Monthly Archives: June 2021

american league, major league, new york, new york yankees

[New] Yankee Stadium

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yankeeinprogress

Yankee Stadium, The Bronx, NY

Number of games: 1
First game: June 24, 2021 (Yankees 8, Royals 1)

I found the old Yankee Stadium not to be terribly special: I liked hanging out with the ghosts, but didn’t find much special about it. So when I returned to New York to see the new place, I wasn’t expecting much. Turns out I was pleasantly

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surprised. The Yankees have managed to create a place where they respect the team’s history without going over the top about it.

Well, with one exception. But we’ll get to that later.

I got off the D train and turned the wrong way, thus finding myself a few blocks away from the ballpark in the Bronx. I
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have to say that I really like the cell phone for this reason more than any when I travel. Yeah, I look like the tourist that I am: I mean, I’m carrying a scorebook and wearing my Gwinnett Stripers hat. But instead of wandering around aimlessly, I can sit down and look like I’m just checking out my phone. As such, I got turned back west to the ballpark.

And this is how I discovered one of the things I like most about Yankee Stadium. It is totally embedded into its neighborhood. There are actual, local businesses surrounding the place, like, right across the street from it. Sure, there’s a McDonalds, but there are also sports bars and actual mom-and-pop businesses to be had. I don’t know whether this is different from how it was when I visited the old place in 1999: truthfully, I didn’t poke around

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the ballpark back then, in part because of fear and in part because of time. But today, I did, and I liked it.

I especially liked Heritage Park across the street. Replacing a baseball stadium with a baseball park is nice enough: I enjoyed seeing a couple of guys hitting fungoes in the new place. The day-to-day business of life went on: I encountered a couple of day care groups walking through the park. I was wondering whether the biggest of the fields was the location

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of the infield of the old place: turns out it was close, as second base on the new field is approximately where home plate was at the old stadium. It felt like they got the new park right, with lots of moments of Yankee Stadium history (games, concerts, Papal visits) embedded in stone in the ground. But I felt like, in the nine years since they had put this down, they hadn’t put enough love into it: weeds were in the outfield and the stone plaques in the ground had been trodden over enough that they were barely readable.
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Nonetheless, a baseball history guy like me could wander around that park for a while thinking of the ghosts. I do wonder whether the ghosts stay on the old site or if they move across the street into the new place. I suppose, as ghosts, they can do whatever they please.

I didn’t expect restraint in the way that the Yankees handled their 27 championships (all of them, incidentally, in the old place), but I found something like it. The only real reference I saw to the championships was in sets of photos ribboning

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the main concourse, with every championship from 1923 to 2009 commemorated in a few photos of the teams from each year. Seeing a photo of (I think) Scott Brosius jumping high leads me to remember images I didn’t know I had stored in my brain, and looking at the old-time photos: well, seeing the joy of a championship feels timeless to me. Yankee Stadium takes advantage of that timelessness and puts it all together in one place. Even something relatively simple like the food court gives a nod to that history. Above the
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concession stands in the main food court, uncaptioned, are photos of great Yankees eating. There’s Reggie Jackson with a Reggie bar. There are Berra and DiMaggio eating Italian. Eating is one thing we all share, so it’s cool to see these great ballplayer humanized as I’m about to grab my popcorn. It leads to the idea of “I’m just like them,” only…well, nobody’s going to put a photo of me up on the ballpark, so I guess not.

Then, Monument Park. It was pretty much exactly what you’d expect. The monuments look exactly like they do on TV. It’s cool to be there–I took a shot of DiMaggio,

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my dad’s favorite childhood player, and texted it to him. I liked watching people responding, sometimes with restrained emotion, to seeing the monuments of their favorite player.

But over it all is a MASSIVE monument to George Steinbrenner. I found it garish–offensively so. Not only is George’s monument bigger than that of all of the players–maybe four times the size–but it is even bigger to the 9/11 monument
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they have back there. It’s appropriate, as egotistical as the guy is: he actually thought he was better and more important than Ruth and DiMaggio and Mattingly…and the heroes who ran into the Twin Towers. I just can’t get over that. As relatively restrained as everything is in the ballpark, that’s how unrestrained George is. He ruins Monument Park.

