02. The Bronx

Challenge Successful.
We went to see the YANKEES!!!!

There's a website called StubHub where people sell their tickets for gigs and sports games (just like Seatwave), so you're able to get tickets for Baseball, Basketball and Football games pretty cheaply. So the a week or so ago we bought tickets to see The Yankees playing the Toronto Bluejays for the bargain price of £20!

We took the 4 train all the way up to Yankee Stadium, the train was full of Yankee fans - all of which looked the same, preppy American college guys wearing khaki shorts, trainers and baseball caps (and all talking really loudly)...

When you get off the train you're right there at the very new and very grand looking Yankee Stadium. It's a bit off because the surround around in the Bronx isn't that nice and there's obviously not a great deal of money around, but Yankee Stadium must have cost a fortune (I suppose the land was cheap... but it must bring in stacks of business for the area and provide a lot of jobs. It's an incredibly impressive building.

Before we even went in the stadium, Abi made sure we had our priorities straight - if we were going to see a Yankees game, we needed a big foam hand to show our support! So we stopped off at a souvenir shop and found a fetching foam hand for Miss Turner. Then we went to find our seats...

We thought we'd be right up in the nosebleed-seats, but we had a pretty good view of everything, it felt great to be so high and to be able to see all the crowd and the amazingly huge TV screen and all the players and all the action.

Inside the stadium are absolutely LOADS of concession stands, all pretty much selling the same thing - Hotdogs and Beer. So, when in Rome...

The atmosphere was fantastic, everyone cheering and singing 'Let's go Yankees, Let's go!' - and the big TV screens constantly showed different phrases or songs to get everyone going, there were constant stats about the players, and each player had their own nickname and little animation to go with it (a bit like the animations they have when you go bowling and you get a spare and there's a picture of the bowling pin splitting in half...). It was all very entertaining, far more entertaining than the actual game itself - which was still great, but it's still glorified rounders really.


It was JUST like we'd imagined, all the little musical bits and pieces - like the old organ tunes when they come on and leave the pitch, the crowds full of passionate supporters booing and cheering, the hotdogs, pretzels, peanuts and beer - and even the vendors walking through the crowd shouting 'Beer! I've got beer here! Who wants a beer?'...

The advertising was incredible too, no opportunity to brand something had been missed - every little nook and cranny of the stadium had some kind of advert or branding on it, even the things they used to comb the field had branding on, and every so often an announcement would come on saying 'Congratulations if you're sitting in seat 8, row 7 in section 319! You've won a seat upgrade courtesy of Delta Airlines' or something like that... they were so many endorsed competitions... they must make an absolute fortune!

This was a funny little break in the game where they were combing the field... not that the field was getting that much action, it was a pretty slow game. But we got into it and the Yankees were winning, Abi even learned all the players names!

We didn't stay for the whole game (they go on for hours, as we had 3 more boroughs to get to), but it was absolutely fantastic to be there and now we know how easy it is to go, and now that a new season's starting (I think), we're going to go again.

It was such a brilliant start to the day, and such an amazing experience being there - the sun was shining, it was beautifully warm and sunny and breezy and everyone was in such good moods and the hotdogs were delicious... all in all, a bloody brilliant morning.