Yankee Stadium, and the fourth of july

A couple of weeks ago, I was offered a pair of free tickets to a Yankee’s Game for the Fourth of July. Having wanted to go to a game for a while, I snatched the tickets up and made plans. I called up Colette, she said she was in, we were set.

Here’s a photo of Colette at the game, modeling her Canada hoodie. Being a Canadian, it was perfectly acceptable to wear that jacket to the game.



The tickets arrived the next Tuesday, and I immediately searched the Yankee’s website to see where the seats were. It took a moment, but I finally found the section labeled 63. It was tucked up at the top right side of the stadium, up high in the stratosphere. Being free seats, they were perfect.

My normal Fourth of July festivities include going to a parade in the morning, perhaps a barbeque in the afternoon, followed by fireworks in the evening. Being fairly new to the City, I didn’t know if any parades were going on, and it isn’t easy to barbeque in the City. Last year I only managed to catch the fireworks. This year, I thought a Yankee’s Game would be perfect.

Game day arrived, so I took the A train down to 125th where I met Colette, and then we took the B train from 125th to Yankee Stadium. We budget time for it to take about 30 minutes, somehow the subway becomes a giant time suck so we planned for extra time, it took 15.

We had planned for at least 15-20 minutes to navigate our way from the subway to the gates at Yankee Stadium. It took about 3.

Our gate was literally just steps from the subway. Since we were so early, the lines were not long, and we breezed right past the attendants who were checking and scanning tickets in no time at all.

We wove our way along the concourse and reached the first open gate, section numbers were proudly displayed along the top of the frame. Thinking it would lead to one of those never-ending ramps that would take us to the upper level and spotting our section number, we ducked to the left to follow the signs.

This is what we saw.



Quite a bit different than what we were expecting, wouldn’t you say? This is where we ended up sitting, right up front where we could see all the action.



The day was overcast, but the stadium lights were on and shining brightly. After about five minutes I wished that I had a pair of sunglasses to wear, or at the least, a stylish Canon sun-visor.



We sat around and watched the crowd as they filtered in, taking their seats. A young girl near us kept busy collecting signatures from the players as they walked by.



Everyone ate their favorite ballpark treats. Hot dogs and Cracker Jacks, what more could you want?



The game started not too much later.



This is the view we had for most of the game…



We had some nice half-time (can you use that word in baseball?...) entertainment, field maintenance workers dancing to the tune, YMCA.



Here’s hoping that Nancy and Charlie were facing the scoreboard!



A rowdy fan caused quite a ruckus on one of the upper levels and was evicted from the game. He was standing right behind the yellow pole, you can’t see him, but you can see the fans reactions around him. (Update: To get a closer look, click here and here.) Looking back through my photos, it appears that one of the fans caught it all on video, via his camera.





All in all, the day was great. Due to the rain I didn’t go to take photos of the fireworks, I still had a fun evening, but I’ll wait to tell you what I did until tomorrow. Hope you had a great Fourth!

-Bitter