Right above Monument Park is a place they called the Pepsi Lounge where my ticket gave me access. I didn’t choose to stay there during the ballgame, but I can see the appeal. The Pepsi Lounge is inside the batter’s eye. I had never thought of this as a location where people could sit before

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(although it certainly happened before batter’s eyes were blacked out sometime around my youth). They have signs banning flash photography, which is fair enough. But to sit somewhere where I can look straight at the catcher’s glove? That might be worth a return trip.

For this trip, I perched my buddy David and me in the front row of the fourth deck. A sign helpfully said that I could not stand next to the railing, so I army-crawled to my seat to stay in compliance. (No, not really.) It was a nice seat and a fun day. I miss Bob Sheppard, but the current PA guy, Paul Olden, did fine.

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I went in an off year for the Yankees. My experience there in 1999, when the Yankees were in the middle of three straight titles, was that fans were surly. I was wondering what it might be like to be in the midst of an off year: maybe instead of a kid shooting me with a water pistol, I’d experience heavier ammo. Not this time. The Yankees busted out to a big lead early, hit three home runs, and never gave their fans a chance to get mad.

Then, after the victory, Sinatra. “New York, New York.” I was departing Yankee Stadium for the last time on this trip, and I

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asked David, my native companion, an important question. I know that if I make it there in New York, I’ll make it anywhere. I was at the end of my trip. Key question:

Had I made it there?

David, who is definitely not a tourist, said that yes, I had. Since I hadn’t been mugged or conned, I had made it there.

So there you have it. I can officially make it anywhere.

Nice ballpark, Yankees! I will be delighted to return one day.

BASEBALL STUFF I’VE SEEN HERE:

Aaron Judge had the big day, going three-for-three with two walks, a double, and a home run. Luke Voit and Gary Sanchez also homered.

Jameson Taillon pitched effectively for the Yankees to get the win.

Hanser Alberto has two hits for the Royals.

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high level single a, minor league, new york, new york mets affiliates

Maimonides Park, Brooklyn, New York

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brooklyninprogress

Maimonides Park, Brooklyn, NEW YORK

Number of states: still 38
To go: 12
Number of games: 1
First game: June 23, 2021 (Brooklyn Cyclones 3, Jersey Shore BlueClaws 2, 10 innings)

I can’t separate my feelings about Maimonides Park from the way I spent the entire day, and as a result, the home of the Brooklyn Cyclones will likely score higher than it might have on any other day. This was a fabulous day at the ballpark,

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and the ballpark itself did well to take advantage of my fantastic mood.

I sandwiched the Cyclones between visits to the Mets and Yankees on a three-day trip to New York in 2021. At that moment, the city–and the country–was just starting to wake up from the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, as I write this during that summer, I realize we may have some fits and started before we are totally done, depending on vaccinations and variants.

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Still, setting aside that future, June 2021 felt incredibly special. People were starting to go maskless and seating pods in stadiums were going away. I felt like I could put my vaccinated body wherever I wanted outdoors and feel safe. And that was the point of the entire trip. 

Because 2020 was a horrible summer. I don’t want to lessen the tragedies and traumas of those who lost loved ones or jobs in that trash heap of a year. Nothing lessens that. But I remember sitting in my house for that entire summer, watching baseball in empty stadiums on my TV screen instead of doing my planned New England jaunt with my baseball buddies (stay tuned for 2022). It was psychologically taxing for me.

This wasn’t just because of the baseball. While one might think I am an extrovert, given my love of being on stage, I’m

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actually a pretty interesting balance between extroversion and introversion. I learned that what I most valued and missed was just being around strangers without having to talk to them. I like being at a ballpark surrounded by all of that energy. Sometimes I like to chat with the people around me: indeed, it has provided for some great memories meeting people. But I also like just being on my own in a crowd. 2020 didn’t allow that.

