Stadium Tour: Yankee Stadium

Hey there kiddos!  Today we are traveling to one of the most famous sports arenas in the world: Yankee Stadium.  I have to say, it is a huge regret of mine that I never got to see the old Yankee Stadium, but I had heard such good things about the new one, I was looking forward to our trip there.  To make the deal even sweeter, the Yankees were hosting my Dodgers for the first time ever during the regular season.  Now, if you are a baseball fan at all, you know that if you are not a Yankees fan, you are a Yankees hater.  Given that we were traveling with a Dodger fan, a Giants fan (they also originated in NY), and two Red Sox fans, we were looking forward to a Yankee beat down.  However, when we arrived for our game, this is what we saw...

It was pouring rain!  The game was canceled and we were crushed.  We had scheduled our trip pretty tightly, four games in four days, we did not have time for rain!  Luckily, since the Dodgers were only in town for two days, they scheduled the make up for the following day at 1:00, which meant we only got to see two hours, but we still had time to make it to our night game (more on that tomorrow!).  We arrived early the following day so we could tour the stadium.  It dawned as a gorgeous summer day!

Yankee Stadium is brand new and cost a small fortune, so we were definitely expecting opulence, and we got it.

We took a tour of the Yankee Museum, which had some cool stuff in it.  My favorite part was the replica of the Yankees lockers, which have a computerized screen to personalize the players' names.  We used it for a different purpose...

(Despite the fact that Matt is a Yankee hater, he will never be on board with "Go Dodgers".)  We had cool seats out in the outfield, which is a view I love.

Of course, a trip to Yankee Stadium would not be complete without some true Yankee fans.  We were "lucky" enough to have two guys behind us yelling out all kind of welcoming messages like "Dodger fans are f***ing trash" and "You're all f***ing losers"...it was so kind of them to live up to the stereotypes.  Fortunately, most of the fans were not that bad, and there were a TON of Dodger fans representing, which was awesome to see.  I only wish we could have been there for the whole game!

In general, Yankee Stadium was lacking in the area of baseball charm.  I think it's kind of a shame that they tore down a building that housed some of the greatest players who ever lived, just to build a large, modern, boring, concrete slab.  This is not a stadium I walked into and thought about history.  It is a stadium I walked into and thought, "This cost a lot of money."  As Matt said, it was the only stadium we visited that seemed to cater to the wealthy--I mean, there is an actual steak house in the stadium--whereas the other stadiums catered to the average baseball fan, the ones who can't afford a suite but will sit in the last row of the bleachers to support their team.  I'm glad that we went, but this is not a stadium I would seek out again.  Tomorrow, a stadium I will definitely seek out again--Fenway Park!