rich Monteleone, Paul Assenmacher, Bob Wickman and Steve ‘The Beast’ Farr) combined for four scoreless innings, and the Yankees had a 4-2 win.
After the game, we realized that we had no money and had been awake for 30 straight hrs, but we hit the city to see the Statue of Liberty and the WTC, then we hit the highway to head back home.
I moved to New Jersey in 1997 and lived there through 2002 and ended up going to probably around 100 games at the Stadium. It was still fairly easy to get relatively cheap tickets then and I got to go see several memorable games, including the Benitez plunks Tino game, El Duque’s debut(also the return of Wade Boggs), a great 9-8 win over Philly, Bernie Williams and David Justice going back to back in the bottom of the ninth to turn a 3-2 deficit into a 4-3 win and too many others to recount.
I didn’t have the chance to go this year, although I’m not really the sentimental type (although f’ing Rudy still gets to me) so I’m not that broken up about the fact that I didn’t actually go there during TEH FINAL SEASON. While the current Yankee Stadium holds a lot of memories for me, I don’t think I’ll have a problem letting it go.
So tonight will mark the last game in Yankee Stadium unless the unthinkable happens, and Steve Phillips will be there. Wonderful.
Anyway, I’d be interested to read stories from anyone else who wants to share some of their Yankee Stadium memories, be it their first game or whatever else.
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