Today I went to a Yankee game with my cross-the-hall
neighbor. She has a half-season plan and shares the tickets with her various
friends and family.
First, I
decided to take the bus, which meant a bus up Riverside Drive, and transferring
to a bus across 155th Street into the Bronx, to Yankee Stadium. I used my MTA
Bus app to learn when the Riverside bus would get to 112th Street and
discovered that it takes just over 3 minutes to get from my apartment to the
bus stop. Just missed the bus and had to wait almost 20 minutes for the next
one.
On this
bus, we waited about five minutes at 135th Street and Broadway for a new
driver. Several blocks on, a woman sitting on a stoop waved toward the bus,
indicating she wanted to get on. But she didn't walk immediately up to the bus,
instead had a conversation with a man near the stoop, so the bus driver closed
the door and started to pull away. The woman then came running up, banged on
the door and yelled that she wanted to get on.
Once on the
bus, she berated the driver, walked a few feet into
the bus, where I could smell strong odor of alcohol (it was about 12:15 p.m.),
and continued to harass the driver. After a few more blocks, the driver pulled
over next to a police car and ordered the woman to get out. I was glad she was
gone, fearing that a look or a wrong move on my part or any of passenger's
would set her off into an attack verbal or otherwise on us.
As
we neared 155th Street, I asked the driver where I should get the bus to the
Bronx, and he pointed to a bus in the other direction, which I could see was
the one I want. By the time I got off, however, the bus had moved on, and when
I checked my bus app again, it looked like the next one was more than 20
minutes away. On Google Maps, I looked to see how far the stadium is from Broadway
and 155th -- just over a mile. I could walk that, and I did, in 25 minutes.
There were
massive crowds trying to get into Yankee Stadium, and as I walked to the gate I
needed, I felt light drops of rain. It took 15 minutes to get through the
entrance, then an elevator to the top Grandstand. Stopped to buy a hotdog and
water, resisted a large order of fries, texted my neighbor that I was inside
(she was still outside waiting for other friends to give them their tix), and
found our seats. And discovered the field covered with tarp and the start of
the game in rain delay -- more like drizzle delay, because it really wasn't
raining hard at all. This meant I wasn't missing the first pitch and would be
able to keep score from the beginning.
Which
turned out to be 2:31 instead of 1:05, so the game started out with an
86-minute "rain" delay.
The game
itself was somewhat anticlimactic. Tanaka did give up a run in the first innning,
but considering that he gave up three straight hits, getting out with only one
run against him was a good sign. Alas, the Yankees could not manage anything
against Jordan Zimmerman, leaving 8 runners on base, 6 in scoring position.
Very frustrating.
As the 8th
inning was about to start, there was a flash of lightning, followed by thunder
and real rain, blowing in on us, even though we
were under an overhang. I had brought a plastic hooded rain jacket and quickly
got it on. But as the rain intensified -- and the tarp was rolled out on the
field again around 4:50 -- my neighbor decided she didn't want to stay, so we
got down the stairs, onto the Grandstand concourse, which had no drainage
whatsoever -- inches of rain piling up. We were soaked pretty quickly. Walked
through the crowds on the ground level, ran for the D train, and got home in a
bit over an hour.
(BTW, if the game had started at its original time, it would have been over before the thunderstorm struck, and we could all have been home, and dry.)
Once home, where the rain had
stopped, I checked in on the Yankee channel, which was still in rain delay.
Once the rain stopped, they periodically showed us the grounds crew rolling up
the tarp, squeegying the field, then poking pitchforks into the ground to
encourage the accumulated water to be absorbed.
Finally, the game restarted, at
8:01. Despite Betances throwing an "immaculate inning" (three
strikeouts on the minimum of three pitches each), the Yankees could manage only
one hit in their last two innings, and no runs. The few hundred people who
stuck it out at the stadium, including children, had an adventure: 2 hours and
52 minutes of game time (a quite reasonable game length), and 4 hours and 37
minutes of rain delay.
While I usually would never leave a
game before the end, I didn't mind this time. It was fun to see as much as I
did, come home, and see the rest of the game while eating my own dinner.
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