The House That Ruth Built

Here’s a fun fact about the New York Yankees that MB would not feel comfortable sharing while actually at Yankee Stadium. Did you know that during Joe Torre’s tenure as the Yankees’ manager, the Angels are the ONLY American League team to have a winning record against the Yankees?

This might be the single ballgame we were most excited about on this trip. The hated New York Yankees were playing our beloved Angels in historic Yankee Stadium at 4 o’clock in the afternoon. With just a short trip from Virginia to New York ahead of us, we started out at 6:30 A.M. Before this trip, I never thought I’d consider a five-hour sojourn “just a short drive.” By the way, this northeast distance thing constantly amazes us. We drove through six states on the way to New York (see sidebar). I much preferred this trip to yesterday’s traffic nightmare, my favorite part of which was MB’s mild case of road rage, characterized by her belching insults at offending drivers. We entered New York in record time, but were slowed down considerably by a sudden rain shower (shocking, I know) on our way to my mom’s cousin’s house. We send a HUGE shout out to Cathy and Jim, not just for hosting us in New York and researching train schedules, but also for all the e-mails back and forth to help us set a more realistic itinerary than the one we started out with! We arrived at their home in the middle of a torrential downpour, and debated whether to sit in the car and wait it out or try to run for cover into the house. After five minutes with no letting up, we abandoned our car full of luggage and chanced a sprint to the garage. Dripping wet, we were greeted with smiles and dry towels.

Curtis in Arlington had warned us that we wanted to get down to Yankee Stadium a good three hours before the game to check out Monument Park, so we had just enough time to change into our designated game uniforms before heading off to the train station. Despite all the grief MB had given me prior to this about wearing any Angels gear, one of her friends convinced her that there would be plenty of Angels fans in attendance and the Yankee fans treated them very respectfully, so she finally caved and we both wore our Angels hats. The rain had delayed our finding the train station, so we arrived at Yankee Stadium well past our intended time and missed out on visiting Monument Park. We did get a glance into it from the stadium ramp, though. We found our seats in the upper level in left field, the seats which we paid six times face value for, and settled in for the game. It wasn’t long before the afternoon sun and our whirlwind adventure caught up with us and we started to doze off. “What are we doing?! We can’t fall asleep during a Yankee game in Yankee Stadium!!” we both thought to ourselves. The only solution was to get out of our seats and take a walk around the ballpark concourse. Revived, we returned to our seats to discover the Angels were down by several runs. We quickly converted to our rally caps amid minor heckling from the surrounding crowd, but to no avail. The Angels lost to the Yankees, 8-2.

On a positive note, almost all the Yankee fans we encountered were friendly, courteous, and encouraging, not at all hostile. The main comment we heard was, “at least you’re not Red Sox fans.” MB, thinking of all the historic moments that had taken place, was awed by the greatness of Yankee Stadium, but Suz was unable to see past the crumbling exterior (and interior) and general shabbiness of the structure. It felt massive, plain, dingy, and impersonal. MB defends that at least it’s clear that Yankee Stadium is solely committed to its purpose, the viewing of baseball, which is undeniable; nothing exists inside to distract a fan from this quest. Recognizing its historic aspect, Suz defers to MB for official ranking purposes, but please note the asterisk.