Friday, August 31, 2007

Yankee Stadium


The Yankees Win....thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa YANKEES WIN!!!!

Yankees 5, Redsox 0. Great day at the stadium.

When I moved to New York in 1994, i had very little money, absolutely no knowledge of what to do or where to go. I had no strong political contact with what was going on in the world. I didn't realize yet that New York was a place that you could mold into your own image. I was 18, on my own, going to college and living in a single room apartment with a bed a dresser and nothing else.

What do I do with my time?

Well, during the baseball season, I went to the ballgame, as often as i could. For 6 dollars you could wait on line for day-of the game tickets in the right field bleachers of Yankee stadium. The bleachers back then were not the party all the time place it is now. There were a small group of rowdy bleacher-creatures that reveled in their love for the Yankees and shared a contempt for anything to do with the box-seat yuppies in any other section of the stadium.

You could sit out in the bleachers, stretch out in the open seating and listen to the inventive and very "un-family friendly" chants. I still think there is little better way to spend 3 hours in the city than by watching the ballgame. Maybe its my connection to the early lean days of my first years in New York. But I think its more the contrast to everything else in my life.

No matter how hectic or stressful your life gets, sitting at a baseball game is just fun.

I could create a list of reasons that the baseball industry is just another capitalist machine draining the working class of its money or complain about a bunch of spoiled millionaires playing a dumb game so the corporate sponsors have a larger vehicle for their own gain. And I would be right to bring up the games success helping to perpetuating sweatshop abuse, and its biggest market players ignoring their responsibilities by making money off the slave labor and not speaking out against the practices.

I would be right to make all these points...and i do often. But watching a baseball game is just watching a baseball game. It's fun, peaceful and it a great way to connect with other people in your city.

I know this blog is supposed to celebrate all of New York, but i hate the Mets...so I'm not going to Shea!!!

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