Bronx Jokers

The Mets game Thursday evening ended up not being my final baseball game of the year. A friend got a pair of freebies to the Yankees-Blue Jays game on Friday. We're both Mets fans, so we went to hope quietly for the Jays to steal one from the Yanks at "the stadium." Naturally, this didn't happen. The Yankees won. But first...

We arrive at Yankee Stadium, and this security woman tells me I can't take my bag in. This is a bag I consistently take into Shea Stadium, so I say, appropriately, "They let me bring it into Shea." They're clearly instructed not to engage a crazed fan, or non-fan as the case may be, and she points me to the dude in charge of the jokers with bags. You see, Yankee Stadium doesn't have a damned bag check, so jokers with bags are required to go across the street to check their bags at a shitty Bronx bowling alley. Thoughts of the hundreds of jokers with bags lining up after the game haunt me, but I decide to let it go for now and go watch some damned baseball.

The dude in charge of jokers with bags has told me to just come back to him and he'll let us right in without having to go through security again, so this is what we do. He lets us in. No one actually searches me. And no one even takes my ticket. I go unchecked all the way to our seats at Yankee Stadium.

Turns out the jokers with bags aren't the only jokers.

I avoid the lines at the bag check at the bowling alley by leaving an inning and a half early. Yankee games are a fucking bore.

But the company was good, and I'm always thankful for free baseball tickets. So thanks, anonymous friend!