Yankee Stadium- Bronx, NY: 19 trips- First visit 5.5.02

The first time I physically set foot inside "The House That Ruth Built" was not the joyous occasion it should have been. I first entered its gates on 9.23.01 for the "Prayer For America" after the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center. Even in its post-1976 renovation state, the building felt as if it was from another time. I remember being awestruck in its presence. And experiencing it for the first time as a place of worship, remembrance, mourning and healing is an moment I'll never forget as long as I'm on this earth.

The next spring, I vowed to actually get up to the Bronx for the building's stated purpose and see my first Yankees game. Despite the fact that I was now identifying myself more and more as a Mets fan, it was silly that I'd been in NYC for 20 months and although I'd already been to 10 Mets games, I still hadn't made it to a Bombers game. After all, growing up where I did most other kids I knew took in their first ever ballgame in the Bronx. It's just sort of the way it is up there. I'd seen the exhaust pipe shaped like a large bat from the Amtrak the first time I ever came to visit New York in 6th Grade and I remember being in awe, knowing that Babe Ruth AND Don Mattingly had both played there (Donnie's 1987 Topps All-Star card with the wooden borders was one that the kids in the neighborhood all wanted, and was one of the few good cards I actually had back then).

Shortly into the 2002 season, I got a call from my friend Jon and was on my way to E. 161st St. and River Ave to see the Yankees take on the Seattle Mariners. Jon was one of my college roommates my Sophomore and Junior years of college (the years before I lived with Joe) and he was born and raised in Brooklyn. He all but introduced me to Hip-Hop (and it was always East Coast stuff: Biggie, DMX, Jay-Z, Big Pun); he allowed me to find appreciation for Steven Seagal movies; he taught me the joys of having a deep fat fryer in a college apartment; and along with his 2 other counterparts he demonstrated a propensity for playing pranks that may be unparalleled (often times with me as the victim). Jon is a huge Yankee fan. It was with him, in our small upstate college town, that I watched the Yankees win it all in '96 and '98. Once I moved to Queens and was first finding my way here in the city, it was Jon who helped me develop what little street cred I may have picked up along the way (which is admittedly very little). So it was fitting that he was the first to bring me to the Stadium for my first game.

I believe 2002 was Jon's first year with season tickets at Yankee Stadium. And his seats that year were in a location it was impossible to be ambivalent about- Jon was a "Bleacher Creature." I was incognito, as I still owned a Yankees shirt at the time. But a poor sucker wearing a hat supporting Seattle or (heaven forbid) the Red Sox was heckled mercilessly with some of the most offensive vulgarities I've ever been privy to. People were pulling airplane bottles of booze out of secret pockets in their windbreakers (the bleachers were completely disconnected from the rest of the park and strictly Alcohol Free back then). I experienced firsthand the player "roll call" at the beginning of the game (including a chant for pitcher David Wells who was one of the few pitchers who ever got that treatment). I remember hearing what I must assume were vulgarities in Japanese being launched at Right Fielder Ichiro Suzuki, and repeated cheers of "Box seats suck!" aimed at the rest of the Stadium. It's not to say it was all bad- not by a long shot. It was bright and sunny and fairly warm for May. The lines for bathrooms and Italian Sausages were much shorter since they only served a very small section of the park. But most importantly, the sense of community and camaraderie out there was unmatched. These were people who spent at least 81 days (more with all those World Series rings) sitting together on these hot metal benches year after year. They knew each other like family and I'm certain that many of the dads had been out there in the same section since they were kids themselves. I returned to the bleachers a few more times, including for a Playoff game that 2002 season with Jon, and while I never felt like I belonged out there, there may have been no better place to experience Yankee fans in their purest form.

Another thing that struck me was the life around the stadium. At Shea, you'd go to the game and then hurry to the train to return to civilization. A post-game dinner or drink happened in Jackson Heights or Woodside or Sunnyside. It certainly didn't happen at the Holiday Inn bar on the other side of the Grand Central Parkway (okay, maybe it did once). In the Bronx, however, there were bars, souvenir shops, parks, little league fields. People got there hours before the game and stayed well into the night. On game days and nights, the complexion of this rough-and-tumble neighborhood changed into a carnival-type atmosphere. Sure, it was more Coney Island than Disney World, but that was a large part of its appeal. I've since found similar vibes at Fenway and even walking around Wrigleyville on a day when there wasn't even a Cubs game. But this was here in New York, and at the time I'd never seen anything like it.


Looking back with hindsight, I find it noteworthy that the first Yankee at bat I heard Bob Sheppard announce was "Now batting for the Yankees, numbuh 12, Alfonso Soriano, the Second Baseman, Numbuh 12." Mr. Sheppard was still years away from his health problems and subsequent retirement. It's hard to believe today's generation will only know him as a recorded voice announcing "Numbuh 2, Derek Jeetuh, Numbuh 2." I mean no disrespect to Alex Anthony (who probably wasn't even anouncing Mets games back then), but the Yankees certainly beat the Mets in the P.A. announcer competition.

