Bleacher Bum

SPORTING GOODS

I had my first experience with two Yankee game phenomena that I had been wanting to experience for some time now. OK, before you guess "watch the team lose 74-0" and "see the earth open up and swallow the team and the owner's box whole," I should rephrase that. There are two ways of watching the game that my fiancee has wanted to do for a few years, and I thought they sounded pretty good too, so I went along with it last night.

First, we took the "Yankee Clipper" from East 34th Street. At $18 per person round trip, it is a bit pricey. But when I considered that compared to a subway ride, I am paying $7 per trip to be sitting on a boat on a beautiful evening, instead of being crammed in to a rush hour 4 train, I forgot about that. They sell snacks, hot dogs, even beers on board. And the views are quite nice, going under a number of obscure and not-so-obscure bridges on the way to the stadium. I wouldn't ride the ferry every time, but it is a nice alternative, particularly on a late summer evening. Just make sure you get on the right boat - we almost boarded a boat to Jersey.

More importantly, I sat in the bleachers for the first time last night. Now that the section is completely alcohol free, it is a bit less dangerous than it used to be, and there were actually quite a few children out there. That said, I still wouldn't wear my Red Sox gear, or cheer for any team but the Yankees, when sitting out there. So it was a quiet night for me, mostly getting to cheer for good plays in the field and some nice pitching (especially by former-BoSox Casey Fossum and Tom Gordon), before watching the Yankees melt down in the ninth inning to lose the game. The views are pretty good from the right field bleachers, and there are pretty much no lines for food or the bathroom, so as far as game experience goes, it was fantastic, especially for $12 a ticket. No Mark Bellhorn sightings unfortunately.

If you're lucky, you'll get to sit next to the guy that I was next to, who I guess thought that barking (literally barking, not figuratively barking) at every attractive woman who walked up or down the aisle was somehow going to get him laid. Whether that was going to happen during the seventh inning stretch, after the game, or during a Yankees rally in which one of his woofees would get so excited she would just throw herself at him, I'm not sure. In any case, it didn't seem to work out. Shocking, I know.