areyoulistening

I went to Yankee Stadium today to drop some shit off for Saturday and the terrible Yankees haven’t returned from their nightmare roadtrip so there were a only few workers cleaning and some tourists taking pictures outside. I walked by where the cotton candy stand that I have been “making” or “spinning” at since 2000 would normally be and had a wave of sadness come over me.

My friends and I have a spent a large portion of our summers and falls in that area, or at the very least, in that building watching our favorite team play baseball. There were hot July day games when every asshole from Connecticut to the East end of Long Island managed to show up and act like because they bought a ticket to a baseball game had the right to treat the people that worked there like a lower form of life. There were also the freezing November evenings of 2001 when the Yankees did the impossible on a nightly basis. For all the bad we went through, we were rewarded with getting to say we were at every big game at the Stadium from October of 1999 on through last year.

One year Dave and I made a point of writing what “Freddy Sez” had written on his sign if it super retarded. A few examples: “I love buffalo wings almost as much as the Yankees” and phrases like “Abba Dabba Goo–The Yankees Can’t Lose!” Freddy Sez is a corpse that walks around Yankee Stadium with a dopey sign that has a pan attached to it–he brings a spoon and makes small children bang the pan. He is also missing an eye. Pete Baker liked to scream, “Go home, Freddy!” whenever he dragged his lifeless soul container toward section 8.

There were plenty of people we saw every game: John Beers’ Grandmother Joan, that weird 16 year old kid from Connecticut that would come by and talk to me about life way too often (I assume he was in love with me), the gross guy with the long hair that got a hot chocolate sundae every game, the drunk guy that threw up near our stand at opening day in 2003 that Pete Baker hated, that fat kid from the neighborhood that walked by the stand and screamed about us being white boys and many more.

I always loved seeing couples  that got into the kind of arguments where the girl refuses to sit near the guy anymore so he follows her around the Stadium trying to talk her back to their seats (the lesson here is: don’t bring women that don’t really care about the game to the game). I saw Alyssa Milano at the 2003 World Series, Chevy Chase a few times, Phillip Seymour Hoffman at the Sausage Stand, the older brother from Diff’rent Strokes, Jeremy Shockey and I’m sure there were others.

One day game Dave and I went to eat lunch in the cooler and I pressed down on the top of a keg and caught the fat beer stream to my face piece. Of course there were the the liquid lunches with Tracey during the Hot summer of 2006 that helped things go a little smoother.

The Aaron Boone homerun in 2003 against the Sox feels like a lifetime ago now but it was an unreal feeling. It really felt like they were just never going to beat us and certainly never win the World Series (boy, were we waaaaay off!). Everything from the 2001 playoffs was great too (the stuff in the Bronx anyway). This year, the last year, we got to see the All Star game played at the Stadium. I’ve never been a huge fan of the All Star game but my Dad really loved it so that was pretty cool.

I will miss the Stadium quite a bit and I fear the new stadium may be too much like all the other new ones around the country. The Stadium was ours, you know? It wasn’t as pretty as all those other new ones and working there we saw all the cracks and faded paint that did make the place look run down but it was still the Stadium. It was still the same building we all saw our first baseball games, where we watched the Yankees of the late 80’s and early 90’s struggle and where we would evantually see them put together a stretch where they would play in 13 straight postseasons, play in 6 World Series’ (while winning 4) and where more recently they have failed to come up big when it counted most. 

So heres all you wonderful bastards: Mike Reeve, Mike Tracey, Pete Baker, Pete Shikar, Dave Marcinkus, Darren Perrilo, Anthony “Tony” Nigro, Bill Parker, Denis O’Sullivan, Brian Tyler, John Beers, Simon O’Connor, Alex Rodriguez (not the ball player), Jonathon Ariaga and all the others.

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