As a society, we love endings — we celebrate graduations and retirements, we turn the season finales of our favorite television shows into social gatherings, we flood the movie theatres and turn the culmination of Marvel’s Infinity Saga into the biggest communal experience in the history of cinema. While our love of endings isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it does sometimes cause us to pay less attention to the journey than it deserves. These days, Marvel movies get judged as good or bad by fans almost
entirely based on how “necessary” they are to the leadup to Avengers: Doomsday. The groundbreaking prime of Game of Thrones, which has transformed fantasy television as a genre forever, often gets forgotten in the uproar of a final four episodes that can at best be described as divisive. And, in sports, the highs and lows of an eight-month baseball journey gets forgotten amongst the irritating week known as the American League Divisional Series.
It’s the journey that I want to reflect on today — or rather, my own personal journey through the 2026 season. You see, heading into the season, my brother and I set a goal for ourselves: to, at long last, make it to 20 Yankees games this season. This is, of course, a reasonable goal only because we both work near subway lines that lead directly to the Stadium, and have work schedules that allow us to reach 161st St. before first pitch rather easily. Because of this, we can take advantage of, for example, somebody selling field level tickets on Stubhub for $10 because the forecast has it below freezing by the third inning.
While Mother Nature did her best to keep us from our goal, we did in fact manage to make it to 20 games this year — just barely. And, as we have been reviewing the season over the last few days, I have thought about all the cool stuff we experienced live this year, and how these experiences, filled with quite a few firsts, reflects a journey that goes beyond statistics on a page, or a postseason disappointment.
Opening Day
So many diehard fans that I know love going to Opening Day, and honestly, I get it. For the first time since the previous autumn, baseball — real, meaningful baseball, not spring training — is back. And yet, actually attending Opening Day was something I never truly considered: baseball is the one sport that still does Opening Day, not Opening Night (let’s just ignore that Netflix business that happened in San Francisco), and as a teacher…well, it’s not exactly acceptable to take days off for leisure. This year, though, the Yankees’ home opener fell on Good Friday…which meant school wasn’t in session. My brother maneuvered his schedule so he could take the day off, and we headed to the ballpark to watch Aaron Judge and Ben Rice go deep, Will Warren spin 5.2 innings of two-run ball (the first of eight or nine Warren appearances we attended), Cody Bellinger make a miracle catch, and the Yankees down the Marlins, 8-2.
In a lot of ways, Opening Day felt very much like a normal game, or at least it did, after the pregame introductions. Still, it was probably the largest, most engaged crowd of the regular season. I still get chills thinking about the excited murmur that went through the crowd when the PA announcer said, “Number 45” during the introductions, and the entire stadium realized that Gerrit Cole, still rehabbing from Tommy John surgery, was in attendance. And I absolutely got a kick out of the fact that, after Aaron Judge and the aforementioned Cole, the biggest cheer the Bronx reserved was for…Matt Blake. Hey, the fans know who is important (side note — Brian and Hal, pay that man!).
Knicks in Five
On the diamond, Wednesday, May 6th was a fairly miserable day. Corey Seager hit a first inning home run off starter Will Warren (hey, I did say we saw him a lot), the Rangers jumped out to an early 6-0 lead before Judge homered to drop the deficit to five, and it was raining on and off before it began pouring late. Yet, it was one of the most fun games I attended this year. Because as the rain came down, everybody in the seats hopped up into the concourse, and began to watch the televisions as Jalen Brunson and the New York Knicks went on a late run to down the Philadelphia 76ers, 108-102 in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals. The Stadium was buzzing to such an extent despite the lack of drama on the field that, standing in right field, Judge kept looking up at the crowd with a confused look on his face until a young kid braved the rain, ran down to the wall, and yelled to him that the Knicks were winning; a thumbs-up was the response.
As it would turn out, that would not be the only Knicks-themed game I would go to. On June 17th, just a few days after downing the San Antonio Spurs and winning the Knicks’ first title in 53 years, Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart were invited to Yankee Stadium to throw out the ceremonial first pitch. As Knicks fans and Villanova alumni, my brother and I of course jumped at the opportunity to go, and we were joined with us by a buddy of mine who is a Knicks fan despite growing up in Arizona. So imagine his excitement when Paul Goldschmidt, who spent the first eight years of his career with the Diamondbacks, belted a three-run homer off Tyler Davis in the fifth inning. A pretty memorable first visit to Yankee Stadium, huh?
