Retired Numbers, A-Line Skirts, & Montreal Expos Hipsters

Last night I took my dad to the Yankees-Angels game for his birthday.   A warning: if you go to a game with my dad, you'd better do your research ahead of time.  You must know all the Yankee retired numbers.  You must also know who wore them.  Finally, you must know in what order they were retired.  After years of going with him, I've finally got it down pat.  But he's stumped many a friend who has tagged along with us.  Personally, I think he's trained me well; if you want to be the ultimate fan, you need to know history as well as current news. 
  
Unfortunately, whenever we attend Yankee games, there are people in attendance who have no interest in being the ultimate fan.  Now, I understand that most people are not as obsessed with baseball as I am.  And that's most likely a good thing; I should probably be in some kind of Baseball Anonymous weekly group or something.  But I can't help noticing that many people who attend the game view it as a social experience rather than a sporting event.  And, as an avid fan, these people bug the hell out of me.  All of them are based on actual "fans."  If you happen to be one of these people, let me apologize now for offending you.

 That being said, please do not bother showing up for a Yankee game if:

• your idea of dressing for the game is whatever you wore to work plus a hat you borrowed from your brother.  I understand that many of you work in Manhattan, and come straight to the game at the end of the day.  But I can also assume that your place of business has a bathroom where you can change into more appropriate gear for a baseball game, and that doesn't involve high heels, an A-line skirt, or a three-piece suit. 
• you do The Wave.  I don't care if you started it or not.  If you participate at all, you're just as guilty, and if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.
• you spend an inning and a half arguing with your friends about whether it's pronounced "Ri-ANNA" or "Ri-HANNA."
• you're a hipster who purchased a Montreal Expos hat at a thrift store and subsequently color-coordinated the rest of your outfit to go along with it, right down to the red skinny jeans and blue and white Converse.  You're only here ironically, of course, because you couldn't possibly approve of a corporate conglomerate such as professional sports, yet you have no problem paying $11.50 a pop to drink their Pabst Blue Ribbons. 
• your solution to your ice cream dripping over the side of the bowl is to slobber all over it and lick it up.  This guideline is not only helpful when attending Yankee games, but also anytime you go out in public and expect to see other people.
• you hear Cory Wade is coming in from the bullpen and you go, "Who?"
• you see a clip of Bernie Williams playing guitar on the jumbotron and you say, "I didn't know he was a singer."
• you decide to deign us with your presence in the seventh inning, carrying NYY Steak souvenir bags, then proceed to antagonize everyone around you, especially the Angels fans sitting in front of you, who up to this point, were actually quite respectful.  You bang the seat in front of you, thinking Mark Teixeira is going to hear your colorful language from Section 9,999, Row ZZ, and hit a homerun, because, well, you asked him to.  You scream "Angels SUCK!" right before they put together a rally to take the lead.  (Hypothetically speaking, of course.) 

This last one is the worst of all the offenders and should receive a lifetime ban from all sporting events. Hey jackass, if you're such a rabid fan, why did you spend two-thirds of the game eating in a restaurant?  If you want to go out to eat, go out to eat.  Don't buy tickets to a baseball game the same day and pretend you care about what's going on.

Unfortunately, these are the people to whom stadiums are now catering, the people who go to a game and need it to be "an experience." 

Here's a novel concept: if you care about the sport, seeing it will be experience enough.  My dad and I brought homemade sandwiches, a bag of pretzels, and a couple of waters, and we had a blast.  We didn't spend a dime inside the stadium. 

Gourmet food has no place inside Yankee Stadium.  Neither does a Montreal Expos cap.