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| Yes, the game's still on - almost everybody's gone though! |
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| Farewell to Yankee Stadium, from the subway staircase |
Saturday, September 24, 2011
A couple of pictures from my final game at Yankee Stadium
Round up
I collected various notes of interesting/funny/weird things that I forgot to mention as I went along but didn't merit a new post all of their own.
The name of the Pittsburgh Pirates is a gift for in-stadium scoreboard graphics. All sorts of pirate-related options are available, including the mascot: the Pirate Parrot. However, the laugh of the pirates is wrong! It's far too friendly and not piratey enough! Now obviously they don't necessarily want to be promoting drinking rum to the younger children, but come on! Another cool thing about the club area is that they have pool tables for people to play on. The final note on Pittsburgh is that they do occasionally launch hotdogs into the stands - some are thrown by hand, others are launched by an air-propelled rocket launcher so that they can get them up into the upper deck of the stands. However, the Parrot managed to overdo the pressure a little in the last game I saw - and managed to shoot the hotdog right over the upper deck and out of the stadium onto the street outside!
The culture appears so different to the UK when it comes to people with any sort of physical disability. It appears to be rather polarised. On the one hand, the ones that could not afford the medical expenses or the insurance have no chance - these are the ones left to begging and cardboard signs although cannot tell whether they are genuine or frauds, except for the one whose cardboard sign read "Why lie? I need a beer"; on the other, you'll find people in wheelchairs, just vending stuff like the others. In Denver, there's a guy who vends on Wynkoop Street who sits in his scooter/buggy vehicle, which is holding the three large canisters of oxygen for his assisted breathing, but apart from that, he's selling bottles of water, peanuts and stuff like everbody else. I saw several wheelchair-using help staff at Yankee Stadium this week - moving around, with their "How may I help you?" paddles like all the walking help staff. Now obviously, they're not going to be going up and down the seating rows on a stairlift (although having said that, Wrigley Field does have giant stairlifts so that the wheelchair club level can be near to the front - obviously this is more of a problem for Wrigley because they cannot make too many major structural changes to it - the newer stadia just provide direct access to virtually everywhere anyway), but they can around the concourses up and down the lifts.it landed
I still meet British people who believe that Americans don't do irony. The quality varies from place to place, but in most big cities, it's right there with anybody else. The huge cheer that went up when the 5th inning of Thursday 22nd's game (TB@NYY - 3) when somebody got somebody got out of an inning giving up only 1 run was raucous. Another of the biggest cheers was reserved for the simplest of groundouts to second that was executed by recording an out - indicative of a night that saw the Yankees commit 4 errors. But in general, any pitcher anywhere who manages two 4-pitch walks back-to-back will tend to get a huge ironic cheer for the next strike.
New York is so full of people from all over the world. The voice in the lifts at Yankee Stadium: a British lady. I heard announcements on the subway that were from an Englishman and an Australasian. There's even Americans here! And on the whole, the people I met are very friendly. Anybody here will ask anybody else questions about the locality - you just can't tell who lives here and who does not - and they're not at all bothered where you're from if you have an answer.
The name of the Pittsburgh Pirates is a gift for in-stadium scoreboard graphics. All sorts of pirate-related options are available, including the mascot: the Pirate Parrot. However, the laugh of the pirates is wrong! It's far too friendly and not piratey enough! Now obviously they don't necessarily want to be promoting drinking rum to the younger children, but come on! Another cool thing about the club area is that they have pool tables for people to play on. The final note on Pittsburgh is that they do occasionally launch hotdogs into the stands - some are thrown by hand, others are launched by an air-propelled rocket launcher so that they can get them up into the upper deck of the stands. However, the Parrot managed to overdo the pressure a little in the last game I saw - and managed to shoot the hotdog right over the upper deck and out of the stadium onto the street outside!
