Sat 18 May - New York City, NY

Last night we did not sleep well as trucks started to arrive in our street at 4am for some film shooting in the area. We sleep in a little to make up for it as we want to be in good shape for our big event today - Baseball at Yankee Stadium! Home of the Yankees, playing against the Toronto Blue Jays at 1.05pm.

We head towards the subway at Canal Street around 9.45am so we can connect easily with a train to the Bronx. On the way we spot this sign and have to stop... we believe this confirms our opinion that the Chinese are interested in anything that will make a buck.

We wander the back streets a little and love this poster - Kim Jong-un, posed with a white cat, appearing as the Bond villain Blofeld.

We are a touch "disappointed" to find out that there is supposed to be a Chinese street parade today and we will miss it - but excited still about Yankee Stadium and we have a smooth subway train connection and are in the Bronx quite early (as usual).

Easy to find the right station...

The train here is an "EL" - elevated above the road- and we still find these interesting. A few shots.

Woo hoo, we've arrived.

On our way to collect our tickets.

The gates don't open to 11am but there is already a crowd building at gate entrances. We don't understand why you would go in 2 hours before the game so we decide to explore the area and also find a cuppa.

We find an old style diner, called Crown Donut, that turns out to be perfect. It's packed - we get the last free table - and it's super cheap. We are sure once inside the stadium we won't find cheap food and drink prices. Here the "breakfast specials" range in price from $3.95 including coffee and toast to a maximum of $9.95 for a mountain of food.

Our waitress and the Bus Boy work their asses off. You can see her in the reflection behind Di.

We chose the $3.95 deal of 1 egg with home fried potatoes (with coffee and toast included). Hans splurged and also ordered bacon. Great food, Hans accidentally got 2 eggs and we still got billed just $8.90 combined. We feel generous and leave a $5 tip.

We still have more time to explore so stroll across the road to see some local athletic and soccer action. Its all happening here. The background gives you a pretty good idea of how the people live here - it's not posh and there is quite a bit of accommodation that looks like housing commission. The Bronx is the NYC Boro with the lowest level of income per person.

Looking back across the road the obligatory self portrait.

Another shot of Yankee Stadium. Very impressive.

Once inside we look back and through these big arches we can still see the soccer and athletics field.

The new Yankee Stadium was completed in 2009 and the design is really cool. It looks good and seems to have factored well for movements of large crowds of people.

We are not sure what this seal means but we liked it and we liked the poster behind. We are also excited by the free New York Yankees caps given out as we enter. The caps stayed on our heads the rest of the time here. When in Rome...

On the main concourse they offered to sell you a pair of seats pulled out of the old Yankee Stadium for $1,500. We tried them out but nope we don't think they'll suit us.

We had to stop and photograph this. There was a stand selling roast beef sandwiches, and this guy was prepping the beef for roasting, inside a window. We drooled a little. Then we saw the price of a roast beef sandwich - $16. We choked!

Yep, all the normal overpriced stadium food is here, although Hans was attracted by Garlic Fries. We could smell the garlic for quite a distance approaching this store.

HA HA - we thought beer at Madison Square Garden was an outrageous price. Yankee Stadium went two dollars better at $12 for a Heineken and all others. We think we will have an alcohol free day.

We noticed that there was another level up that went to the furthest point from the Home Plate. We had to explore. Hans has no trouble standing at the highest pointy end of the stadium.

Di waits one level below - and it's high enough!
It made for great photos - you could see the whole stadium from here. Our seats were about 2/3rds of the way up to the right of the picture here. About 2 on a clock face.

You can see that Yankee Stadium is not in the most glamourous part of New York City, but we are sure that the new improved stadium has helped to bring some money and services to the area.

Another view of the Bronx.

A self portrait in our seats waiting for the game to start. The national anthems played, Canada and USA, and the words for USA appeared on the big screen for a singalong (which we did).

Reading the lyrics for the first time, some lines just don't make sense to us (this is probably a common issue with all anthems) but these really confuse us a bit ... "Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight, O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?"

This we understand - go Yankees!

Who's batting first? Toronto Blue Jays win the toss.

David Phelps is the Yankee pitcher and he didn't start well - a few Blue Jays "walk" after 4 balls. With strike outs too, no ball is hit until about batter number 4. Hans does not understand this game and was already muttering that it was not up to Ice Hockey standards. Well, so little was happening and it is sooooo slow.

No runs scored for the first 2 innings (ie: both teams have fielded batters twice)

Then in the third innings Robinson Cano hits a home run, with a fellow Yankee already on 1st base. Woohoo that's 2 runs for the Yankees. We are on our feet with the crowd - high fives all around.

Another Yankee scores a run. The score is now 3 runs to 0 in favour of the Yankees.

There were quite a few fly foul balls hit and we could not believe when one came straight at us! The ball landed 3 seats to our left and was picked up by a very excited man. The couple had brought their 2 and 1/2 year old to his FIRST game. Dad got the ball and gave it to his son (see the photo below). We all applauded and congratulated them. The dad's expression says it all. He said he had been coming to baseball for nearly 40 years and this was his first ever field ball and his son got one in his first game.

End of the 4th innings and the Blue Jays scored a run. The sweepers came out onto the field to tidy up the dirt. Like the Zamboni ice machine at the hockey but more manual.

Then in the 5th inning Robinson Cano for the Yankees came out again to bat and with a guy on 2nd base hits another home run! We were on our feet. He is responsible for 4 of the 5 runs so far. Despite Robinson's efforts the game overall was too slow for our style and took 1 hour 40 minutes to the end of the 5th inning, with 9 innings in total.

The weather got colder and it was sprinkling rain, leaving Hans with a headache. We think that is enough for us so we did not wait for the end of the game and we leave. We understand why the "World Series" really isn't - baseball requires more patience than many people have. We've been told it can take 4 hours to complete with not much higher scoring than what we saw today. Great experience nevertheless.

We head back to the 161 St / Yankee Stadium subway station and we don't need to wait long for our train. Bye Yankee Stadium - definitely an impressive arena.

Bye Bronx - we probably won't be back on this trip.

It still amazes us that it is open and you can see cars passing underneath the train tracks at some stations.

A quick pharmacy visit on the way home for extra strength Tylenol and home around 4pm. Tablets and rest for Hans and blogging for Di.

The final Yankees vs Blue Jays result is 7-2 in favour of the Yankees.

A quiet dinner of leftovers at home.

 

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