Yankee Stadium and the 4th of July

My trip to Yankee Stadium on Tuesday was really awesome! I went to the game with Jacob, Daniel, Kerrie, Caren & Nat, and it was a fantastic time! We met up with Caren at a mall parking lot north of the city that had a free park-and-ride. From there we took a bus across the Tappan Zee Bridge to White Plains, hopped on a train down to 125th St in Harlem, then took the “4” line subway to Yankee Stadium. It was all quite painless really, and we got to our seats at about 6:30, so we had plenty of time to grab an italian sausage for $7.50 and a 20-oz. Coke for $4.50 (what a ripoff, but not unexpected prices at a ballpark in New York City). Anyway, our seats were in the last row of the right-field bleachers, and I thought they were actually pretty good seats. And the weather was perfect too, mostly clear with temps in the mid-70s at game time. A gorgeous day for a ballgame!
One of the first things we discovered is that the bleacher seats have a code of conduct, since one of the many cops there went around informing everyone of the rules before the game. First, saying the word “suck” (as in “you suck!”) will get you ejected. Second, pointing at someone during the song “YMCA” after the 6th inning will get you ejected. (We didn’t understand that one at the time. After we got back to State College, Jeff Grabon informed us that the reason for that is Yankee fans had a habit of pointing at fans wearing opposing jerseys (such as himself in a Red Sox jersey) and chanting “Whyyyy Are You Gay?” instead of “YMCA,” so when George Steinbrenner got wind of that, he wasn’t enthralled with that sort of behavior in his stadium.) Third, any form of profanity will get you ejected. Fourth, booing can get you ejected. Fifth, standing on the bleachers can get you ejected. Sixth, alcohol is not allowed (darn, I can’t buy that $10 bottle of beer!).
We found out very quickly that the cops meant it when they said they’d eject you for violating the code of conduct. In fact, we didn’t even have to wait for the start of the game to find out! You see, Jacob & I were wearing our Twins gear and were getting heckled a fair bit, as would be expected. But then a group of high schoolers of college kids came walking up the aisle to their seats at the left end of our bleacher. When they saw us, they started chanting “asshole! asshole!” and they were eventually joined in by a couple people at the right end of our bleacher. I of course was egging them on, kinda popping my jersey and whatnot, but the cop was not amused, and after this had been going on for about ten seconds, promptly kicked out the group of students that started the chant. Nothing happened to me because I wasn’t doing anything crude or obscene or whatever, but we all thought the whole episode was quite amusing. 🙂 We still took a lot of good-natured heckling (such as “Torii/Morneau/Santana are gonna look really good in Yankee pinstripes in a couple years!”), including from one student a few rows in front of us, who made a special point of turning around and jawing at me every single time something good happened for the Yankees. Apparently there was a cop who noticed this and was watching us like a hawk to see if one of us would escalate it in some way, but I wasn’t that stupid. I’d either ignore the kid or have some sort of comeback to egg him on a bit. It was a fun little game. 🙂
As for the game itself, not much went right for the Twins. Trailing 1-0 in the 4th inning, the Twins loaded the bases with one out, but then Torii Hunter hit into an inning-ending double play. In the bottom half of the inning, the Yankees came through for another two runs to make it 3-0. At that point I pretty much felt like the Twins were done, because they had Wang (the Yankees starting pitcher) on the ropes, let him off the hook, and then let the Yankees seize all the momentum by scoring. It was a huge swing. And then the wheels officially came off in the 6th inning, when New York scored another five runs to go up 8-0, which was the final margin. While the on-field result left much to be desired, I was still glad I got to see Yankee Stadium buzzing (who wants to go to any stadium when it feels like a morgue?) and a fair bit of offensive excitement, including a home run (just for the wrong team). All things considered, this was the most fun atmosphere I’ve ever experienced at a baseball game. After the game I spent a few minutes down at the railing looking all around, just taking in the experience of being in historic Yankee Stadium. I can’t believe they’re building a new ballpark across the street (due open 2009), this one’s just fine, and it’s a baseball landmark!
