The Cheap Seats

Someone go feed the roosters.
San Francisco, California - May 2005

We got tickets to last night's Yankees-Devil Rays game in the Bronx from Baker. He and Jim told us the seats were great, no I mean, REALLY great, and they didn't lie. Behind the screen, lower deck, section 1B, row 1, seat 1. I've been told Tanja and I were on TV (for some people it was the first real proof that we're actually back in New York--not perpetrating some elaborate and bizarre scam). We could see the speed of the pitches on the radar gun before everyone else in the stadium. We could see the complete lack of movement on Chien-Ming Wang's pitches. I'd never seen anything like it.

But you know what's really great about those seats?

What?

It's the little differences.

Example.

When you're sitting waaaay up in the upper deck, and everyone's cheering, I mean really cheering, or in the case of this year's team, complaining, the fans call the players by their last time and throw things at them. "Come on Mattingly!" "Let's go Nettles." "Don't walk this guy, Guante."

Down low, with your catered hot dogs, and hand-delivered plastic bottles of Bud, it's different. "Let's go, Derek." "Strike this guy out, Mike." "We'd be obliged if you could drive Jason in from second, Gary."

It's a whole other New York.