Yankees-Red Sox, July 6

This was probably the best game we’ve been to this season. It was a crisply (at least the first half) played game with lots of drama and a great ending for the Yanks.

It was also my first time driving to Yankee Stadium. The ride in was fine, we left really early to make sure to beat the holiday weekend traffic. Got there really early and hung out in the parking lot.

During that time we became friends with this butterfly that would not stop landing on Matt’s hat and shoulders.

We also saw three girls get busted for peeing by the female cop riding her bike around…

And Cope…

…battled through a heat stroke or something, sweat an incredible amount and nearly passed out, but was good to go into the game.

The view again from row X, section 7. Also interesting is that it was 9:08 in the top of the 5th inning.

The only scoring up to that point was a laser of a home run by A-Rod that got into the box seats in left field in a hurry. It was his 536th in his career, tying him on the all time home run list with Mickey Mantle.

Of course the Yankees can’t hit Wakefield all night, but Girardi comes out and gets tossed…

… and Gardner and Jeter put together back to back hits and get the crowd back into the game.

It was also nice to see Gardner improve on his batting average, which dropped down to .056 at one point during the game

When Manny came up to pinch hit in the 9th the general consensus was to just walk him. But when Mariano Rivera is on the hill nobody is good enough to pitch around.

This ass hole in the red hat was messing with the crowd all night, and in the ninth inning he was finally escorted out, but not before trying to take his hat off and hide.

And finally, the aftermath of Brett Gardner’s game winning hit.

Note the game ended at 11:36 and we didn’t get home until after 2:30, but even getting lost in the Bronx in the middle of the night didn’t put a damper on a great game like this one.