Baseball on a summer evening is the single easiest way to spend three hours with New Yorkers rather than near them. Tickets are cheaper than you think.
Going, even if you do not follow baseball
The season runs April to early October, there are 81 home games, and that volume means tickets to a midweek game against an unglamorous opponent can be genuinely cheap — often less than a cinema ticket in Manhattan. Weekend games against the Red Sox or the Mets are a different market entirely.
You do not need to understand baseball to enjoy an evening there. The pace is slow enough to talk over, the crowd is the show as much as the game, and the ritual — the seventh-inning stretch, the vendors shouting down the aisles, the Bleacher Creatures doing the roll call at the top of the first — is worth the ticket by itself.
The stadium
This is the second Yankee Stadium, opened in 2009 across the road from the 1923 original, which was demolished. The new building reproduces the frieze around the roofline and a fair amount of the old one’s proportions. Purists have never forgiven the replacement and complain about the ticket prices, the amount of premium seating, and the fact that the crowd is quieter. They are not wrong about any of it.
Monument Park behind centre field holds the retired numbers, the plaques for Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Mantle and the rest, and is free with a game ticket. It opens when the gates open and closes forty-five minutes before first pitch, which catches people out every single game.
The Yankees Museum on the main level has Thurman Munson’s locker and a wall of signed baseballs.
Where to sit
The bleachers in the outfield are the cheapest and the loudest, and the Bleacher Creatures in section 203 run the roll call. There is no alcohol served in the bleachers.
Grandstand level up top is cheap and the view of the whole field is actually rather good.
Field level down the lines is the sweet spot if you are paying more.
Bring a layer. April and September evenings in the Bronx are colder than the afternoon suggests.
Getting there
The 4, B and D trains stop at 161st Street directly outside, and the Metro-North Hudson Line runs a Yankees–East 153rd Street service on game days from Grand Central and from Connecticut.
Leaving after the last out means 40,000 people going down the same stairs. Waiting fifteen minutes in your seat costs you nothing.
The other team
The Mets play at Citi Field in Queens, on the 7 train, and tickets are usually cheaper. Neither fanbase will thank you for treating them as interchangeable.
More Other Places
Coney Island
A wooden roller coaster from 1927 that is a designated landmark and still runs, a boardwalk, a free beach and the hot dog contest. Forty minutes on the subway.
The Oculus
A four-billion-dollar train station shaped like a bird leaving a hand, which is either the most beautiful transit hall in America or the most expensive shopping mall. Free.
Green-Wood Cemetery
478 acres of Victorian garden cemetery that was the second most visited attraction in America after Niagara Falls in the 1860s. Free, and a flock of green parakeets lives on the gate.