Friday was Opening Day for the Staten Island Yankees, and so I trekked out to Richmond County Bank Ballpark for the first time in 2010. While I am in no way a fan of Staten Island the borough (who is?), I am a huge fan of minor league baseball. I try to make opening day in Staten Island every year, and while last year was more exciting because one Arodys Vizcaino was starting I wanted to be there to see them put up the Baby Banner so that was somewhat exciting.
I had a nice seat (not that there are any bad seats in a small stadium like RCB) in reserved seating:
Section 14, Row A at Richmond County Bank Ballpark
The stadium looks empty here at the start, but it filled up as the game went on and Staten Island announced their first sellout of the year.
As part of the opening ceremonies, some sort of motorcycle rec club on Staten Island rode around the stadium (on the edge, not across the actual field of course). The three Yankees mascots hitched rides and were dropped off around home plate.
Mascots on motorcycles.
The game itself was pretty uneventful, but if you want to know more about the events check out Robert Pimpser’s game story on Gotham Baseball.
A huge amount of the crowd was made up of group ticket sales, which is not uncommon for Staten Island games. Section 14 seemed to be made up of me (I went to the game by myself), the two people next to me and then three or four groups who had a large number of drunk angry people in them. I don’t think they were angry about the game so much as just angry people. There was a group of Little League kids I’d say were in 4th or 5th grade. They were not being aggravating or annoying, just cheering for the Yankees and occasionally yelling for a ball. Several people in the (not Little League) groups just constantly shrieked mean things at them. I was rather taken aback, and in the 4th inning I decided that I didn’t want to sit near these people anymore and went to get some food and walk around to see what changed since last year.
There were two big changes in concessions this year:
- The food stands now take credit/debit cards–hooray!
- All you can eat food is served at the normal concession stands through separate lines rather than in their own areas like last year.
The lines were, to put it simply, atrocious. I walked around trying to find one of acceptable length but found nothing. I wasn’t willing to stand on line for an hour to get a hot dog so I passed on eating. A lot of season ticket holders complained, and in an attempt to make good the team apologized over the PA and is offering ticket exchanges for people who had tickets to the game.
I took a picture of a line to document it. You see all those people on the concourse? They are on line for food:
I was not able to attend yesterday’s game, so I’m not sure if they’e had any luck working out the kinks yet. I may go Wednesday, and am definitely going Thursday so I’ll know soon enough.
I was hungry, but I still had fun. It’s really hard to not have fun at a minor league game. Here are a few more pictures from the night.
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| Staten Island Yankees Opening Day 06-18-10 |
