So imagine my surprise when the count to Jose Lopez hit 1-2 and some girl a few rows down yelled out “I’m going to start the wave!”

If you are over the age of 8 or so you should never do the wave at a close Major League baseball game. If you are accompanying someone of the proper age to do the wave, you should probably encourage them not to and teach them proper ballpark etiquette. I suggest taking them to a minor league game where anything goes for things like the wave and tossing beach balls around. Basically, if you are not a small child do not do the wave.

Seriously, don’t do it. It’s rude and interferes with people who are actually at the baseball game to watch the baseball game. Yes we actually exist, I know it’s amazing. I’ll give you that there are certain times when it’s not a crime against humanity to do the wave (you can read about all that over here if you’re confused and need guidance), but I promise you that Mariano Rivera closing out a game at Yankee Stadium is never one of those times.

And so, if you try to do the wave and block my view when Mariano is pitching, especially on a two strike count, don’t act surprised/offended/upset when I yell at you to cease blocking my view. Because I am watching the game. Funny how that works.

[Picture Credit to Subway Chatter]

This goes well with those quote from the aforementioned noted hater of the working class stiff:

There’s an area by the Legends Suite which is not an area that fans can get into,” Trost said. “If you purchase a suite, do you want somebody in your suite? If you purchase a home, do you want somebody in your home?

(I’m still alive, just extremely busy with work these days. Hi, internet.)

As of right now, I’m not sure if both tiers of the patrician class are allowed in the Legends seats. As soon as I figure it out, I’ll report back.

If you haven’t been a part of the process, it’s hard to explain how absolutely annoying it’s been. While I’m sure there are lots of satisfied customers (especially those with full season packages), there are a huge amount of people who–even if they got what they wanted in the end–are angry with how everything went.

Here’s the timeline:

December 2007 – The Yankees tell everyone that relocation information will start being sent out in “early 2008″.

January – August 2008 – The Yankees tell everyone who calls to ask that the information will be sent out anywhere from “in a few weeks” to “in a few months”. In the middle of the year, they send out information about Premium Seating (those are the suites in the terrace up to the $2500 “legends” seats) at least twice trying to solicit interest from the common man.

During this time the Mets relocate all their full season ticket holders without a mess and only a few whines.

September 2008 – The Yankees send out relocation booklets and questionnaires! The booklet lays out rules about who is qualified to upgrade to full season seats and how many (using a magical calculation) and says that everyone will be offered something. People…sort of rejoice because it means something is happening!

The guide includes all the changes to the plans. The 46 game M-F plan is now a half season alternating game plan, and the Flex Plans are not flex but rather 20 game plans according to a specific “every fourth day” schedule. The weekend plans have two extra midweek games added to them, and the 8 game plan is now an 11 game plan.

The questionnaires ask things about seat location preferences (e.g., Do you want to pay $12 for bleachers or $100 for main level?), plan preference (keeping what you’ve got or up/downgrading) and all that fun stuff.

The actual hard copies of the relocation brochure arrive after the initial due date for some people, so they push back the questionnaire deadline because there are plenty of non-crazy people who don’t check Yankees.com incessantly.

November 2008 – The Yankees start sending stuff to existing Full Season and A Plan (who are all being upgraded to full season) holders.

December 2008 – The Full Season pool process starts and it becomes clear they are just throwing out all the rules in the book to accommodate everyone who wants to upgrade. Which I was okay with. The NOT okay thing they did was take new business full season licensees before moving onto the smaller plans.

Late January 2009 – 41 game (former B plan) holders are sent their information. This is when it starts to get crazy–because of all the full season plans sold suddenly there aren’t enough half season plans to accommodate the existing base, and many people are assigned 20 game plans instead. Here is one tale of woe, and the relocation thread on NYY Fans has a lot more.

Meanwhile they quietly start making the $350 seats available in 41 game plans, and try to sell them to everyone calling up to voice their displeasure.

Mid February 2009 – Finally, the partial game plans are sent out. Weekend ticket holders are the biggest casualty here, with many Saturday and Sunday licensees being assigned to mid-week plans they don’t want or can’t use. While the Yankees say they went by seniority, it seems to have gotten skewed in 2007/2008. Some 2008 E plan holders have been assigned, others (like myself) have not. There are some 2006 seniority holders who have not yet been assigned seats (and this is with 2 seats, not a billion). The Yankees outsourced this all to a vendor, so if you call your ticket rep directly or the Yankees ticket office they have no real information give you (though they will try to sell you the $350 seats).

Many people who had both the Saturday and Sunday plan–2 or 3 seats each–were assigned a midweek plan that combined the two for four or more seats together. Some people with excellent seniority have been assigned seats that in no way match up with what they put on the questionnaire (Main Box to Bleachers is my favorite example so far–and you may say “Well they save money” but lots of people prefer seats with backs for lots of reasons). How does that make any sense at all?

In short, here are the things the Yankees did wrong that turned this into a mess:

1. Did not adhere to the magical formula they created for full season upgrades.
2. Allowed new business full season licenses to jump the line above all the people with other plans waiting for relocation assignments.
3. Apparently picked seating by throwing darts.
4. Combined multi-plan licenses into one plan with the total number of seats.
5. Seemingly randomly assigned weekday plans to weekend plan holders after it hit a certain seniority date.
6. A complete lack of  communication on two significant levels: 1) Between the Yankees ticket office and the relocation vendor; 2) Between the Yankees and the license holders.

