I used to have Yankee Season tickets. In fact I had them for over 25 years. Not a full season ticket. I ain't rich and even when they were five bucks a game in the 1960's I couldn't afford that. No I had a plan. I started with a Saturday plan. I had on for about 15 years. Saturday plans were great. It was almost always a day game. You got Old Timer Day. Almost always got plenty of Red Sox and Baltimore games. Plus some of the West Coast teams like the A's. You wanted to go in the daytime because it wasn't all that safe around the Stadium late at night in the 1970's,
Then I switched to a mixed plan. You could mix and match you games if you got 20 games. Plus you got one playoff ticket to every playoff game. That was great because you could pick the teams you wanted to see and not be locked into every weekend. The problem was the playoff seats were always in the nosebleed section. Once I had the very last seat on the corner with nothing to my left but a straight drop down to River Avenue. I was shitting the whole game with a iron grip on the railing.
In 1996 a got a better plan. Every week night. That was tough but I would sell off a bunch of tickets. It was easy because the Yankees were really good and I had great seats and everybody wanted them. The playoff seats were great too as they were the same seats. So I had them through the whole run.
I had to give them up. The prices skyrocketed. I gave them up even before the new stadium and the seat license fees. Going to the game is just too much of a hassle. I took the train and that had become even more of an ordeal. Especially coming home at one in the morning. It was safe but it took forever.
Plus the team is not as appealing as it once was when the core four were there. I hate A Rod and most of the other players are various rent a players. Not that I have any problem with free agents. But I don't like picking up loser Red Sox guys and paying them tons of dough to fail. And there are not enough American. I mean the starting pitcher this year is that over paid Jap loser. Why couldn't they have that load CC out there. They just named him the fifth starter. He was opening day starter six times already. Why not one more before he retires to work in a bakery like Mickey Lolich.
I have seen a ton of Yankee opening day pitchers from Mel Stottlemyre to Dave LaPoint to Jimmy Key to Catfish to even Carl Fucking Pavano. Most of the times we lose Opening Day. The team is pretty mediocre this year but it is a lousy division and we can still make the playoffs. I can't go to the game but I might listen on the radio. I much prefer the game on the radio than TV. I will be nostalgic but I don't regret not going. Sports like so many things these days has been taken over by forces that have ruined it. Maybe I live in the past too much. I just remember riding up to the Staduim on the train in my Yankee TShirt with a hero sandwich in a paper bag. Buying a rack of beers and yelling at George Brett and Mo Vaughn and having good clean dirty fun. Now you can't bring in outside food and if you yell creative invective they escort you out. Times change I guess. Like the changing of the earth.
Play ball.
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On the Mets' side Matt Harvey is having trouble peeing and the Yanks had two of their top relievers knocked out on the last day of spring training. Not permanently, Miller broke or chipped some tiny bone in his non-throwing arm but Mitchell will be out for three months with something I can't remember. So here's my question? Were ballplayers always so fragile? When I was a kid starting lineups were written in stone. They didn't change all season long. Berra, Snyder, Pee Wee Reese, Alvin Dark, 150 games a year, year after year. Now it's platooning and late inning substitutions and resting. Everyone gets to rest. Starting pitchers go six innings, tops. I don't like it that they aren't slaves no more!
I know right. But I have been told we can't talk about the old ballplayers or the old TV shows or the old movies because we wouldn't be cool hip cat world traveling know it alls.
So lets talk about Carlos Beltran and a Dominican to be named later. Jeeeez Louise.
Did you know that Topps never produced a Mickey Mantle baseball card? Even though we hated the Yankees out here in shitkick country, us kids spent all our allowance and even stole some out of ma's purse to try to get a M.M. card. It never happened. I had a stack of Clint Courtney cards 12 inches high though.
Too late to start a class action fraud case against the bubble gum barons?
Really. I thought I had a Mickey Mantle card back in the day. I put it in the spokes of my bike but I am pretty sure I had one. Are you sure about that?
I was being maybe a little sarcastic. But honestly, I never knew anyone who got a M.M. card. The probable reality was that Topps printed very few Mantle cards on purpose. A vintage version of the Superball Lottery for poor little kids. All the kids in our neighborhood played ball and we bought thousands of them, 5 at a time for a nickel.
That's exactly what they did. They printed Mickey Mantle cards but in minute quantities. There's a reason why so many people hate capitalism.
I had a couple of cards with Mickey and another player on it as I recall. Of course my Mom threw them all out before we knew they were worth anything.
This is the one I was talking about with Al Kaline.
I actually still have this one but it is not in mint condition so it is not worth anything.
The tragic flaw of Dodgers' fans was that they thought Duke Snider was the equal of Mickey Mantle. You could always trade those credulous peasants a Duke Snider card straight up for a Mickey Mantle one........I suppose Willie Mays was the most talented of the three NY center fielders, but Mickey had the grandeur. Mickey's career was subverted by bad legs, hangovers, and STDs, but, on the playing field anyway, he carried the mantle of the gods.
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