On the Road
It had been a long time since I had gone to see the Yankees on the road — since before COVID, at the very least. This year, though, the Yankees headed down to Philadelphia at the end of July, and so, this year, we took the Amtrak down to the Land of Brotherly Love to catch a game with college friends. As it would turn out, that would be the day that LeBron James announced his intent to sign with the Sixers, which injected a bunch of energy into what was already expected to be a dynamic crowd.
And we were treated to one of the best games I have attended, honestly ever. The first batter to reach base for either team? Paul Goldschmidt, who led off the top of the fourth with a solo home run. The first time multiple baserunners were on base at the same time? When the Yankees loaded the bases in the fifth, but they failed to get a runner across the plate. Between Cam Schlittler and Jesús Luzardo, the starting pitchers combined for 14.1 innings, allowing just seven hits and one walk while striking out a whopping 21 batters. Earlier this week, Matt noted that this was, according to GameScore, tied for the Yankees’ most dominant performance of the season, and well, the Yankees needed every inch of that performance.
Schlittler’s dominance (and Brent Headrick’s Houdini-esque escape in the 8th) only tell half the story, though. New Yorkers travel well, and Philadelphia is only ninety minutes from Penn Station by Amtrak. Sure, Citizens Bank Park wasn’t exactly Yankee Stadium South in the same way that the Wells Fargo Center (or whatever they call it now) becomes MSG South during the NBA playoffs, but the crowd was very much divided — and with such a close game, the tension was so thick it could be cut by a knife. 10/10, would absolutely recommend doing if you have the chance.
Amongst the Creatures
Yankees/Rockies isn’t exactly a primetime matchup, really ever, so naturally, my brother and I were more than happy to grab some well under-priced tickets on Stubhub and go on a Wednesday night in September, right before the school year truly got underway. We weren’t exactly paying attention to where the seats were — we got them fairly last-minute, so we just saw the price, the fact that they had access to the Pepsi Lounge (hey, the food in there is fresher than most other spots in the Stadium), so we were as surprised as could be when we realized that we were not simply sitting in the bleachers, but amidst the Bleacher Creatures, just a few spots down from the guy in charge of the Roll Call.
The game itself wasn’t much to write home about. Warren put together a good outing against a meh opponent, and the Yankees lineup struggled to get anything going against Rockies starter Tomoyuki Sugano. Well, except when they got two outs in the third. A single, a double, and a walk later, and suddenly George Lombard Jr. came to the plate with the bases juiced…and he responded with the first grand slam of his career — and the first grand slam of the season. The Stadium, of course, went nuts.
What I remember most from that game, though, isn’t the grand slam, but a revelation I had. Ever since Nick Swisher, I’ve heard quite a bit about the relationship between the right fielder and the Creatures, but never quite understood it. There was quite a bit of…I don’t want to call it banter, exactly, between them, but it was clear that Aaron Judge recognized many of the season ticket holders, and would occasionally react to them. And apparently, you know who spent a lot of time interacting with them, relative to his time in the Bronx? Juan Soto. I now get why they treat him like jilted exes.
Double Trouble
The final weekend of the season was, to put it bluntly, a disaster. Thanks to an impending storm, Saturday night’s game — CC Sabathia Day — was moved to Friday afternoon and turned into a single-admission doubleheader. It ruined Josh Hart bobblehead day, as fans who bought tickets to get it (guilty as charged) but who couldn’t get off of work (I don’t teach on Fridays this semester, so I was good) lost their chance…and that’s before we got into the ballpark. Sabathia got to see his number retired in front of half a dozen fans; ok, I’m exaggerating, but when the right field bleachers aren’t able to sustain a “Thank you, CC” chant, you know the crowd is just, well, not there. To top it all off, the Yankees were an absolute disaster in the first game, going on to lose 10-2 in a game that wasn’t even that close. The second game was much better, but by that point, I’d been on my feet for hours (I didn’t go to my seats, as they were in the upper 400s, but instead watched the game from the various terraces throughout), the storm had started to dump buckets of water on us, and frankly, the game was meaningless.