I am somewhat happy that I got something but using their “tie breakers” and the fact that I have a weird 07 seniority date (I put down a deposit the first day they were available for 08 plans) means I should have been ahead of the people with two tickets for an E plan and 08 priority. Instead, I have only one of my plans for this year.  As I mentioned before I am likely taking a partial plan off the hands of a friend who is one of the unlucky people to get assigned a weekday plan they can’t use but I’ll be even more annoyed if suddenly another midweek invoice shows up after everyone is done declining/accepting.

• Umbrellas (this one was particularly hilarious because they had an umbrella give away night when this ban was going on)
• Food and Water (pretty common from what I understand but it only lasted a month)
• Liquid makeup/lipstick/etc (this one happened at the same time the TSA started their ban–it lasted maybe two weeks)

They also arbitrarily decide to change the size of an acceptable purse, let some people in with backpacks after hassling people with tiny ones, etc. They have, however, never previously tried to ban sunblock from the stadium but are now worried people are sneaking in gasoline disguised as Banana Boat to torch themselves like Tibetan monks. Or maybe they have more sinister financial motivation:

The Stadium does sell 1-ounce bottles of Arizona Sun SPF 15 for $5 – a huge markup that makes its beer seem cheap.

Don’t tell anyone but I bought my travel size bottle of 60SPF sunblock in last night with no problems and had no idea this was going on as I’ve brought it along at every game I’ve attended this season. You can kick me out of my seats but you’ll never take my sunblock!!

Important Update: The Yankees have now been embarrassed into making sunscreen a non-contraband item once again.

I would especially like Mussina to keep this up because it basically assured him a spot on the post-season rotation if the team gets there. Which terrifies me, because then I assume his inevitable meltdown will happen at an extremely bad time, such as Game 7 of the ALCS at Fenway Park or something.

Today’s reading:

This is probably the only place I approve of the “Everybody Wins” way of doing things. Warning: article is sappier than anything involving Joba Chamberlain’s father.

Completely random Doug Mienktiewicz love piece from Vig Siegel in today’s Daily News.

Major League Baseball’s preliminary 2008 schedule has the Yankees finishing up on the road. Hopefully this will be changed, or the Yankees finish out the season winning the World Series there. The latter sounds better to me, of course.

Barry Bonds still a jerk, but this time it’s funny.

“He’s stupid. He’s an idiot,” Bonds said, according to the newspaper. “He spent $750,000 on the ball and that’s what he’s doing with it? What he’s doing is stupid.”

He is referring to Mark Ecko’s purchase and decision to “democratize the the debate” over what to do with the ball. It’s a dumb publicity stunt, just send the thing to the Hall of Fame. It won’t be there anyway unless Alex Rodriguez goes the way of Ken Griffey Jr or something (that hopefully won’t happen).

In the Bronx, versus the Red Sox, Andy Pettitte starting. It’s August, the Yankees are in a playoff chase. It winds up being a close game, Andy pitches 7 great innings and Mo closes it out with a 1-2-3 9th. Some kid named Joba also pitched a good inning.

Tonight I would be surprised if the Yankees even put up a run, but I’ll just watch the replay from yesterday’s game and go back to pretending baseball doesn’t exist (until Friday).

Article Roundup

ESPN’s Jim Caple says that Red Sox fans need to shut up. Everyone except Red Sox fans agree.

The Daily News reports that Andy Pettitte is really pretty awesome. Why Andy was in New York instead of Detroit is a mystery, however.

Mike Mussina’s dead arm is finally being given a rest, and he is being replaced by mini-Moose on the rotation for a while.

Milton Bradley is a lot like Gary Sheffield and Kenny Lofton in that he is a really good baseball player nobody wants around for long.

This Scott Miller column about the young pitchers the Yankees are fielding these days is a few weeks old but still very nice.

With two more co-defendants distancing themselves from Michael Vick, the embattled Falcons quarterback was considering on Monday whether to accept a plea agreement for his alleged role in a dogfighting operation.

Sources told ESPN’s Kelly Naqi that Vick attorneys Larry Woodward and Billy Martin met with federal prosecutor Michael Gill and the investigators on Monday afternoon. The attorneys planned to speak with the quarterback in the evening to see what direction he wants to go in.

That comes on the heels of news that co-defendants Purnell Peace and Quanis Phillips are scheduled to appear in federal court in Richmond at the end of the week and are expected to accept their own plea agreements. Peace’s hearing is at 9 a.m. (ET) on Thursday, while Phillips will appear on Friday at the same time. Plea agreements would clear them to testify against Vick.

Michael Vick is a jerk. Everybody knows this. Hell it seems to be a family trait. However, this is all a little much. I really, really love animals and I think dogfighting is disgusting. However some important things are being lost in this parade of insanity:

1. Everybody gets due process, so let Michael Vick get found guilty before damning him to eternal torment.
2. Even if he is found guilty in a court of law, how can the NFL justify expelling him when they have set a precedent of letting convicted felons who served jail time and other people who have been involved in terrible things continue to play?

I am pretty sure Michael Vick is guilty of something in all this, but I have never seen people kick up a fuss and pile on someone like this before. Not even the Rae Carruth fiasco caused this much outrage.