The culture appears so different to the UK when it comes to people with any sort of physical disability. It appears to be rather polarised. On the one hand, the ones that could not afford the medical expenses or the insurance have no chance - these are the ones left to begging and cardboard signs although cannot tell whether they are genuine or frauds, except for the one whose cardboard sign read "Why lie? I need a beer"; on the other, you'll find people in wheelchairs, just vending stuff like the others. In Denver, there's a guy who vends on Wynkoop Street who sits in his scooter/buggy vehicle, which is holding the three large canisters of oxygen for his assisted breathing, but apart from that, he's selling bottles of water, peanuts and stuff like everbody else. I saw several wheelchair-using help staff at Yankee Stadium this week - moving around, with their "How may I help you?" paddles like all the walking help staff. Now obviously, they're not going to be going up and down the seating rows on a stairlift (although having said that, Wrigley Field does have giant stairlifts so that the wheelchair club level can be near to the front - obviously this is more of a problem for Wrigley because they cannot make too many major structural changes to it - the newer stadia just provide direct access to virtually everywhere anyway), but they can around the concourses up and down the lifts.it landed
I still meet British people who believe that Americans don't do irony. The quality varies from place to place, but in most big cities, it's right there with anybody else. The huge cheer that went up when the 5th inning of Thursday 22nd's game (TB@NYY - 3) when somebody got somebody got out of an inning giving up only 1 run was raucous. Another of the biggest cheers was reserved for the simplest of groundouts to second that was executed by recording an out - indicative of a night that saw the Yankees commit 4 errors. But in general, any pitcher anywhere who manages two 4-pitch walks back-to-back will tend to get a huge ironic cheer for the next strike.
New York is so full of people from all over the world. The voice in the lifts at Yankee Stadium: a British lady. I heard announcements on the subway that were from an Englishman and an Australasian. There's even Americans here! And on the whole, the people I met are very friendly. Anybody here will ask anybody else questions about the locality - you just can't tell who lives here and who does not - and they're not at all bothered where you're from if you have an answer.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Tampa Bay Rays @ New York Yankees (3)
The final game of my road trip was the final game of the originally 3-, but ended up 4-, game series between the Rays and Yankees. It was quite entertaining, but not in a fun way for the local fans ...
Bartolo Colon was pitching for the Yankees. The crowd were not impressed by the 3 runs given up in the 1st, 2 in the 2nd, 2 in the 3rd, so were quite pleased when Joe Girardi took him out and put Proctor in instead. He gave up 5 in the 4th. A long procession of pitchers who weren't with the team a month ago followed, some making their major league debuts. Laffey got a big cheer for only giving up 1 in the 5th!
In the meanwhile, Tampa Bay's starter Matt Moore give up 4 hits in 5 scoreless innings for the win. The final score was 15-8, but wasn't nearly as close as that, although the Yankees did load the bases late, but failed to get any more runs in.
This is an important homestand for the Yankees - it's their final regular season homestand, with just the three game series against Boston the next three days. I am fortunate in that I attended three games of this series against the Rays (unfortunate to miss CC, though). I feel sorry for people/families who wanted to come to see their heroes for one final time this year as they had no chance at postseason tickets and chose today's game, because so many regulars did not play (and it's not like they played both games of the double-header the previous day either - most sat out one of other of those games too). And at 13-0, more were taken out, including Jeter. Jorge Posada played the whole game at 1B though, and got a huge welcome every time he was announced. I wonder if I shall see him playing again (didn't I say that last year, too?)
The official attendance was 47500-ish. By the 9th inning, I'd estimate it was about 4750-ish. The subway ride home was very easy.
No more games for me this year. I shall, however, if the wind is right, be performing a fly-over of tomorrow night's game between the Red Sox and the Yankees, probably sometime in the 2nd inning - my flight takes off from LaGuardia about 20-25 minutes after first pitch.
Bartolo Colon was pitching for the Yankees. The crowd were not impressed by the 3 runs given up in the 1st, 2 in the 2nd, 2 in the 3rd, so were quite pleased when Joe Girardi took him out and put Proctor in instead. He gave up 5 in the 4th. A long procession of pitchers who weren't with the team a month ago followed, some making their major league debuts. Laffey got a big cheer for only giving up 1 in the 5th!
