It's One, Two, Three Strikes You're Out of Money

Our story begins -- as such stories must -- with a 6-year-old boy, a father and a long-ago first baseball game at the original incarnation of the original Yankee Stadium.

It was Saturday afternoon, Sept. 12, 1953, and my father and I (along with 9,000 other fans) got to watch the World Series-bound Bronx Bombers clobber the hapless Detroit Tigers 13 to 4. (I am indebted to the archives at Retrosheet for helping me pin down details based on hazy memories). We witnessed -- and how I wish I could remember -- a monster three-run home run in the upper deck by a 21-year-old named Mickey Mantle.

My childhood allegiance to the Yankees did not survive the bumptious antics of George Steinbrenner's managerial merry-go-round in the 1980s. (He hired and fired Billy Martin five times.) But I never gave up my nostalgic affection for Yankee Stadium, even if it lost some of its 1923 historical patina with an unimaginative 1970s renovation.

Shortly after we moved to New York in the mid-1980s, my wife, Meryl, decided to surprise me with Yankees tickets for my birthday. Knowing nothing of schedules and seating locations, Meryl befriended a guy named Stanley in the Yankees' ticket office. Thus was born a glorious tradition that lasted for two decades: We purchased affordable box seats about 25 rows behind home plate for a dozen or so games a year. Friends bought country houses; we had the summer greenery of a ball field in the Bronx.

Only as annual Yankee attendance crossed the 4 million mark in 2005 (it was 1.7 million as recently as 1995) did we start having problems. Our old seats became special-occasion expensive (over $80 each) and then completely unavailable. It was the unalterable law of supply and demand. We were journalists competing for a scarce resource against the beneficiaries of boom times on Wall Street, with predictable results.

When the new and unnecessary Yankee Stadium opened this April with ticket prices that would cause a Saudi prince to balk (a box seat for a single game could run as high as $2,500), I surrendered to the inevitable and recognized that I was permanently shut out. Yes, of course, I could have relocated to the upper deck or the bleachers, but I have a quaint notion that I would actually like to see the baseball. Too far away from the action, and the entire game looks like a circus pantomime, with the clowns circling under an invisible pop fly.

There were compensations, like two spur-of-the-moment games at Camden Yards in Baltimore (the first and best of the modern retro-style ball parks) and a visit to the home park of the Washington Nationals. But I am a New Yorker, living just a short subway ride from Yankee Stadium, and the season-long self-restraint began to rankle. Like a junkie trying just a taste for old times' sake, I started checking out seat prices and locations on the Yankee website. (A word of warning: If you opt for the "best available" seat, the price is invariably a wallet-cleansing $900.)

So in honor of July 4 (and the great tradition of baseball, hot dogs and...er...the now-bankrupt Chevrolet), I cracked. Even though we are in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the Depression, even though I had to borrow the money from two guys who will break my kneecaps if I am slow to repay, I did what I had to do in order to get a single field-level seat at the new Yankee Stadium. The online price tag for a seat in the 22^nd row in Section 114 B, a little beyond first base, was...and this is embarrassing to write...$266.35. But think about how frugal I was to take the subway both ways.

The new Yankee Stadium -- across the street from its beloved predecessor, now shrouded in netting as it awaits demolition – is Brobdingnagian in its excess. (For those keeping score at home, that was a reference to "Gulliver's Travels" and not to a bulked-up-with-steroids slugger.) From the outside, it reminded me of the oversized buildings in Islamabad that were designed to give an aura of authority to a shaky government. Even beyond the ticket takers, the outer concourse seems more like the United Airlines terminal at O'Hare Airport than a baseball park.

Yes, I could continue with my grumpy fan's lament. After Yankee batting practice, I wandered into the Peter Max gallery (a trip to see a baseball game brings with it, of course, an irresistible urge to shop for art) and noted that the price on a print of a Yogi Berra likeness was $3,000. On a humbler financial plane, a scorecard costs $10. But (and this is better than a rebate) you get a tiny Yankees pencil with it. And I guess I should mention that my lunch (two tasteless hot dogs and a bottle of water) cost $24 before the tip for the seat-side waiter.

Where the old Yankee Stadium never hid from the grittiness of its Bronx neighborhood (though Steinbrenner certainly complained about it), the surrounding buildings are masked by the sheer size of this colossus of sport. What I particularly miss is the imposing view of the Bronx County Courthouse (immortalized in Tom Wolfe's "Bonfire of the Vanities") behind the old center field.

I could also complain that the weird wind currents that turn right field into a home-run launching pad make a travesty of the game. And do not even get me started on Alex Rodriguez's salary, his late-night romantic escapades or his 2003 positive test for steroids. Rooting for the Yankees and their bloated payroll these days is akin to rooting for (and pardon the update) Microsoft.

As much as I am enjoying this curmudgeonly act, I have an embarrassing confession – I had a wonderful time at the new Yankee Stadium. The padded seats were exceptionally comfortable and the sight lines far better than in the old ballpark. Saturday afternoon's game (even with four somewhat dubious home runs to right field) was a thriller, finally won by the Yankees 6 to 5 in the bottom of the 12^th inning. Given the 4-hour-5-minute length of the game, I actually got a baseball bargain. My ticket ended up costing me just a few pennies more than a dollar a minute.

I also had the treat of sitting next to a thumb-sucking 6-year-old boy on my right (who had brought his Rawlings glove) and a self-possessed 4-year-old girl with hair braids on my left. Much to my amazement (and the seeming awe of both sets of parents), the children happily lasted well into extra innings. Maybe someday both of them will dutifully prod their parents' memories and check old box scores to try to conjure up their first game at the Stadium.

So what if the total cost of my first trip to the new Yankee Stadium almost equaled that of the used station wagon that Meryl and I bought right after we were married? There are things in life, like visiting the Taj Mahal and the Pyramids, that you just have to do. Too bad that a day at Yankee Stadium has become a bucket-list extravaganza – something you do once and savor the memory.