The music selection may be another story. While I marveled that first afternoon at the choice of Bobby Darin's "Sunday in New York" and still remember the time that half my section sang along to the organ rendition of The Spiral Starecase's "More Today Than Yesterday," I just can't get behind being subjected to 2 Unlimited's "Get Ready For This," Rednex's "Cotton Eye Joe" or The Village People's Y.M.C.A each and every time I go to a ballgame (Although of all the jobs in baseball, I'm probably most qualified to be member of a dancing grounds crew). Even a guy with cheesy tastes in music has to draw the line somewhere. But I do always find myself singing along with Frankie's "New York, New York" when I leave the Bronx (and I swear I once heard them play Liza's rendition after a particularly bad loss to the Devil Rays).

My first Yankees home game ended up 10-6 in favor of the Mariners. It was former Yankee Lou Pinella's last season as the Seattle manager, and despite being in the other uniform, I remember the warm reception he received when announced. Bernie Williams hit 2 Home Runs and batted in half of the Yankees' runs by himself. Former Met John Olerud (who was part of that '99 Mets team that stole my heart) started at first for the M's and Robin Ventura (ditto) was at 3rd for the Yanks. Ichiro led off the game with a hit and scored a few batters later (he also scored a couple more as the game went on). There aren't too many more memories of the game itself that still tug on my heartstrings 8 years later, but it was a good game. Jon was pissed that they lost though.


"The Stadium" was the site of many special baseball memories during my first decade living in New York. I took my sister to her first baseball game a couple months after that first game (she's since joined me on a couple stops on the stadium tour, with more to come this summer). I saw my first (aforementioned) MLB playoff game in the Bronx, as the Yankees lost to the eventual World Series Champion Anaheim Angels. I spent an afternoon of my friend Paul's bachelor party taking in a Yanks/Indians game (Paul is the same guy from the Expos post, and is a big Mets fan as well-by way of the Houston Astros-so it's a bit funny that our second game together was a Yankees game). I've attended 2 Yankees/Red Sox games and experienced first-hand the most intense rivalry in American sports. I was there the night Derek Jeter got his 2,000th hit, which proved to be a surprisingly sentimental moment as I vividly remembered his first full rookie season of '96.

In the summer of 2006, just before I officially embarked on the Stadium Tour, I vowed to attend games of the 9 MLB teams I still hadn't seen in person. As a fan of a National League team, 6 of those 9 remaining teams played in the American League. So I went to Yankee Stadium as many times that season as I had in all of the 4 seasons before that, taking in games against the Devil Rays, Rangers, Royals, White Sox, Tigers and Twins. During those games I lost a favorite sweatshirt, learned about the merits of BBQ Sauce from an obnoxious fan behind me, saw future Yanks Mark Teixeira as a Ranger, Ivan Rodriguez and Curtis Granderson as Tigers and, on a rainy day in early September, I completed the goal of seeing every team in baseball in a rain-shortened game against the Twins (the only game I've ever seen that didn't go the full nine).

Just after the All-Star Game in 2008, in the last game I ever attended at the old Yankee Stadium, I saw a kid from my High School start at Shortstop for the Twins and score a run at Yankee Stadium. He and I weren't friends, but he was always a stand-up guy. During his second at-bat, the fun-fact on the scoreboard was that Brendan Harris had attended HS at Queensbury in Upstate NY. It was the smallest of things, but it stands as probably my favorite memory of the old place. I remember wondering if Brendan had ever seen the bat from the Amtrak and felt the same way that I did whenever he set foot inside (of course on a good night, he also gets to run the bases). He came from the same world that I did, yet there he was on the biggest stage in sports.



I'm sad that it's gone. It was an icon-perhaps as close as our country could ever get to the Coliseum in Rome. Honestly, it seemed to me that part of the ownership's motivation was only to build a new park the same year the Mets did, so that they couldn't be outdone (and with that came an All-Star Game, a Sports Illustrated cover dedicated to the building, etc.). I realize that it was never quite the same after the facelift in the '70s (and wish I had been able to see it in its original glory). I realize it was structurally impossible to add additional luxury boxes, let alone a Hard Rock Café, to a structure built in 1923. But there was nothing like a game in that old stadium. You could leave there with vertigo, a headache and indigestion and still wonder if life ever got any better than this.