In the meanwhile, Tampa Bay's starter Matt Moore give up 4 hits in 5 scoreless innings for the win. The final score was 15-8, but wasn't nearly as close as that, although the Yankees did load the bases late, but failed to get any more runs in.
This is an important homestand for the Yankees - it's their final regular season homestand, with just the three game series against Boston the next three days. I am fortunate in that I attended three games of this series against the Rays (unfortunate to miss CC, though). I feel sorry for people/families who wanted to come to see their heroes for one final time this year as they had no chance at postseason tickets and chose today's game, because so many regulars did not play (and it's not like they played both games of the double-header the previous day either - most sat out one of other of those games too). And at 13-0, more were taken out, including Jeter. Jorge Posada played the whole game at 1B though, and got a huge welcome every time he was announced. I wonder if I shall see him playing again (didn't I say that last year, too?)
The official attendance was 47500-ish. By the 9th inning, I'd estimate it was about 4750-ish. The subway ride home was very easy.
No more games for me this year. I shall, however, if the wind is right, be performing a fly-over of tomorrow night's game between the Red Sox and the Yankees, probably sometime in the 2nd inning - my flight takes off from LaGuardia about 20-25 minutes after first pitch.
9/11 Memorial
The 9/11 Memorial at the site of the World Trade Center buildings has been opened to the public for the past few days, since the day after the 10th anniversary of the fall of the towers. The whole area is still a construction site really, but the memorial pools and immediate vicinity are complete. Right now, the noise of that construction on all sides does rather overwhelm the serenity of the memorial at times, but that can't be helped.
I had worried about the type of place that it would be, but I was very pleasantly surprised. It is simple, classy, not at all US-biased, no pictures, no quotes, just all the names. In fact, it's actually in really good taste.
I'd not seen TV pictures of it (you'll remember I avoided the TV a lot the first week of my trip!) The pictures that I'd seen had been stills on the web and primarily without people in them, or they were expected outcomes or something. The first thing that struck me was just how large the two pools were. From ground level you cannot see the bottom of the central level of each pool, which makes it seem as if it's dropping away infinitely. The names of the people have been placed around the two pools, each pool is an identical design, just with different names on each one. Each pool is square with 18 slabs full of names on each side of the square and four corner pieces. The names are engraved, cut right through to a void underneath to permit underlighting so the names light up at night (there's a small cheat for dots though - they each have a tiny LED in their holes!) The names are grouped in various ways, with the groupings annotated by embossed lettering. This, plus the level of the name tablets makes the memorial extremely friendly to wheelchair users and the blind. They will allow you to take rubbings of names that interest you - the numerous memorial staff have rolls of paper to give people bits of and rubbing pencils to lend people so they can take away their copy of what's there.
The oak trees that are being planted and about 8-10m tall at the moment and quite well spread, as the intention is that they will grow rapidly and form quite a lot of shade, but that's just going to have to come with time. However, some of them are just starting now to drop their acorns on top of people!
The only thing that is open right now is the pools and the garden around them. The small original visitor centre about the building of the memorial is still there, but the new ones should be finished in a year or so.
I fully support the time-controlled access that they are using whilst access is so limited by all the building work going on - it would be chaos otherwise, and it is quite well organised too. It probably took 5-10 minutes from the moment of entering to walking past the final check and into the memorial itself - some of this is on uneven streets as you're actually walking around the outside to get around to the far side from the entrance, so that the security stuff can be done inside.
Visitor tip: if you have some kind of plastic name badge holder capable to holding your ticket (or for print-at-home passes, it'll need to be the third of a height of A4), with an attached lanyard, you might need fewer hands to carry everything!) Don't take any bags at all - you'll get through quicker!
Pictures later.
I had worried about the type of place that it would be, but I was very pleasantly surprised. It is simple, classy, not at all US-biased, no pictures, no quotes, just all the names. In fact, it's actually in really good taste.
