New Yankee Stadium still sucks, but fans make their own fun

The New York Yankees represent a great tradition that goes back more than 100 years. They are the pinnacle of baseball and represent a dynasty that is the envy of the professional sports world. The Yankees also perfected another long-standing tradition in professional sports: screwing over their own fans in a grab for cash so shameless it would embarrass Ayn Rand.

The company I work for had a group social outing to see the Yankees play the Boston Red Sox in what happened to be a somewhat historic game. Boston’s David Ortiz, known as “Big Papi” was playing his last game at Yankee Stadium, so there would be a special ceremony there to bid him farewell.

Our small office closed early on the appointed day and we took the subway to Yankee Stadium with many of my coworkers honoring the tradition of sipping beer concealed in coffee cups on the way up. Meeting up with our boss and his son outside the Yankee Tavern, we headed to the Stadium.

The Yankees won’t let you print tickets if you order them online from certain places, so the one coworker who had the tickets had to open them in an email on her phone. The rest of us stood there waiting while she tried to get reception on her smart phone and then we could all enter. Why can’t someone print out one of their own damn tickets like everywhere else in the civilized universe? I don’t know but someone in the Yankee organization figured that they’d make a few more cents per ticket making things miserable for their fans.

The real Yankee Stadium was torn down years ago. It was a historic place, though much of its historic innards were destroyed when the stadium underwent a poorly-done renovation in the 1970s. The new Yankee Stadium fails as a baseball stadium in just about every way possible. The entire field is not clearly visible from every seat.

This stadium was built to sell overpriced merchandise with watching baseball as an afterthought and it shows. This game was no exception. There were long lines for the expensive concessions. The one central concession stand that serves the bleachers was crowded and some fans waited on long lines only to learn that they would have to stand on a different long line at the same counter if they wanted French fries or chicken. A stand-alone hot dog stand had a grill full of foot-long hot dogs, but the woman running it told a long line of people that none of the hot dogs were ready yet.

Our group had left-field bleachers, which are not good seats. The right-field bleachers, in the old Yankee Stadium was a notoriously rough place with merciless fans. Life in the bleacher seats of Yankee Stadium, like life elsewhere in New York City today, is a soft-pedalled and safer version of what it was. It plays at being the old days but doesn’t pull it off.

However, the fans in the bleachers still insist on having their own fun and being the voice of irreverence that the game desperately needs. It brought enjoyment to the game that is dulled by the frustrating shit-show that is Yankee Stadium.

We got there early enough to see David Ortiz get some gifts. It was great to see Yankee great David Cone come out onto the field to congratulate Big Papi. Like many other Red Sox, Ortiz was fun to hate. He was a tremendous hitter though and was a nightmare for any opposing team. Like many other star players of this era, his abilities were supplemented by performance-enhancing drugs. Fans broke into chants of “Let’s go steroids!” and plenty of Boston fans were there to repeatedly chant “Let’s go playoffs!” referring to the Red Sox superior position in the divisional rankings that guaranteed them a playoff berth.

As the innings wore on and the beer continued to flow, the chants and backtalk between the Boston and New York fans got more colorful. One of the most popular concessions at Yankee Stadium today is the chicken bucket, a serving of eight chicken tenders with a large helping of French fries served in a plastic bucket. Into the fifth inning fans began chanting “Chicken Bucket!!” in the cadence of the traditional “Let’s go Yankees!” chant.

“CHICK-en BUCK-et!” —clap, clap, clapclapclap—

“CHICK-en BUCK-et!” —clap, clap, clapclapclap—

As the chant wore on, Red Sox and Yankee fans would take turns hoisting these buckets into the air for all to see and appealing to the crowd for applause. Though Boston fans were numerous, Yankee fans still had the upper hand and would win more applause with the proud display of this snack souvenir.

Some of the insane banter and shouting from the fans made it more entertaining than the game, and Yankee fans got bolder as the Bronx Bombers got the upper hand and took control of the game. What helped was that the star of the show that brought out so many Boston fans, David Ortiz, was taken out of the game after only a few at-bats with a poor showing. It was great to feel the energy when he walked off the field, as Boston fans surely must have felt cheated to see their hero play so little. These tickets weren’t cheap for them either.

I was also heartened that another time-honored tradition of baseball, sneaking into more expensive seats later in the game, lives on. This new Yankee Stadium was built to prevent that and has a much-talked about “moat” to separate the rich bandwagon fans from the rest of us hoi-polloi, but my boss is a baseball fanatic and knows how to beat the system. He managed to get along the first base line as the innings wore on, watching the action up close from a seat that would have cost him more than all of our bleacher seats combined. 