Shea Stadium-Flushing, NY: 69 trips- First visit 4.23.00

I'm not sure there are enough words in the lexicon to say all that I'd like to say about Shea Stadium. In my first eight years living in New York City, I attended 69 Mets games at Shea-including an Opening Day, a playoff win, a heartbreaking playoff loss and a Stadium finale- with a number of amazing and miserable games thrown in the mix. It was Shea that made me truly fall in love with the game of baseball and the team that played there- at times early on, it felt more like home than my Queens apartment did.

Allow me to set the stage for my first visit by going back a few months earlier, during the fall months of 1999. My roommate Joe (who was my roommate during my senior year of college, and still is my roommate to this day) is as die-hard a Mets fan as they come. While I was a fairly casual baseball fan back then (and a Yankee fan to boot), Joe could be a roller coaster of emotions- even in the apartment, he'd be on his feet clapping with 2 strikes and 2 outs. He was known to throw his hat or jump up on the couch and his energy and passion for the game were contagious. Thanks mostly to living with Joe, my most vivid memories of the 1999 Postseason are not of the Yankees sweeping the Braves in the World Series, but of the Mets/Braves NLCS. I found myself rooting against the team I used to follow in that series, no less. Step one of my transformation was officially complete.

While the Mets didn't ultimately go as far in that postseason as anyone had hoped, the buzz they created was not to be ignored. Sports Illustrated said they had "The Greatest Infield Ever." From the one-game playoff against the Reds, to Todd Pratt's HR against the Diamondbacks in the NLDS (which my roomie was at Shea for), to Robin Ventura's Grand Slam Single (which despite the fact that I was 300 miles away is one of the most memorable baseball games of my life and may warrant a separate post sometime) the '99 Mets were really fun to watch. After that postseason, the Mets had found their way onto my own radar for probably the first time since the '88 playoffs against the Dodgers.

In April of 2000, towards the end of my senior year in college, I went to Long Island with Joe and his girlfriend for the Easter weekend. During a visit to the King Kullen supermarket on Saturday night to do some shopping for the next day's dinner, Joe's father asked us if we wanted to go to the Mets game against the Cubs the next day. Conveniently, King Kullens had kiosks which sold Mets tickets right on the spot, so within 5 minutes of us emphatically answering 'yes,' Joe's dad had bought tickets for my first baseball game in New York.

I think I'd only driven past Shea 1 or 2 times before that day. This was actually my first trip to Long Island, and I'd only flown out of JFK a couple times. So I wasn't really prepared for how blue it actually was. Or how silly the four-story tall neon outlines of ballplayers adorning the sides were. It was a bit dreary and cold, and I'm not only describing the weather that day. A big apple (how creative) rose up out of a top hat every time a ball went over the wall. The orange dot matrix DJ on the scoreboard was spinning "Sir Duke" by Stevie Wonder and "You Dropped a Bomb On Me" by the Gap Band and I first experienced the glory of Lou Monte's rendition of "Lazy Mary" during the 7th Inning Stretch. The planes taking off from LaGuardia created one of the more unique home field advantages in baseball. In the concrete pits along the exit ramps were piles of old scorecards, ticket stubs and other assorted rubbish from seasons past. The place smelled like hot dogs and garbage and popcorn and stale beer and things not to be mentioned in polite company. I'm certain it goes without saying that I was immediately infatuated with all of it.

In contrast to my first two games up in Quebec, this one was a high scoring affair: 15-8 Mets. (which in hindsight might be a fitting testament to some of the ways the game had changed during my 6 year break between live ballgames). Derek Bell went 4 for 4 with a Homer. Mike Piazza and Edgardo Alfonso were also among those who hit Home Runs for the Metropolitans, while Sammy Sosa (who was still one of the biggest stars in baseball at the time) knocked one out of the park for the Cubs. Future Hall-of-Famer Rickey Henderson led off for the Mets. The Mets jumped out to a three-run lead in the first inning and had both a seven-run 4th inning and a five-run 5th. The Mets themselves scored almost as many runs in this game as I'd seen combined in the two games I attended before this one.

In a Borough as diverse as Queens, the Easter holiday had little effect on the crowd- the attendance at Shea was at least double that of my first Expos game (which I realize isn't saying much). People from all backgrounds and walks of life had come together on this Sunday afternoon to take in a ballgame. It was on this day more than any other (as I was still months away from being a New Yorker myself) where I marveled at the "melting pot" that is New York City. The fans were loud and often crass, but they really knew their baseball and all its subtleties. They cheered loudly when their team did something exciting. They hollered even louder when they sarcastically congratulated a pitcher for throwing a strike after three straight balls. And loudest of all was the "HOO!" that followed the cheer of "Let's Go Mets!" At times when a Met hit a Home Run, the crowd made the upper decks shake like they were in the midst of an earthquake (a phenomenon I wouldn't experience until later on, as my first seats were in the Loge near first base thanks to Joe's dad and King Kullen). They loved to do the wave. They rose to their feet en masse on a 2-strike count with 2 outs. It was on this day that I first considered NYC as a possible destination for myself after graduation. The energy in this big, bad city was contagious. Riding in the back seat of the car in traffic on our way back east for dinner and then back upstate the next day, I began to realize how much I'd just felt "at home." Four months later, I moved to Queens, six stops away from Shea on the 7 train.