I'd not seen TV pictures of it (you'll remember I avoided the TV a lot the first week of my trip!) The pictures that I'd seen had been stills on the web and primarily without people in them, or they were expected outcomes or something. The first thing that struck me was just how large the two pools were. From ground level you cannot see the bottom of the central level of each pool, which makes it seem as if it's dropping away infinitely. The names of the people have been placed around the two pools, each pool is an identical design, just with different names on each one. Each pool is square with 18 slabs full of names on each side of the square and four corner pieces. The names are engraved, cut right through to a void underneath to permit underlighting so the names light up at night (there's a small cheat for dots though - they each have a tiny LED in their holes!) The names are grouped in various ways, with the groupings annotated by embossed lettering. This, plus the level of the name tablets makes the memorial extremely friendly to wheelchair users and the blind. They will allow you to take rubbings of names that interest you - the numerous memorial staff have rolls of paper to give people bits of and rubbing pencils to lend people so they can take away their copy of what's there.
The oak trees that are being planted and about 8-10m tall at the moment and quite well spread, as the intention is that they will grow rapidly and form quite a lot of shade, but that's just going to have to come with time. However, some of them are just starting now to drop their acorns on top of people!
The only thing that is open right now is the pools and the garden around them. The small original visitor centre about the building of the memorial is still there, but the new ones should be finished in a year or so.
I fully support the time-controlled access that they are using whilst access is so limited by all the building work going on - it would be chaos otherwise, and it is quite well organised too. It probably took 5-10 minutes from the moment of entering to walking past the final check and into the memorial itself - some of this is on uneven streets as you're actually walking around the outside to get around to the far side from the entrance, so that the security stuff can be done inside.
Visitor tip: if you have some kind of plastic name badge holder capable to holding your ticket (or for print-at-home passes, it'll need to be the third of a height of A4), with an attached lanyard, you might need fewer hands to carry everything!) Don't take any bags at all - you'll get through quicker!
Pictures later.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Tampa Bay Rays @ New York Yankees (2)
The middle game of my three in New York was a day game, with a start just after 1pm. I arrived a little late, because the numerous signs I'd seen at the 39 Av subway stop saying "No Manhattan-bound trains between 10am-3pm Wed 21-Fri 23" hadn't registered. I had to travel about 15 minutes the wrong way, plus waiting at the start and the turn around point. Afterwards, I realised I could probably have walked 5 minutes to the M,R station two blocks further and saved a lot of time.
Today was my first game in the premium seats, although I didn't actually use the club room to which I am entitled, as I wanted to actually watch the game. I was almost directly behind the plate and quite high up, which gives you an excellent view of the field and what everybody's doing. It makes it much easier to spot the fielding team adjusting their positions for each batter, too. Sometimes just subtly, but always to a plan.
The game was quite tight, although I did miss all of the early runs and nothing else was scored until New York finally got to the Tampa Bay starter in the bottom of the 8th inning. The upside to them taking a 2-run lead was we all got to see Mariano Rivera pitch the 9th inning. He duly completed a 1-2-3 inning to record his 603rd career save, extending the record that he broke on Monday. Winning this game also clinched a playoff berth for New York.
Due to an earlier postponement, the Rays and Yankees were playing a doubleheader, but it was a separate-admission DH, so they played "New York, New York" just the once and a huge army of cleaners who'd been positioned around the concourses during the 9th inning, got to work almost immediately - there seemed to be about 1 cleaner per row per section, which is a lot! They had around half an hour to clean the entire stadium, although I suspect that they could have delayed the entry to the second game for a little bit to give them a little more time, if necessary.
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| View from section 320b, row 9 |
The game was quite tight, although I did miss all of the early runs and nothing else was scored until New York finally got to the Tampa Bay starter in the bottom of the 8th inning. The upside to them taking a 2-run lead was we all got to see Mariano Rivera pitch the 9th inning. He duly completed a 1-2-3 inning to record his 603rd career save, extending the record that he broke on Monday. Winning this game also clinched a playoff berth for New York.
