Enemy Perspective:

Yankees (Box Office) Suck

This article appeared in the April 18, 2007 issue of Barstool Sports.

Web site: Barstoolsports.com

I've never been as excited for a baseball season as I was for this season--and it had nothing to do with Dice-K or Drew, Pettite or Pavano.

This year was the year I was to "come of age" in a baseball sense. This was the year my love of the game manifested itself in a beautiful marriage, the year I busted my hardball cherry.

This was the year I became a New York Yankees Season Ticket Holder.

Having spent the last eight years catching more Yankees games in the not-so-friendly confines of Fenway Park than at Yankee stadium, this was the year I decided to change that. You see, I live in Boston, but my girlfriend lives in New York, so my whipped ass was going to be in the Big Apple enough this season to justify the purchase of a ticket package.

On the appointed day, I jumped online and bought the Saturday package as soon as it became available. Twelve games, every Saturday game played in the Stadium except Old Timer's Day, and including one Rivalry matchup.

I expertly chose my seats: section 621, right next to first base, two rows back from the railing in the massive upper horseshoe at the Stadium. I gladly paid through the nose for them. And then I waited like a kid on Christmas Eve for my tickets to arrive.

When they finally showed up at my girlfriend's house mid-week, I commanded her not to open them--I wanted the honor. I wanted to pull a Fallon and tear open the package, flip through the booklet, touch them, smell them. When I went to visit her a day before my first appointed game, I hugged the UPS package instead of her.

Then I ripped open the package. In an instant, joy and excitement turned to shock, shock turned to anger, and soon I was screaming like a Jack Bauer torture subject.

What could turn such unbridled joy to unbearable pain? What could turn one of the defining moments of my adulthood into the day the Yankees mugged me and kicked me in the junk?

The fucking Yankees sent me the wrong ticket package. They sent me the weekday package--nine games, Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

Let me remind you of an important point: I LIVE IN BOSTON. I have an office job, which unfortunately requires me to work on every Tuesday and Wednesday. I was faced with an important decision: immediately begin work on a teleportation machine, or call up the Yankees and start smashing heads.

I chose the latter, but getting a human on the Yankees box office hotline is as realistic as a gorgeous woman urinating fresh Guinness. After several hours of trying, I was as frustrated as an illiterate man on the toilet.

I'm not sure what it says about me that this is one of the biggest disappointments of my life. For a few minutes, deep in a cloud of sadness and anger, I contemplated rooting for the Red Sox this year and starting "Yankees Suck" chants at Fenway--seriously, that's how upset I was.

After a few hours and a couple of sympathy beers, I came to my senses and remembered that God invented Craigslist and eBay for situations just like this, and that it might not be the horrible situation it seemed. The package contained much better opponents than the weekend package, even if it had three fewer games. (For the record, I didn't notice the price difference when I made the purchase, because a retard in the second grade can add better than I can.)

There's a Boston game, so that's money in the bank; Toronto, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, also easy sells; the Orioles game I can probably give away to a friend who has given me tickets in the past and make good on that debt; and Arizona, which isn't so great except that there's a chance the Yanks may get to slap that lanky ass biatch Randy Johnson during that game. All of these tickets are very marketable.

So I'll play the whore and sell pieces of my soul on the internet. Fine. Then I'll use my earnings to buy tickets to other games I want to see, as I ended up doing on that first weekend.

After getting over the shock and giving up on trading in my tickets--all the good tickets would be gone anyway--I scored tickets to the Easter Sunday game against Baltimore off Craigslist. I bought a pair of nosebleeds for $35 off some Orioles fan, because goddammit, I was going to see some baseball that weekend--even if it meant forcing my girlfriend to sit through a 20 degree snowstorm to watch that game, which we did. Even if it meant dropping $10 on a pair of Yankees socks because the girl wore open toed shoes so she could "look cute for church," which I also did. (For some reason, she didn't think the socks made us even for making her sit in the freezing cold weather. Go figure.)

In the end, two valuable lessons has been learned: first, things aren't always as bad as they seem, like getting the wrong package full of better games; and second, that the Yankees do in fact suck sometimes--even if it's just their box office.

**** Because I have a few words left, let's handle some bidness: this being my first article of the season, I'd be remiss if I didn't get in some predictions. But really, what is there to predict? If the Yanks win the East this year, the entire span of my 20s will have elapsed with New York atop the standings when the season comes to a close. That's pretty remarkable, considering how good the Sox have been during some of those years--good enough to win the World Series once, anyway.

So the question is, do I predict the unpredictable to be different and less likely right? Or do I predict the predictable and be right--but boring? I'm sorry, nine years in a row can't be wrong: the Yankees win the division, Sox go second and take the Wild Card. My article that predicted that last year almost got banned from this paper, a paper that doesn't ban anything, because the Barstool editors didn't want to depress the fuck out of the Boston populace.

Boston fans, you guys always love to argue with the facts. For you, Jeter sucks, even though he's future HOF and the premier winner in the game. Nothing I can say will change your minds. But the facts are the facts: nine years in a row will be 10, because winning the division is what the Yankees do.

Here's a bone for you though: I don't think the Yanks can win the World Series. The pitching just isn't there. The Sox have a better shot at winning it all. In this bizarro world, that makes a ton of sense.

Because this is the world we live in: a world where I'm a Yankees Season Ticket Holder but won't be going to any of my games, and where a team that can't win the division is more likely to win the World Series than the team that will.

In the words of one of my favorite writers who passed away this week: so it goes.

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