Listening to the people around us restored my faith in Yankee fans and the game itself. No matter how badly the Yankee organization craps on its own supporters, they can’t kill the spirit that brings so many to the bleachers of their shitty stadium. Yankees Inc. may insist on being every bit the evil empire, but Yankee fans won’t let those bastards destroy the game entirely. 

The New Yankee Stadium: A Concrete Cathedral of Greed

Last night marked my first visit to the new Yankee Stadium, and I’m sorry to say it is exactly the kind of soulless place I expected. It is a concrete cathedral of cupidity and a lousy place to see a baseball game unless you are a millionaire.

The new Yankee Stadium is not a ball park; it’s a large, expensive and poorly-designed imitation of a ball park where fans coming to see a baseball game are an inconvenient afterthought.

I went to the new Yankee Stadium with an open mind, since I was against its very existence. Friends who had been told me good things about it. The seats are bigger and it’s easier to get in and out of it. It’s new and isn’t falling apart.

I wanted to see the new stadium for myself and go to a game again, especially since my favorite Yankee, Jorge Posada, may not be back next year. I’m still glad I went to last night’s game. We lost, but Jorge Posada played well. And the spirit and camaraderie of Yankee fans is not broken. Also Nick Swisher impressed me as someone with good Yankee spirit, as his introduction video, which are staged and lame for most of the team, begins with him greeting the right field bleacher creatures. He played his heart out as well.

Leaving home early, I planned to explore the new place as much as I could and maybe visit Monument Park before the game. Two short subway rides got me to the new stadium in good time.

The new Yankee Stadium makes no pretenses about who it expects to attend games: people coming from out of the city or from other boroughs other than the Bronx. If you’re coming to the new stadium from one of the bars on River Avenue of from a part of the Bronx where people actually live, there is no entrance for you unless you are a police officer or food vendor. All the big gates where fans come in face the parking lots and public train stations. It is good that those entrances are there, but why not have other entrances? If you decide to visit Mullaly Park before going to the game, your view of the stadium is a fenced-in parking garage filled mostly with police vehicles.

Where the real Yankee Stadium used to be is a construction site surrounded by ugly fencing. The famous field that saw so many legendary moments is now at least three baseball diamonds. It’s called Heritage Field now.

Entering the stadium, it is large and roomy and the customer service there on the part of the staff is for the most part excellent. Buying concessions was easy and there were not mobbed bathrooms.

But the stadium is designed with the priority of keeping people from moving from one area to another, which is a part of the game understood by generations of fans (move down until the person with the ticket for that section arrives, then move along). Sections that were once different segments of the same level are now two different levels, and the area closes to home plate is surrounded by the infamous “moat,” a clearly visible barrier that shows the Yankee management’s contempt for the majority of fans.

Last night’s game was delayed by rain for about two hours, and fans got to see firsthand that the stadium has serious drainage issues. In the grandstand’s passage, there were big puddles of water that fans had to tiptoe around. I saw a plastic drain pipe emptying water out right on to the floor. The passageway is somewhat open-air, so if you stood at the concession counter, you were rained on and risked getting your expensive concessions drenched. Smooth concrete stair landings had inches of standing water on them. This is inexcusable in a multi-billion-dollar stadium.

And when you attend a baseball game, you should be able to see the entire field of play from every single seat. From the right field upper deck, one cannot see the right field wall where all of last night’s home runs went. The big screen is partially obstructed also by stairs and railings. Isn’t the entire purpose of going to a baseball game to watch the baseball game? Again, inexcusable in a stadium that is supposed to be state-of-the-art.

The big screen was filled with exciting “news” about the latest overpriced foods available at the stadium, and there was even a commercial for a Yankees-themed children’s cartoon called “Henry & Me,” which features voices of Yankee players as well as owner Hank Steinbrenner, and which I can only imagine is as unwatchable as its commercial. It marks a new low for Yankee management avarice.

It is good that you don’t miss an entire inning of baseball waiting to buy a hot dog, and that the person behind the counter isn’t also using the hot dog fork to pry open the cash register (yes I really saw that at the old Yankee Stadium). But as a place to watch a baseball game, the new Yankee Stadium is a big expensive failure.

The owners of the Yankees are not doing justice to the great heritage of the team. They are quick to hawk nostalgia and make reference to the litany of legendary players that have worn the pinstripes. But the new stadium is an insult to the Yankees’ storied past.

One can dream that if there’s an afterlife, the ghost of Yankee owner George Steinbrenner is being bludgeoned by Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth, with Billy Martin standing ready to kick dirt and spit tobacco juice on him.

Baseball is America’s past time because baseball serves as a mirror to the condition of America as a whole, and our condition is not good.