Due to an earlier postponement, the Rays and Yankees were playing a doubleheader, but it was a separate-admission DH, so they played "New York, New York" just the once and a huge army of cleaners who'd been positioned around the concourses during the 9th inning, got to work almost immediately - there seemed to be about 1 cleaner per row per section, which is a lot! They had around half an hour to clean the entire stadium, although I suspect that they could have delayed the entry to the second game for a little bit to give them a little more time, if necessary.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Tampa Bay Rays @ New York Yankees (1)
I left the hotel at 6 for the 7.05 game, but I needn't have left quite so soon, because although the first subway from the hotel's stop down to 59th/Roosevelt was OK, the 4 train was jam-packed, as were the next two, so in the end I waited about 20 minutes for a train to arrive that I could actually get on. Fortunately, the 4 is an express train, so although it's quite a way (over 100 streets worth!) it doesn't take very long to get there.
My credit card did not yield the tickets from the ticket man's computer. Fortunately, I had taken all the receipts with me - I always do, just in case of this sort of thing. When the man typed in the reference numbers from my receipts, the tickets did come out successfully. I had chosen a cheaper seat for this game - it was only $95, which is 50% more than the most expensive generally-available Rockies ticket - so I was in the outfield.
The play is certainly quite distant, but I was next to the Rays' bullpen, although we weren't allowed to take photos during an inning. We also had an armed police officer at the front of the section, presumably to protect the players, rather than the crowd!
The weather forecast is not that great all week, but there was no problem with this evening's game. In fact, Nova, pitching for New York was extremely economical, throwing very few pitches. Conversely, the Yankees loaded the bases several times during the course of the game, including the 2nd inning when Curtis Granderson hit a bases-clearing double to put the game out of reach.
The game after that wasn't boring exactly, but it lost any tension with New York having a 4 run lead. It finished 5-0, but still took over 3 hours, despite the pitch economy.
I found the PA announcements very hard to hear in the stadium. The only one I could understand was the late Bob Sheppard's anouncement of Derek Jeter's at-bats. Maybe that's because everybody knows exactly what he's saying, but it just seemed clearer, perhaps Bob's decades of announcing experience are relevant here!
I think I've noted in the past how New Yorkers appear to believe that the jam-packed train currently at the platform is the last ever train going their way and they must add to the crush and somehow get on the train rather than wait for the next one. I only had to wait about a minute for an empty 4 train to arrive - we could see it stopped just outside the station waiting for the packed one to leave - and thus travel back in comfort on a mostly empty train.
My credit card did not yield the tickets from the ticket man's computer. Fortunately, I had taken all the receipts with me - I always do, just in case of this sort of thing. When the man typed in the reference numbers from my receipts, the tickets did come out successfully. I had chosen a cheaper seat for this game - it was only $95, which is 50% more than the most expensive generally-available Rockies ticket - so I was in the outfield.
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| Most players have trouble hitting a ball 400ft, let alone a bat! |
The play is certainly quite distant, but I was next to the Rays' bullpen, although we weren't allowed to take photos during an inning. We also had an armed police officer at the front of the section, presumably to protect the players, rather than the crowd!
The weather forecast is not that great all week, but there was no problem with this evening's game. In fact, Nova, pitching for New York was extremely economical, throwing very few pitches. Conversely, the Yankees loaded the bases several times during the course of the game, including the 2nd inning when Curtis Granderson hit a bases-clearing double to put the game out of reach.
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| Now batting, number 2, Derek. Jeter. Number 2. |
I found the PA announcements very hard to hear in the stadium. The only one I could understand was the late Bob Sheppard's anouncement of Derek Jeter's at-bats. Maybe that's because everybody knows exactly what he's saying, but it just seemed clearer, perhaps Bob's decades of announcing experience are relevant here!
I think I've noted in the past how New Yorkers appear to believe that the jam-packed train currently at the platform is the last ever train going their way and they must add to the crush and somehow get on the train rather than wait for the next one. I only had to wait about a minute for an empty 4 train to arrive - we could see it stopped just outside the station waiting for the packed one to leave - and thus travel back in comfort on a mostly empty train.
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