Random thoughts:
It dawned on me during the drive to Yankee Stadium last night that though this was only the fourth Yankees game I’ve ever been to, three of them were against the Baltimore Orioles. And I think the Yankees are now 1-2 in those games. Oh, well.
I love between innings when they have the Yankees players on Diamondvision delivering the usual rules of the stadium, sponsor messages, etc. It looks like there’s someone just off camera with a gun pointed at them while they read the note. It’s not tough to memorize a ten word sentence, Jorge Posada. It’s bad when you stop after the fourth word to read the next line on the cue card. Embarrassing, it is.
Also embarrassing: Poor Derek Jeter having to go out before the game to shake hands with a bottle of French’s mustard, a Yankee Stadium “partner.”
I love the sweet Premio Italian sausage, even at the $8 price point.
Paid $5 for a soda I barely drank because I couldn’t tell if it was truly Diet Coke, or just a mix so bad that it tasted like regular Coke.
Baseball stadiums always seem smaller in person than on TV.
No foul balls came my way, so I doubt I made it to the telecast, even in high def.
We left after six innings, because we’re old and tired and have jobs and kids and whatnot. The Yankees lost the game in the very next inning, from what I heard on the radio later. On the bright side, we hit no traffic on the drive home. It was wonderful.
On the drive in, we saw a van with signage for “Deathwish Piano Movers.” Yes, I imagine that’s a fitting name for a piano moving company in the city. Made me laugh.
Had no problems bringing the camera into the stadium. Just had to turn it on to show the security guard that it wasn’t a bomb. Took over 250 pictures. When I have the desktop computer set up again in a couple of weeks, I look forward to organizing them and uploading a lot of them to Flickr. I have a pic of A-Rod’s home run swing.
My 70-300mm lens is just long enough to get good pics of the players on the same side of the field as you, so long as you have lower seats. At 300mm, though, there’s some serious vignetting, and not nearly enough bokeh at f/5.6.
I couldn’t take any panoramic shots, because the lens was too long. Wish I had my 17-34mm lens on me, but didn’t want to carry that hunk of plastic in my pocket, and you can’t really bring a camera bag in with you anymore. So I settled for getting long shots of details and was happy with that.
As if being the ballboy isn’t cool enough — sitting on the field, wearing the uniform — he also gets to play catch with an outfielder between innings. The ballboy in front of our seats caught a line drive aimed right at him during the game, getting a big round of applause.
The guy in the upper deck who let the foul ball bounce in front of him and then down to the lower levels, got the biggest boos of the night.
The poor guy who caught the Orioles homerun ball in left field was mercilessly yelled at by those in the stands around him to throw back the ball. It’s tradition now, I know, but still — the odds of catching a ball are not in your favor. To have to give it back afterwards because the wrong team hit it? Cruel. To the guy’s credit, he didn’t just throw it back on the field. He threw it right into Derek Jeter’s glove, on the fly.
Batting practice is just an excuse to create dozens of souvenirs for fans who get to their seats early.