What an autumn that was to be living in New York. The 2000 Mets moved past the Giants in the Divisional Series thanks in part to an extra innings HR by Benny Agbayani and a complete game one-hit shutout by Bobby J. Jones to go to the NLCS. In the Championship Series, underscored by the glorious tones of the Baha Men classic "Who Let the Dogs Out?" and the corresponding local parody "Who Let the Mets Out?," we watched Cardinals' pitcher Rick Ankiel forget how to throw a strike, both as a starter in Game 2 and a reliever in the clinching Game 5, and with Mike Hampton pitching brilliantly in that Game 5 (another game that Joe was at Shea for), the Mets were heading to the World Series. The next night, the crosstown Yankees clinched their own Championship Series, and the stage was set for the first Subway Series in 44 years. I'll never forget being in Times Square at the moment the Yankees won the ALCS. Seeing them win on the outdoor TV screen, as the heart of the city realized all at once that we were getting a Subway Series, is one of the single greatest moments of my New York experience.

Then came the ad campaign for that Subway Series: "Pledge Your Allegiance." With the logos of the two New York baseball teams, the logos of the 4 and 7 train lines that lead to their respective ballparks, and the white Helvetica font on a black background reminiscent of the station signs hanging over the city's Subway tracks, this campaign immediately caught my eye. It also forced my hand, proving to be step two in my transformation. Thanks to this ad campaign, Joe's emphatic support and my newfound love for that ballpark in Flushing Meadows, I pledged my allegiance for the New York Metropolitan Baseball Club of the National League that October. The Mets lost the World Series in 2000. But they won me over completely that year. Sure, I still owned a Yankee shirt for a few years before I sold it on ebay. Sure, I still go to a few Yankees games every year- it's baseball after all, and I simply love baseball. But from that World Series on, I've been a fan of the Amazins. I've Gotta Believe.

I was there on Opening Day 2002 (April Fool's Day), when the Mets didn't look nearly as terrible as they would the rest of the season. I was there when Shawn Estes took a perfect game into the 7th Inning against the Brewers, eventually giving up only one hit and one walk. I was there the day Bob Murphy announced his retirement, on Murphy/Kiner Bobblehead Day, when Bob didn't get to give a "Happy Recap" that day. I was there, with my arm resting on the Mets' dugout, when Kaz Matsui's 2 HRs and Richard Hidalgo's 3 for 4 with a dinger helped spank the Yankees 11-2. I was there for Pedro Martinez's 200th Win. I was there with my new co-workers in the Pepsi Picnic Area when the Brewers walked in the winning run in the 11th inning of an 8-8 game. I was there when David Wright launched a walk-off single over Johnny Damon's head to beat the Yankees in a game where they were down 4-0 in the 1st. I was there for Carlos Delgado and David Wright Grand Slams, as well as Grand Slams by opposing pitchers Dontrelle Willis of the Marlins and Felix Hernandez of the Mariners. When I was there, Xavier Nady had 15 hits (5 of them HRs) in 31 At Bats. I was there when José Valentin's two HRs agains the Marlins clinched the 2006 NL East title. I was there when Paul LoDuca turned a double play at home against the Dodgers in the NLDS. I was there, with my head painted orange and my beard dyed blue, when Endy Chavez made "The Catch," only to watch the Cardinals celebrate on our field a short time later.


I was there in the best seats in the house. I was there in the worst seats in the house. I was there, on a date, for John Maine's only career HR to date. I was there when I finally got in that first ballgame with my dad. I was there the night the Mets increased their lead in the NL East to 7 games with 17 to go in 2007, the night before "The Collapse" officially began. I was there when the Texas Rangers played slip-n-slide on the tarp after the officials called the game for rain. I was there for Irish Night, Asian Night, Jewish Heritage Day, Fiesta Latino. I was there to see Billy Joel the night he didn't bring out McCartney, Daltrey, Steven Tyler or Garth Brooks, but gave us John Mayer, Don Henley, John Mellencamp and, mercifully, Tony Bennett instead.



I was there the day they shut it down after a crappy, rainy loss against the Marlins with a ceremony where not even Maz, Kid, Mex, HoJo, Koos, Fonzie, El Sid, Le Grand Orange, Nails, Doc, Yogi, the Franchise or The Say-Hey Kid could make us believe that day. And I was there two days before they tore the last piece down- and got my own little piece of blue concrete rubble.




And I miss it all the time.