This is why I chose New York City for my first ballpark trip as COVID restrictions lifted. I can’t think of a better spot in the world to be by myself around a slew of strangers. That’s kind of what New York does. And it’s what I did that day, June
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23rd. I walked 13 miles. Got a bagel. Fifth Avenue to 34th Street to the High Line. World Trade Center Memorial across the Brooklyn Bridge. I kept seeing faces: unmasked faces. I was outside. I was vaccinated. I was safe. Faces of all colors. Gorgeous faces. Plain faces. Smiling faces. Business-deal-concentration faces. Tourists like me. Locals. This is obviously an everyday occurrence in New York, but I was beside myself with joy after a 2020 with almost no new faces in it–and the few I saw were half-covered.

The last of those faces were on the Coney Island Boardwalk as I approached the ballpark. And there’s something about an amusement-park boardwalk that encapsulates the whole minor league baseball experience. It’s all about the fun. I loved being around those people.

So when I got to the ballpark, I was predisposed to like the place, and I did.

They have a sense of Brooklyn baseball history. They’ve set up a statue of Pee Wee Reese with his arm around Jackie Robinson, creating a memorial to that critical moment when Reese showed that he sided with his teammate and not

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with racist jerks in the stands in Cincinnati. While I worry a bit about centering white people in Robinson’s story, I still find this moment poignant. As a white guy myself, I cannot place myself in Robinson’s shoes or pretend to understand what he went through. But I can place myself in Pee Wee Reese’s shoes (or in Andrew Goodman’s, or Michael Schwerner’s, or Isaac Hopper’s…), so I periodically like seeing those stories presented in a subtle way as subplots to the main story. A memorial to that moment is a nice complement to the retirement of Robinson’s number. The history goes beyond baseball, of course, as every Brooklyn police officer or firefighter who died as a result of September 11th attacks is memorialized with an individual plaque with their likeness on the side of the building, as are police and firefighters from the other boroughs (listed by borough separately). 

Inside, pillars with former Cyclones who have since become Mets, such as Syndergaard and Conforto, look out at the

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field. Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs are available, which helps the ballpark pass the is-there-any-question-where-you-are test. Amusement park rides pop up past the batter’s eye every now and again, and I suppose that if you angled yourself just right, you could see the Atlantic Ocean.

The game itself turned out to be every bit as fun as I wanted it to be. When I saw the opposing pitchers had really high ERAs, I was ready for a slugfest, but instead, the game stayed scoreless until the 6th and zipped to extra innings tied at 1. We put the stupid zombie runner on base at that point (I was delighted to hear people yelling that the rule was stupid). When the home team won, it put a pretty nice cap on the evening.

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This just felt like a package of fun where the baseball still got to take center stage. The only time I felt like the promotions interfered with the night was for the “villain of the game,” their term for the guy on the other team who needed to strike out for some section to win something (I don’t remember the details). Poor Herbert Iser was the villain of the game, and wound up wearing a golden sombrero: he couldn’t touch any kind of pitch the Cyclones threw at him. So he had taken care of his three strikeouts by the seventh-inning stretch, but STILL got to hear the horror-movie music to villainize him has he struck out again to end the top of the ninth. But beyond that, I found the Cyclones to be respectful of the game.

I would have thought about heading back for a second game the next night had the trip on the subway not been so long (as it turns out, Long Island is a fairly Tall Island as well). On the whole, this was very well done.

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BALLPARK SCORE:

Regional Feel: 8/10

Plenty of Brooklyn around: Jackie and Pee Wee, 9/11 heroes, the ocean, the boardwalk, New York accents, Mets history…the ballpark does well here.

Charm: 3.5/5

This score was hurt by the turf field.

Spectacle: 4/5

The whole day felt like a spectacle: the amusement park, unlike at Altoona (the only other place I can think with a visible roller coaster), seems to bleed into the attitude and mood of the entire night. They were, on the whole, respectful of the game while still up for some non-game fun.

Mascot/Name:  3.5/5

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Sandy the Seagull didn’t do much for me. The team name, though, was delightful: I like naming the team directly after the roller coaster.

Aesthetics: 3.5/5

Charming place, yes, but not terribly good-looking.

