A memorable baseball weekend (part 2): May 26, 2000 Red Sox v Yankees

I think we got to our seats in time for me to fill in the rosters for the Red Sox and the Yankees prior to the start of the game. The seats were great, a few rows back on the first base side. We felt like kids, none of us had ever had such good seats at a major league baseball game. We were a little above eye level with the field. Shortly after the start of the game a waitress assigned to our area came by. It seems that club seating comes with seat side food service. She gave us a menu and said that she would be back to get our order. Since it was a night game and none of us had time to eat dinner prior to leaving for the game, we had decided to eat dinner at the ballpark. I have a note on my scorecard that we spent $68 in food, seems that seat side food service comes at a premium. I did not make a note of what we ordered, probably sausages, fries, and a soda.

The Red Sox got off to a quick lead, at the end of the third inning they were leading by a score of 4 to 1. David Cone took the loss for the Yanks with Ramon Martinez notching the win for the Red Sox. The Yankees only run came in the bottom of the third by our reserve infielder, Bellinger (playing 2nd base that night) with a solo homerun.

The most entertaining part of the game came perhaps one–third of the way through the game. We noticed a buzz in the crowd and everyone was staring at something behind home plate. It took us awhile to figure out what was going on. Finally, we looked in the netting behind home plate and saw a body lying in the net. We looked in stunned silence at the body before the body stirred and attempted to climb up the netting. The crowd cheered when they saw that the body, male, was indeed alive. He got up, took some bows and tried to climb back up the netting. It became obvious to us that he was drunk, because he was unsteady on his feet and kept falling down as he tried to climb back up the netting. We started to boo. At some point, we looked up in the stands over where he had fallen in the netting and saw some of New York’s finest. They were ready to cart him away. And when he finally got back up, they did escort him out of the area. And probably out of the stadium.

The game went on and we had a great time. We enjoyed being so close to the action. We were in foul ball territory. Nothing came our way, but I have a note on my scorecard that two balls bounced off the scoreboard near our seats.

At the end of the game, we walked a short distance to the parking lot. Since this was the first time any of us had driven to the stadium, the traffic jam inside the garage caught us all by surprise. Writing this almost eight years later, I want to say that it took us 30 minutes to leave the garage. The reality was that it was perhaps half that time. We resolved never to drive to the stadium again. The trip home involved going back a different way from the one we used to get to the stadium. I don’t believe that this was our intended route, but it worked out. We got back to Manhattan and eventually back to the GW bridge for the trip home.