Nonetheless, it was an awesome day. As I noted in the Five Worst Defensive Plays of the season post last week, I got to check “inside-the-park-homer” off my baseball bucket list. I got to watch CC Sabathia get his number retired — the first Yankee whose entire career in pinstripes I saw to receive the honor. Sabathia and Hart each threw a strike from the rubber as their ceremonial first pitches (in truth, I think Hart’s was a tad better). I talked baseball with some random fans throughout the ballpark, including some who remember going to the original old Yankee Stadium, before the renovations in the 1970s. And, for the first time ever, I was recognized by a student “in the wild” (i.e., not at school); trust me, hearing “Wait, Mr. Griffin?” outside of the confines of the school building will throw you a bit — and I’ve been told that feeling never quite goes away, either.
Game 162
The Yankees only played 161 games this year, with the single-admission doubleheader that Friday night being the final two games of the season. Nonetheless, they did at least go through the motions of pretending that they would play that Sunday. When I got to the Stadium, it was clear from the jump that, while Major League Baseball may have insisted they try, in the off chance that the Yankees and Braves met in the World Series (hah! — but yes, had that occurred, this game would have mattered for home field advantage), the Yankees had no intention of playing. The security guards outside knew they weren’t playing. The workers at the concessions stands knew they weren’t playing. The grounds crew…I can’t say for certain, because I never actually saw the grounds crew actually spend any time on the field, but I’m going to guess they knew, too. For their part, the Yankees never even submitted a lineup (which unfortunately robbed Elmer Rodriguez of one day of service time). Even so, we waited for three hours in the rain.
So what did we do for three hours, you may wonder. That’s right — we watched football! The Yankees put the Giants and the Jets up on the scoreboard, split-screen, thus turning Yankee Stadium into the biggest sports bar in the city, and they only officially cancelled the game once Jevon Holland came down with the game-clinching interception in the end zone. My guess is, they figured everybody who was left would simply go across the street to the bars to watch football, so they might as well make that sweet, sweet concession money, which…uh, fine. Go spend that money on Teruaki Sato, Hal!
Down Goes Boston
The season began with my brother and I attending our first-ever Opening Day, so it was rather fitting that it would end with our first-ever postseason game — and fortunately, our first-ever series clinching win. A season ticket holder that we know wasn’t able to use his tickets to Game 2 against the Red Sox, so he sold them to us (rather than use Stubhub) in order to ensure that Yankee fans would get the seats.
I had heard over the years that October in the Bronx was different, and I had some semblance of what that means — I vividly remember hearing, and more truly, feeling the Stadium rock while driving home from New Jersey on the Deegan during the 2019 Wild Card Game. Nothing, however, truly prepared me for the vibes inside the Stadium. The best comparison I can make, to be honest, is the student section of a Villanova basketball game (from back in the days of Brunson and Hart and Mikal Bridges, i.e., when they were dominant). From Tino Martinez throwing out the ceremonial first pitch to walking out of the Stadium as something that rhymes with “Buck Foston” echoed throughout the Stadium.
Closing Thoughts
I could, honestly, keep going — from watching Amed Rosario sprint back to the dugout in 30-degree weather just minutes before hitting a game-changing three-run homer back in April to the statistically improbable fact that the 4 train only won two of the 19 possible subway races. For the sake of the editors, and for the sake of the readers, though, I will stop here…well, after one more thing. All indications are that this winter will yet again be one of the longest we have seen, with Rob Manfred and MLB’s leadership dead-set on union-busting for the second time this decade. As the hot stove goes dark, and the baseball diamond sits idle, it is this journey that I will miss, and these memories that I will cling to, not the disappointment of Judge and Stanton missing so much time this year, or the heartbreak of an early postseason exit. Because while I desperately want to see the Yankees host another parade down the Canyon of Heroes, I always return to baseball not for the postseason, but for the months-long journey there — and all the friends and memories we make along the way.