Pavilion area 3/5

We can’t walk around the entire park on the inside, or watch the game from the outfield. But one can see the game easily from the walk from foul pole to foul pole.

Scoreability: 4.5/5

Solid work here. I was never lost save one wild pitch/passed ball question.

Fans: 5/5

How can I argue against my longtime ballpark friend David? People, on the whole, were very friendly.

Intangibles 4.5/5

So much to like about this night: it was the end of a fantastic day. Only the long subway ride detracts here.

TOTAL: 39.5/50

Baseball stuff I saw here:

Brooklyn comes back to win in the bottom of the tenth. After scoring the zombie runner without a hit (HPB, walk, walk), catcher Jose Mena lobs a single in front of the right fielder for the winning RBI.

Strong pitching by Jersey Shore’s Ethan Lindow and Brooklyn’s Alec Kisena take us deep into the game without a run.

major league, national league, new york, new york mets

Citi Field

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Citi Field, Queens, New York

First game:  June 22, 2021 (Braves 3, Mets 0)

It was 1999 when I took the 7 train to Shea Stadium. I was 29, single, and scrounging together money to travel around the country trying to conduct long-distance relationships and attend ballparks before starting a new job. I was 51 when I returned, a married dad, leaving my wonderful wife and equally-wonderful children behind for three days of solo R&R. It feels different doing this as a middle-aged man, but it’s certainly fun either way. I like the idea of having fun and heading home to my wife more than having fun and leaving behind a sort-of-but-not-really girlfriend. Man, time sure blasts on. The last time I watched a game in Queens, Ronald Acuna was in diapers. Now he’s on the field and a household name…

Some things, however, stay the same. The ballpark is still surrounded by oceans and oceans of parking lot. As a result, it’s hard to succeed at the is-there-any-question-where-this-is test. The small-but-nice Mets museum? Yes. Billy Joel singalong (10,000-plus fans singing “Piano Man” in the middle of the 8th, which sounds cool)? Wonderful–and you don’t get more Long Island than Billy Joel. And I was taken by a dilapidated muffler shop across the street, which seemed to be holding out in the middle of all of the parking lots: people were actually working in there as the fans streamed in. Loved it.

Still, there’s a little bit missing here. I got myself a nice seat with access to a swanky club behind home plate.

 I liked the super-cushy seats, but the setup was such that we were behind the press boxes and had no view of the

field: just a few of the Arthur Ashe tennis court nearby. I do admit that this was a

good place to wait out a rain-delay: probably the best way to wait out rain, as I have learned in the past. I couldn’t sit in the comfy chairs for too long: my 51-year-old self doesn’t handle red-eye flights quite as well as my 29-year-old self did, and I’d have fallen directly to sleep. But it still seems strange that someone would pay all that money to get to a ballgame and then just watch it on TV. Different strokes, I suppose. (But I can’t argue with that killer pastrami sandwich. Wow. 15 bucks and worth every penny.

I am not a huge Mets guy, but the dude checking us out at the metal detectors looked a LOT like Keith Hernandez of the 1986 World Series winners. For one thing, wearing a mustache in 2021 is way different 

from wearing one in the era of Tom Selleck. Turns out I wasn’t the only person to notice: the people in front of me told him so. He said he gets that a lot. I would imagine 

working at Citi Field is one place where that happens a ton.

I appreciated the passion of the fans for their first 3 or 4 beers. But thereafter–and especially on this night, when the team couldn’t get anything going of offense against Atlanta–it got uglier. One profane and ugly fan was letting loose a section over. (Man, have some perspective! Your team is in first place by five games! And the Yankees are having an off year!). Ushers said “sir? Sir?” to him a few times, and he stopped without leaving (it was the ninth inning anyway). I found the Mets staff to be delightful: they gave me Tylenol at the first-aid space (I headed off a red-eye headache) and the wonderfully-New-York-accented usher remembered me and asked how I was doing several times thereafter. So I got the best and the worst of this fan base.

On the whole, this was a great kickoff to a self-directed three-day NYC tourist blitz by me. I’m not sure when I will get to go back, but I’m glad I got to this one as I try to re-assemble the 30 parks again.

 

Written June 2021.