Listen now to the story of Nine-fingered Frodo and the ring of Doom. Not quite, but you’ll see later why that’s a good way to start. Yesterday I went to the Yankee Game! You read that right; what’s next seeing Dawes? A friend had tickets she couldn’t use and offered them to me. I’m a Met fan and Yankee hater but I love baseball. I happily took them To make it even better they were playing their archrivals, the Boston Red Sox. This was a big game. I had two tickets so whom to ask? I asked Mark to join me. Why? Two reasons, I love Mark and he’s a Red Sox fan. He grew up in Massachusetts. I wanted to go with a good person i.e., not a Yankee fan.
I have walked to Yankee Stadium before but that was some time ago and I didn’t really know how far it was. My thoughts were, I live on 205th street, Yankee Stadium is on 161st Street. There are 20 blocks in a mile, ipso facto it’s a little over two miles away. But no. There are many unnumbered streets in between, it’s a little over four miles. I knew that before I left because I mapped it on Google. It said it would take me an hour and 20 minutes. It was closer to an hour and a half. Horror of horrors I was 15 minutes late. I also left five minutes late because I left the house the first time without something important. I have no idea what, I just knew I had to go back. It was probably my glasses.
Mark was waiting right where I said we’d meet, and we went in. The process was fairly painless, I had our tickets on my phone. I downloaded them the night before. When I got to the line to get in they were no longer on my phone. Luckily, I had no connectivity issues and could access them through my Ticket Master app. My phone pulled a prank on me. We had what are known has pinstripe passes. On the downside they don’t come with seats, it’s standing room. On the bright side they come with free drinks, beer, water, or “a Pepsi Product.” The problem was the Pinstripe Pass didn’t show up on Ticketmaster, I needed it on the Google Pay app. I discovered that not only was I missing the tickets I was missing the app. There were several other false starts, but I finally got it installed and found the tickets. I had tried everything out the night before just to avoid this at the game. My phone totally punked me. When they scanned the app, it came up as invalid for the free drinks. I don’t know what they did but they finally gave it to us, a little dixie cup of Pepsi. We could have had beer. Would they have given us a dixie coup of beer?
That’s it for negativity. The real upside of having standing room tickets is that we wandered around Field Level seeing the game from different angles. It was hard to see the scoreboard, but the view of the game was great. We ended the game at the best spot, right behind the plate. What made that the best was not just the view but that’s in front of the team store. The doors were open and cold air blew out on us, the coolest spot in the stadium. It was hot last night.
It was a great game. The Yankees went out ahead 3-1 but the BoSox clawed their way back to a 4-3 lead. Their lights out closer, Matt Barnes. He proceeded to give up a walk and a double and just like that the game was tied. He settled down after that. In the tenth inning the new rule was invoked. In extra inning you start the inning with a run on second. As the visiting team you want to score more than one run, as a one run lead isn’t safe when the home team starts with a running on second too. The Sox moved him over and we reached a man on second and third situation with two out. I had said earlier that the Red Sox wouldn’t get the cheap run of the runner on third scoring on an out. But they’d knock in two and take the much safer two-run lead. That’s what happened! My favorite Boston player Xander Bogaerts drove them in. Why is he my favorite Red Sox? Two reasons, first he has a Buffy the Vampire Slayer name. Secondly in my old fantasy baseball league I drafted him when he was I the minors. I always thought he’d be great.
The most unexpected, good thing that happened was the way I was treated by the Yankee fans. I’m a Met fan and I wore my colors. Not just a cap but my David Wright replica jersey. I always wear Mets gear to Yankee Stadium and always got some abuse for it. Not this time. The Yankees fans were wonderful. There was some good-natured ribbing. There was even friendly conversation. Just when you think that the world has separated into warring tribes you discover that even Met and Yankee fans can get along in harmony. This seriously affected me. People make a big deal of every clash, but we should make just a big a deal about unexpected harmony. Returning to The Lord of the Rings it’s how Gimli the dwarf felt when he met Galadriel, Queen of the Elves of Lothlorien, someone he thought of as an enemy, and saw friendship. It melted even his rock hard dwarven heart.
When I asked Mark to go he said, “I haven’t been to Mordor for a while;” For that is Yankee Stadium to a Met or Red Sox fan. I wanted to get a selfie of us with the Stadium in the background and caption it, Frodo and Sam entering Mordor. I didn’t do that so I’m making that the title of this entry. I didn’t go on my Donut Walk yesterday but I ended up walking 5.86 miles. I’m not sure how much of that was within the stadium. Wow, even with the sick days I’ve averaged 4.0 miles a day for the last week and 3.18 miles for the last month.
It was hot last night so when I got home I made myself an ice cream soda. That went down very well. It’s 88º outside and feels like 93º. I’m going to have to force myself to go out for my walk today. Perhaps it will cool down a bit. They have these devices that they put on fire hydrants to turn them into sprinklers for kids to keep cool in. They are different than when I was a kid. Those used to spray into the street the new ones go mainly on the sidewalk. It’s a good idea to not make kids literally play in the street. When I pass one I don’t avoid it. I walk right through it to cool off. I care much more about keeping cool than my dignity.
Wise Madness 