New York Yankees (Major League Baseball) @ Yankee Stadium (Bronx, NY)

*This trip occurred on June 2, 2026.

If you know anything about baseball, then you probably don’t need me to explain the history of the New York Yankees. Heck, as someone who viscerally dislikes them, I feel like the less I say here, the better.

So how the hell did I end up going to a Yankees game?

The story of this trip begins with the Somerset Patriots Semiquincentennials. Back when I saw them in April, I bought a Semiquincentennials jersey, and it came with a voucher for two free tickets to a Yankees game. Originally, I was going to give the voucher to one of my friends, but then I realized:

This blog is kinda my job right now, and I should not stick my nose up at an opportunity for CONTENT.

With that in mind...I decided to go for it - but one BIG thing to keep in mind for this voucher: the jersey cost $148. Therefore, in order to “maximize” the value of the voucher, I had to make sure that the cost of the two tickets met or exceeded that price - if they would have been less, then I didn’t feel it was enough value to justify using the voucher (i.e. “why spend $148 to not have to pay $20 for tickets?”). You might think that this would be impossible to do as the Yankees would not be so willing to give “discounts”, but you’d be surprised what seats were available from the voucher. Sure, the “best” seats were still second deck or outfield seats, but the prices I saw for some of them were surprisingly high (case in point: the tickets I got would have cost around $170 “firsthand”).

I’ve already talked about Yankee Stadium before, as I visited it both last year AND this year, but for those who need some context: the stadium opened in 2009 as a replacement for the “original” Yankee Stadium built in 1923 1977. As the home of the New York Yankees, the team wants you to KNOW who they are and what they represent - testaments to the team and its championship pedigree are (annoyingly) found around the stadium. This includes Monument Park, a team museum, a large image of George Steinbrenner in the outfield, and the years the team won the World Series plastered all over the walls. This trip, however, saw me check out the museum a bit closer (as I wasn't able to get down to Monument Park before it closed), and I saw that the museum had a collection of signed baseballs - some by legends, some by rather obscure players, and one signed by one of my favorite Yankees of all time: Carl Pavano¹.

This is also somehow NOT my first Yankees game: I saw the "old" Yankee Stadium back in (what I'm FAIRLY sure was) 2007, where they lost one of the final games in Tampa Bay Devil Rays history (as they dropped the "Devil" and became the Tampa Bay Rays in 2008). This time, they were taking on the Cleveland [REDACTED] Guardians - a team I had thoughts about seeing because of Jose Ramirez, but ended up selecting after they called up 2023 Cape Cod Baseball League MVP and 2024 #1 overall draft pick Travis Bazzana. While I was mainly interested in the aforementioned Guardians players (plus two other former Cape Leaguers in Cleveland's Chase DeLauter and Yankees starting pitcher Cam Schlittler), it must be noted that sadly, this game did NOT feature Aaron Judge (who, it should be noted, is ALSO a Cape Leaguer²) or Giancarlo Stanton, who were both injured.

This game was a rather close affair as the Yankees and Guardians spent a few innings trading the lead, but around the time I had to leave (so as to not get home well after midnight), Cleveland(town) took a lead they'd never lose - going on to win 9-4, which means that I have an excuse to post a link to this³.

Also, I've heard that Yankee fans don't like how many random noises there are in games nowadays, and while it's not Savannah Bananas level "music blaring the whole time" bad, those "YOU HAVE TWO STRIKES...WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT?" sounds are very much NOT necessary.

MERCH

I won't go over too much regarding Yankees merchandise (as I've gone over the stadium's merchandise areas before), but my goodness were there a TON of stands. I didn't go through all of them, as most of them had the same items which I'm REALLY not that interested in (replica jerseys, random other shirts, and various small collectibles which I'm trying to cut down on due to space limitations).

I will mention that there was a special deal: buy a fitted hat, and you'd get a free mini bat. I will NOT say whether or not I ended up taking the deal however (though I've recently been getting fitteds again due to my old ones being too small for me now...).