I love watching baseball. As a baseball fan, I’ve long wanted to visit Yankee Stadium. Last weekend, while visiting New York, I went to see the Yanks play my beloved Oakland A’s.

First of all, if you’re clostraphobic, I hope you’ve never gotten stuck in the herd that completely clogs the corridor before and after a sell out game. It’s obvious that the original architecture was not meant to hold 55,000 fans. The hallways are narrow, the ceiling is about six and a half feet tall, and everything around you is solid concrete. It feels like you’re in a cave. After fighting my way through the mosh pit in the corridor for 20 minutes, I make it to my seat. My over priced ticket is 20 rows from the field, but it seems like 60. As opposed to the modern ball parks, there seemed to be little regard for fan proximity to the players in the layout of the seats. Speaking of fans, they aren’t the friendliest of folks. They don’t seem to enjoy cheering for Yankees success as much as they do booing their team for it’s mishaps. I try to start a conversation with the disgruntled patron sitting to my right. He’s not much of a talker, except of coarse when Oakland gets a hit, at which point he stands and yells a string of expletives. His 8 year old son sits quietly in his seat looking scared to death. Luckily the ornery fan likes beer because he drinks 6 of them by the middle of the 4th and falls asleep in his seat before the 5th. His 8 year old son sits quietly in his seat looking scared to death.

So what do I think of Yankee Stadium? It’s stuffy and crowded. The seats sprawl far back from the field. The fans are scary. There’s no extraneous entertainment like you see at the new Disneyland baseball parks that they build today. There’s nothing glamorous about the place at all. In a word, it’s spectacular. As soon as you walk through the turnstile it’s evident that there’s no reason to be here unless you genuinely enjoy watching baseball. I love watching baseball. It’s a shame I only get to watch one game in Yankee Stadium.

_j