Our review of Yankee Stadium - Trip Day 34 (6/24)

It was an unexpectedly cold and foggy night in the Bronx tonight and to put it lightly, well, none of the Venables were impressed with the new Yankee Stadium.  All four of us took the subway up to the Bronx to see the game and I think we were disappointed to say the least.  The best word to describe the place is sterile.  I had been to the old Yankee Stadium three times before.  The new one looks almost the same on the inside and out as the old one with the exception of the great gigantic scoreboards they have in center field.

The whole Venable crew came out to see what the Yanks had to offer.  

 

The CF scoreboard is nice.  The biggest so far that we've seen and it does the job.

Andie and I hamming it up for the camera

What I was really disappointed with more than anything were the fans.  In the old Yankee Stadium, the fans were running smak, and not just smak, but REALLY good smak at the opposing team and fans.  This time, you might has well had been in any bad baseball town for the most part.  The fans were docile and even did the wave  twice during the game.  The wave??? In Yankee Stadium??

Not all of the fans were boring.  It is cool what the bleacher creatures in right field do to start the game.  About three sections of fans in RF begin chanting each Yankee player's name one by one until the player looks to right field and waves at them.  That's pretty nice to see and it shows the connection the players have with the fans.  But the word from the fans sitting near us was that in the new stadium, prices for all of the seats nearly doubled and the working class fan who would usually be there with all the great smak runners have been priced out of the park, which is too bad.  I've always hated the Yankees, and New Yorkers can be rough around the edges, but I have a great respect for their fans and they definitely know their baseball.

Anyway, there were some great parts to the ballpark.  You have to love the section in center field where all of the monuments sit in respect to the players who have had their numbers retired.  One thing the Yankees do right is tradition and history.  They also have it all around the park.  There's hardly a place you can go where you don't see something about Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, or Lou Gherig.  I guess my belief is that if they wanted to make the new park look so much like the old park, they should have just refurbished the old one.  The park does have great concessions though.  The food was very good - something my kids definitely enjoyed.

Cold and foggy at Yankee Stadium

 

The banners surrounding the inside of the park are very cool.

More banners.  The Yanks do history right.

Me and my main man.  We can now say we've seen a game in Yankee Stadium together.
I just wish it had been the old one.

The Yankees lost the game by the way - 4-2 to the Rockies.  As for the two parks Michael and I saw in New York, Citi Field wins that competition hands down.  Even the Yankee fans sitting around us acknowledged that Citi Field looks better.  Overall, I would give it a 6.5/10.  It's not a bad place to watch a game, but it is Yankee Stadium, and you just expect more if they were going to build a new park.  Anyway, here's Michael's take:

Hi everyone.  It's me Michael.  It's pretty late tonight and we've got to head out to Philadelphia tomorrow morning so I'll make it quick.  Yankee Stadium was not good compared to what I have seen so far.  I agree with my dad.  I thought it would be much better.  The outside of the park was nothing special.  My dad told me about all the great fans.  The fans were boring to me.  I did like the food and the big scoreboard was nice, but I'm not even sure it will make my top 15 stadiums.  I will have to think about it some more.  Anyway, I give it about a 5.5/10.

Well, there you have it.  The Venable crew will head out bright and early tomorrow morning for a quick two hour ride to Philadelphia.  Tomorrow night, just Michael and I are heading to Citizens Bank Park to see the Phillies play the A's.  I've heard the park is really nice so we'll see how it turns out.  We'll also take in some more historical sights and I'm going to race Michael to the top of the Philadelphia Art Museum to see if we can recreate the scene from Rocky.  Looking forward to it and maybe even a cheesesteak sandwich!

Another story on our trip

We noticed this last night.  The Catholic Sun - the newspaper published by the Archdiocese of Phoenix, did a quick blurb on our trip.  Apparently, they were doing a story about Catholics and baseball and learned about our trip and the fact that we are Catholic and Michael goes to Our Lady of Mt. Carmel school in Tempe. The article is almost a month old, but it was very nice of them nonetheless.

