I work in advertising and I’ll admit that sometimes it has its perks. Last week I got another of them in the form of tickets to a Yankee game. I went with a rep from a site we worth with as well as a couple co-workers. It was my first Yankee game and my first visit to the new stadium. I’ve only ever been to two baseball games before and both of them were at Shea Stadium. The tickets to both of them were free as well.

I met up with our rep, Jason and co-workers Steve and Eddie at the stadium. It just so happened that at least three other co-workers were at the game. It was a day game too. I forgot to mention that. With the new station at the stadium I was there in twenty minutes by train. Very convenient.

I contemplated what to wear to the game. I had worked from home in the morning and it was supposed to be hot. I ended up going with a t-shirt and jeans thinking that shorts were too casual. Sure enough I show up and Steve and Eddie are both in shorts. Fortunately for me our seats (which were awesome) were in the shade provided by the level above us.

Taken from my BlackBerry

The game was entertaining despite the fact that I got lost quite a few times. Stuff happens in baseball that I just don’t understand sometimes. The crowd would suddenly start cheering and I would have no idea why. Our view of the scoreboard was blocked by the level above us so I couldn’t see some of the stats that were displayed there. Also, I can see why people say that baseball is boring. If I were watching a game on TV I would be bored as hell. Between pitches the stadium tries to keep the crowd pumped by constantly asking them to make some noise or playing a variety of snippets from songs.

The food was also amazing. Yes, I had some Cracker Jack but I also had a cheese steak which was pretty damn good. I didn’t have a hot dog, but I got over that pretty quickly. One thing that I thought was a little annoying was that we had to show our tickets to an usher every time we went to sit down. So if I got up to go to the bathroom I had to whip out my ticket in order to get down to my seats even if I just walked by the guy. I guess it’s to prevent people from buying the cheap seats and then making their way down to the more expensive areas. I don’t see why this is the case though because there were a ton of empty seats all over the place. Let the people move down!

There were also a group of annoying European guys that sat in the row in front of us. You can see one of their greasy slicked back haircuts in the bottom right hand corner of the picture above. This guy was filming the game for long periods of time and was pretty blatant about it despite video cameras being prohibited at the stadium. Towards the end of the game one of the ushers asked him to put the camera away and he flipped out on him, cursing him in some foreign language and claiming that he was only taking pictures. Dude, you were caught. Just deal with it. At least he didn’t throw you out. Of course, right after the usher left he took the camera out again.

I was the only one in our group to stay until the end of the game. I can understand people wanting to avoid traffic but if you come to a baseball game, stay until the end! You don’t even know who won if you leave two innings before it’s over. All in all, I had a great time. I checked my BlackBerry quite a few times during the game but there were no urgent matters that I couldn’t take care of through that device. Now to wait until I get more free tickets so I can go again.