This past weekend I went to a Yankees versus Texas Rangers game. Yanks lost 8 to 1 but Aaron Judge hit a home run so the day wasn’t a total loss. He’s the most exciting player to hit baseball since Mike Trout.
This was my first time at the new Yankee Stadium. As a kid (long ago at an age far, far away) I used to inhabit the old Yankee Stadium; you know the one, where the center field distance was 490 feet and to hit a homer to left center (or even right center) took the power of a DiMaggio, Gehrig, Mantle or Ruth. Centerfield was known as “death valley.” When Maris had his 61-homerun streak, I attended 23 games. To my way of thinking, Maris set a “real” record, as he was steroid-free, unlike Barry Bonds and some others.
I was with my wife the Beautiful AP and Jerry “Stickman” and his wife the Sainted Tres. It was the last – number 30 – of the baseball stadiums Stickman and I visited in our Baseball Odyssey. Our wives joined us at a number of the ballparks and were certain to be at this capstone game.
We had $300 seats – yes 600 bucks to watch a Yankee game in seats that would cost about $60 to $90 in other stadiums. And $$$$$ to pay for our limo – way, way, too, too much.
Our seats were in row 15 over first base dugout, in the shade of the overhang. These comfortable seats were padded, two together, separated from the next two seats by a table, and you could order food that was delivered to you – food that cost the equivalent of what right-handed hitters faced in the old stadium, a helluva lot! And that is New York: a beautiful baseball stadium plopped in a ghetto and prices that are ridiculous.
The high ticket prices, however, could not keep away the worst fans ever. You know them; they’re the ones whose antics pull your attention away from the field and onto themselves.
In this case it was the beer-guzzling, 20-something man/boy who was compelled to yell out the name of a player followed by “you suck.”
“Natoli, you suck!”
“Beltre, you suck!”
Once per player was not enough, nor twice, nor three times. It was over and over and over again, throughout the entire game.
His target was not only Texas Rangers. He even threw a few Yanks in there as well, especially pitcher Tyler Clippard who seemed to suck more than all the players combined as poor Clippard gave up hit after hit and run after run in the game, “Clippard! You suck! You suck! You suck!” He was proud of that last load of “you suck” because, “He heard me that time.”
I asked Stickman, Tres and AP, “Can you believe he belongs to the same species that achieved space flight?” Still later I asked incredulously, “Can you believe he came from the same species that discovered penicillin?”
After a particularly loud and pointed, “You suck,” hurled at a Texas Ranger, this guy’s girlfriend squealed at his amazing wit. Yes, he has a girlfriend. They will reproduce one day and his mini-me will be weaned on baseball, beer and boorishness.
It sucks, doesn’t it?