I go to a lot of baseball games during the season, mostly Yankees games. I am able to do so because I have a pretty good job and use most of my allocated entertainment funds on tickets and ticket plans.
I don’t (usually) work crazy hours and I am (usually) not on call, but I do have a laptop that I often use to bring work back and forth between my office and my home. It’s not a work issued laptop, but it makes my life a lot easier. Working on one file instead of sending things all over the place and having several versions floating around is pretty helpful!
The Yankees, however, throw a wrench into my precious routine with their security guidelines that ban laptops. On days where I go to a game after work I have to make a decision whether to take my laptop to work and lock it in my desk or leave it at home. Sure, there’s the bag check across the street but I am not comfortable leaving my laptop there and I am not willing to pay $10 to do so in any case. It’s a small, yet rather aggravating thing that bothers me enough times during the season that I feel the need to whine.
I know that it interferes with other people more than it does me, so I dedicate this whine to those of you out there who are glued to their laptops for work and sometimes like to take part of a night off for a game. May your laptops never be broken while behind the counter at a store on the other side of River Avenue.
Probably the worst thing about the ban beyond the impact it has on people is that nobody seems to have any real answers about why laptops are still on the Prohibited Items List. Even after loosening the formerly totally insane bag policy the team has not budged on laptops. In fact, they added iPads to The List for whatever mysterious reason (but the team didn’t actually make it known–someone found out when they were told they couldn’t bring it in and then another person verified it, etc).
There has been speculation that these bans are in place so that people don’t get distracted by any laptops or iPads in use. Frankly, this is stupid. There are a zillion things going on at a game at once. People standing up and sitting down, people yelling, roving vendors, video screens, aggravating people doing the wave, that random person a few rows away doing something weird and so on. I do not for a second believe that these two random items in use are any more distracting than the crazy loud HIP HIP!!! dudes 99% of the time.
And honestly if someone near you is doing something that is killing your enjoyment you can follow these simple steps (most of the time you can stop after Step 1 or 2):
- Ask them, nicely, to cut it out.
- Ask them, less nicely, to cut it out.
- Nuclear option: Contact security.
Use your judgement, usually just repeating Step 1 a few times works.
The typical response to this seems to be: ”Well you’re going to a baseball game, why do you even need your laptop?”
That’s just a sign that you’re not thinking about anything and just being an ignorant snob. Sorry if that sounded harsh, but if you take two seconds you can think it through pretty easily.
Here’s some reasons why people might bring their laptops to a baseball game that don’t involve using the laptop during a game:
- They have a job where they need to bring a laptop to and from work.
- Commuter student headed to a game after classes.
- They are going to a game after being somewhere where they had to bring their laptop.
- They are going to a game and afterwards have to go somewhere with their laptop.
Really, people, it’s not hard.
Plus, if someone wants to use a laptop at a game more power to them. There are legit baseball reasons like scoring apps to be using one, though I wouldn’t risk damaging mine by pulling it out at my seat. If they’re watching porn or something ridiculously violent then yeah that’s a problem, but it’s not a problem without a solution.
I’ve been told that you can actually get a laptop into Yankee Stadium these days because security doesn’t really spend a lot of time scrutinizing items. I’m not willing to risk this since I don’t want to check mine across the street in the event that I am busted. But if security isn’t even noticing them, it makes the ban that much goofier.
No other baseball park I’ve been to in the last four years has a laptop ban, what makes going to Yankee Stadium so different?
Nah, the ban on laptops is not at all about the inconveniencing of other fans, but is instead all about the ability of those devices to send video feeds of the game elsewhere. Which is not subject to the fees paid to the team, MLB, etc… They’d ban smartphones if they could get away with it, and will ban any other common class of device that can send a feed live-ish.
I’ve thought about that one but it doesn’t fly because no other team bans them.
That’s a red herring. The vast majority of teams allow laptops into their stadiums and many allow laptop use at fans’ seats. I don’t see anyone rebroadcasting the game via a laptop, and if that were truly the issue, all smart phones would be banned.
Catch that feed-sender and:
Arrest them
Ban them from baseball for life
Prosecute them to the fullest extent
Let bloggers and scorers and students and businessmen carry their laptops!
One of the security guards wouldn’t let me take my Kindle in. My KINDLE, for f*ck’s sake. I use that on the subway, and it’s a long ride. And you can’t send a video feed from a Kindle. Or take one. Or even look at pictures that aren’t kind of grainy and in black and white.
But I tucked it into the bottom of my purse and tried a different guard and got in with it.
They wouldn’t let Ross from NYY Stadium Insider in with his Nook tonight, he like you had to hide it. I don’t get it, this is ridiculous.