As flawlessly as our experience with public transit was on the way to the game, it was the opposite after the game. First, I got turned around and didn’t think we needed to take the subway back toward Manhattan from Yankee Stadium, so we wound up going two stations the wrong direction before realizing our mistake. So we hopped on a subway going back the other way, and after packing out the car at Yankee Stadium again, Jacob & I could barely see Nat, and couldn’t see Caren, Kerrie or Daniel at all. A couple stops later, I looked up at the marquee in the train, and it said “125th St.” Thinking this was our stop, I grabbed Jacob and we pushed our way out the doors just before they closed. We instantly realized that nobody followed us out, and quickly realized why: signs saying “138th St” adorned all the walls of the station. We’d gotten off at the wrong stop! (As it turns out, I’d missed the marquee message immediately prior to “125th St,” which read “The next stop is.”) So we waited 15 minutes in this stuffy and absolutely dead station (there was only a cop, an engineer, and maybe one other person in the entire station) before another subway came to take us to 125th. When the doors opened at 125th, directly in front of us was a bench on which Nat, Daniel, Kerrie & Caren were sitting and applauding us for finally arriving — talk about perfect timing/positioning! So we all had a good laugh about that, and then had to wait a bit for the train to White Plains. That came 10 minutes early (so we were unsure it was the right train), and got us to White Plains a full 10 minutes before the next Tappan Zee Express bus was scheduled to come. But that time came and went, as did an additional 40 minutes or so, before the bus finally came (either 40 minutes late or 15 minutes early, depending on your perspective). All told, it took us three hours to get back to our cars at the mall after leaving the stadium, it was 1:30am! Then Kerrie went to stay at Caren’s place just north of the mall, while the rest of us drove down to Nat’s place just over an hour south of there in Jersey; it was almost 3am when we got to his house, we were so tired. We were grateful for a free place to stay the night, and Nat’s dad even made us a really nice brunch in the morning! We got back to State College about 4pm on the 4th.
The weather was kinda drippy and I was pretty tired, so I didn’t go out to any of the four July 4th cookouts I’d been invited too, oh well. I did make my way down to the Central PA 4th Fest fireworks with Jon, Daniel, Kerrie, Jacob & Anke, though. We found a spot on the College Ave side of the baseball stadium, about 50 yards from the line which we couldn’t go past. That meant that we were able to see all the low fireworks that were blocked by the stadium from our vantage point last year. And even though there a few sprinkles during the fireworks, it was an awesome show! Last year’s was great, but I thought this year’s display was clearly better than last year, definitely making the State College fireworks worth their national top 10 ranking. The choreography to the music was very well-timed, and I took three kinda lengthy videos during “Rhapsody in Blue,” “1812 Overture” and whatever was playing during the Grand Finale. Large portions of the 45-minute display would be like a grand finale at any other town’s display, but they were just part of the normal show here. And then the Grand Finale was truly spectacular! I’ll mention it in a future post when I get around to uploading my videos of the fireworks to my website.
This afternoon I failed yet again to win multiple games in a set from Ben in tennis, falling to him 6-0, 6-1, 6-0. In my defense, I was feeling really crappy the first couple sets in particular. My tummy wasn’t too happy with me playing tennis in 90-degree heat, but I think that was actually more of a function of the huge lunch I had at Green Bowl after church with Ryan, Sarah, Chris & Ryan’s friend from Boston. That might not have been the smartest thing I’ve ever done. Note to self: don’t eat a huge meal right before playing tennis when it’s really hot and/or humid out.
Back on Monday I played my first full game of the year for church softball, against Oakwood Presbyterian at Boalsburg. I caught the three fly balls I had a chance at in left field (all differing levels of adventurousness), though I did also let a couple balls get past me somehow, which really frustrated me. I didn’t do much better at the plate though, going 1-for-3 (popout to short right, single to center, flyout to right), but our whole offense was a bit too anemic once again to overcome our too-many errors, as we lost 17-5. Sigh. I’ll have to miss the game this week against Faith Baptist, because I’ll be heading down to DC for the GMU AT&D Modeling Conference.
Another reason to be excited about going to the GMU conference next week, even though it’s gonna be in the 90s, is that the air conditioning system in Walker Building has been broken since Tuesday, except for a three-hour window on Friday from noon-3pm when it broke again. It’s been absolutely unbearable in Walker. On Friday afternoon when I left, my office was back up to 81 degrees, and offices on the other side of the building were over 90 degrees. That’s completely unacceptable, and nobody can get any work done when it’s that hot (it’s even warmer on the floors above us). Computers and other equipment start malfunctioning too, so it’s just not a good situation. I wouldn’t be surprised next week if Chuck tells everyone to shut off their computers and stay home if the A/C can’t be fixed. You know it’s bad when, in summer on a hot and/or humid day, you have to open the window or walk outside to cool off. I was just in there tonight to help Kerrie with some last-minute SCIPUFF/HPAC stuff before the GMU conference, and the A/C is still broken. It’s now up to 84 degrees in my office. If I wouldn’t have shut my computer off in there this afternoon it’d be whirring loudly just like all the other computers are that are still on. I’ll only be in for a token appearance tomorrow, especially since I still have to pack and run a couple errands.
[UPDATE 9 July 2007 at 10:22am: Rhonda just sent out an email to the department informing us that OPP has said the A/C will be down for the rest of the week. Absolutely ridiculous.]
Anyway, if I get around to it I’ll try to post once from GMU. It should be a fun time, with Walter, Kerrie, Anke, Andrew & Jon (ARL student I don’t know) going, plus Sue & Dave’s new employee Brian G. Walter, Kerrie & I all speak Tuesday (I go at 11am), and Anke speaks Wednesday, while Andrew & Jon are giving posters (which I did last year at GMU). It’ll be my first-ever conference talk, I hope it goes fine!