Game 5 – July 28, 2008

Orioles vs. Yankees
Yankee Stadium, New York

Orioles 13, Yankees 4
Home runs: Kevin Millar, Ramon Hernandez (back to back), Adam Jones, Aubrey Huff (Orioles); Xavier Nady, Johnny Damon (Yankees)

Beer: $9.50

Photos

During our introductions on the bus a few days earlier. Yankee Stadium was mentioned by quite a few people as the ballpark they were most looking forward to seeing on the trip. (Me included.) As I was watching the Home Run Derby and the All Star Game two weeks before – and eagerly digesting all the talk about the stadium’s history – I couldn’t quite believe I was actually going there. I woke up the morning of July 28 with that feeling intensified.

First on the agenda, though, was a trip back to Manhattan. We had some free time in the Central Park area that morning, so we wandered around a bit (searching for Yankee Stadium postcards, which were impossible to find) and even walked a bit in Central Park. Next was a group lunch at Mickey Mantle’s restaurant. The walls are filled with Yankees and other sports memorabilia, which made it enjoyable to look around a bit. It was fun to sit with other members of the tour group and get to know them. And the food was really good. The service, however, was terrible and it took forever for our food to arrive – despite the fact we’d made our selections in advance. Oh well. Despite that drawback, it was a good time.

When we got back on the bus, our tour guide joined us and we spent the afternoon touring Manhattan. He was filled with stories and entertaining tidbits about which celebrity lived where and how much that “where” costs. No way to know for sure, but still fun. (Kathy, as we drove past Trump World Tower on First Street, he said that’s where Derek lives, in a $20 million apartment. For everyone else, that’s Derek Jeter.) When we arrived in Battery Park, the walking tour began. First was the chance to take pictures of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Then we walked to the Financial District, Wall Street and stopped briefly in Trinity Church. I’d been to New York once before, Labor Day weekend 2001, so much was familiar from our tour at the time. Then it was on to Ground Zero – which looked nothing like it had from my trip past there by bus in early September 2001. Despite the new construction in progress, the area still seems very solemn. As we returned to the bus, we walked past a beautiful Firefighter Memorial honoring those who lost their lives on 9/11.

The bus wound its way uptown, with the guide departing in Harlem. Then it was across the river to the Bronx – the time had finally arrived! Our walk from the bus parking lot to Yankee Stadium was long, as Stevette warned us in advance. Even in the parking lot, there were guys trying to sell us Yankees hats for $10 – Stevette said they’d be selling them for $5 after the game. (They were.)

After our blocks-long walk, it was tricky to find a spot for our traditional photos given that Yankee Stadium is in the middle of a neighborhood with a lot of traffic going by everywhere. Our spot ended up being across the street, on a narrow sidewalk that was crowded with others doing the same thing. After that, we went into the team store. It was so jam-packed we quickly left and went into the ballpark instead. And discovered that the majesty of Yankee Stadium really comes from the field itself, not the concourse area. Narrow, dark, crowded – I quickly made my way toward the field. And there it was – the NY logo behind home plate, the famous white frieze atop the signs in the outfield, the grass manicured in perfect rows of green. It seemed surprisingly cozy and intimate, but it looked even better than it ever has on television. The Orioles were taking batting practice, although I didn’t pay attention to that. I just wanted to look around at what seemed so familiar. I sat in a seat behind home plate, in the second row of the second section of seats, and tried to imagine what it would be like to see tonight’s game from here.

Our actual seats were between home plate and third base, but probably 15 rows from the very top of the stadium. And those rows are steep! Wow. Once I made it up there, hot dog and beer in hand, I knew I’d only be having that one beer – I didn’t want to walk down to the bathroom! The rows are also close together, so that cozy feeling I had upon first seeing the field continued all night. Yet once the starting lineups were announced, nothing else mattered. I was watching a game at Yankee Stadium!

I like the Yankees, and I know a lot about them since my friend Kathy is a huge Yankees fan. While so many people complain about George Steinbrenner and the salaries he’s paid and how he attempts to buy championships, I don’t have a problem with that. All he’s ever wanted is to win, and he’s willing to pay to get players to help him do that. Contrast that with other owners who just try to make money and don’t care about winning – where are the complaints about them?

The game – well, there was a lot of action and a lot of runs scored, but most were by the Orioles as Mike Mussina had a rough night. That allowed for plenty of time to use the binoculars and look for famous people sitting around the Yankees dugout. Marybeth thought Jimmy Carter was there. Of course we had to joke that we saw Madonna, and then discovered that her picture was in the program on a page that featured photos of celebrities at recent Yankees games. (I think I saw the same photo in Us Weekly while flipping through it at the grocery store checkout recently.) No Rudy Giuliani. Actually, no identifiable celebrities at all, although someone was getting an autograph from a guy in the seats right next to the Yankees dugout.

The middle of the seventh inning at Yankee Stadium, of course, features the singing of “God Bless America.” Having also watched that so many times on television during the past seven years, and having been at Ground Zero hours before, I had to sing along. Then it was “Take Me Out of the Ball Game.” While no other ballpark makes a spectacle of that like Wrigley Field, no fans at any of stadiums on the tour really got into singing it much either.

Then came the Yankees one and only exciting inning, as they scored all four of their runs in the bottom of the seventh. Xavier Nady hit his first home run as a Yankee to start it, which gave those of us on the tour a unique distinction: we saw his last Pirate and first Yankee homers. Johnny Damon hit a three-run homer and, despite the fact he was on the 2004 Red Sox and therefore I don’t like him, I cheered.

One non-game highlight came when the song “YMCA” was played between innings. The grounds crew was on the infield at the time and they were dancing along just like people in the stands, including forming the Y, M, C and A. Fun to see!

As the later innings went on, more and more Yankees fans left. By the bottom of the ninth inning – when Jeter, A-Rod and Giambi were replaced by Betemit, Christian and Sexson – there were few people remaining, especially in the lower deck around the Yankees dugout. And as the Yankees finished out the game quietly, one of the guys from the tour sitting nearby said this wasn’t how the game was supposed to end. We were supposed to be watching Mariano Rivera right now, in a 3-2 game. Oh well. We did get to hear Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” after the final out. And it was a game at Yankee Stadium, even if not the type of game we hoped to see. It was still amazing to be there, even up so high, and take a minute to think about everything else that had happened in that ballpark, all the players through the past 85 years that had been there. Plus there was still the Yankee Stadium tour to look forward to the following morning …