Catholic Sun article

Some cool stats on the Baseball Adventure

We have two weeks left on our big trip that started over a month ago and here are some little tid-bits on the trip:

• Days away from home - 34
• Number of states driven through - 22 (Arizona, California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey) and Ontario, Canada
• Number of countries - 2 (U.S. and Canada)
• Total number of ballparks visited - 19
• Total number of games seen - 14
• Total number of tours - 5
• Record of the home team when we see a game - 7-7
• Number of extra-inning games - 2 (home teams won both games)
• Number of rain delays - 1
• Total miles traveled - 8,077
• Total times Michael has asked to go home - 1 (right as we arrived in Denver after 3 days of driving)
• Page visits by others to our blog - 3,321 (recently been averaging about 180 per day)
• Number of baseball movies seen in the car - 6 (Bad News Bears - Michael's favorite)
• Number of times interviewed about the trip - 3
• Number of times blog has appeared in the news or has been linked - 4
• Number of times we've had to yell at Michael and Andie for fighting each other - Too many to count

If there's anything someone wants to know about the trip so far, please feel free to ask by submitting a comment.  The question I get the most is how is Michael holding up so far (fine and he's not asking to go home yet) and am I sick of driving yet (no but we have some really long trips coming up once we leave Baltimore and it will be tough as it is near the end of the trip).

Baseball Adventure - NYC with the family - Day 33 (6/23)

After two days of running ourselves ragged around NYC, we decided to do only one thing today - take a boat to see Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.  We headed out around 9:00 am and went to Liberty State Park in New Jersey to catch the boat.  The weather was crappy - lots of fog that made seeing above 200 feet in the air very difficult, and a constant drizzle of rain.  That didn't dampen our spirits though.

Michael and Andie playing around waiting for the boat.

When we got on the boat, we couldn't see Ellis Island or the Statue at all.  Normally on a semi-clear day, you can easily see them.  The islands are no more than a few city blocks off the shore of New Jersey.  But as we took off and got closer, they came into view and the views were awesome.

First stop - Ellis Island.  I was really looking forward to this.  To think this place was the launching point for over 12 million immigrants, mostly from Europe, was amazing.  We had a great tour guide who gave us a tour of the registry building and the medical facilities.  The most interesting stat I heard was that of the 12.2 million people to enter the country through Ellis Island, only 2% of them decided to return to their home countries after they arrived.

Although everyone wanted to come here, not everyone here wanted them.  When you hear about the immigrants' plight to the US, it's usually sugar coated and told in a way that the US welcomed them all.  Definitely not true.  The majority of the country wanted nothing to do with the waves of newcomers for fear of taking American jobs away, raising crime rates, and causing the decay of America.  Sound familiar?  The truth is that the immigrants that came to this country were some of the most hard-working and innovative people that raised the standard of living of the country enormously according to our tour guide.  I'm guessing the same is true today.

A photo from the Ellis Island museum.  Not everyone was happy to see the newcomers.

I saw this and thought this was a great story.  And it was likely very true.

Anyway, we then sailed over to the Statue of Liberty.  What an incredible sight to be so close to it.  The kids loved it too.  I tried to imagine myself being an immigrant on one of those ships back then and what it must have been like to leave my country, be stuck in the steerage section of the ship for up to four weeks, and then come into the harbor in New York and see that statue from a distance.  I can only think of how excited and scared I would have been.  The kids just thought the statue was big.  It was great watching their faces.  Both of them had seen it in their history books from school, but to watch them finally see it up close was a great thing.

Anyway, we spent the rest of the evening back at our hotel and enjoyed a peaceful evening of watching movies.  Tomorrow (Friday), we are heading to Manhattan for some general sightseeing and then we will cap the evening off as a family by taking the 4 train up to the Bronx to see the Yankees take on the Rockies in new Yankee Stadium.  Looking forward to it.