Tampa – “Dig Dig Dig Dig Dig Dig Dig Dig Dig Dig Dig Dig Dig Dig Dig Dig Dig Dig Dig!!
Hence George M. on Sunday afternoon. Announced a boisterous Yankees fan at Steinbrenner Field as Miguel Andujar tried to leg out an infield single on the grounder for Cavan Bigigo, the third baseman of the Blue Jays. “Dig!”
Andujar fell short, yet the dialect of that moment, beyond the actual lyrics, that we had missed last year. No 2020 empty ballpark can have pipe-in-crowd noise by 2020, as well as causing 2021 moment and unhealthy.
Welcome, fans. You missed more than you knew.
“When you run out for the first time, the crowd, the energy, the roar, hearing them scream some sort of, good stuff, bad stuff, you feed on it,” Aaron Judge said as the Yankees lost their grapefruit opener. , 6-4 to the Blue Jays, in front of payback, a socially deformed crowd of 2,637. “So it was very exciting they finally came back.”
“It’s been too long,” Aaron Boone said.
On March 12, 2020, the Yankees confronted citizens as a pack housing witness at the Palm Beach ballpark on the other side of the state. When the start was in play, home-plate umpire Angel Hernández told Yankees catcher Kyle Higashioka, “Oh, yeah, they’re gonna shut the thing down.” This is the last time anyone other than family members, Yankee employees or the media had seen a Yankees play until Sunday.
With limited capacity out of respect for the novel coronovirus (the location is a little over 11,000) there was hardly a flood of customers when the opening at 11 am until 11:04 pm, the stadium’s front entrance was empty. The setting proved to be sufficiently quiet, with the media dining room closed, as longtime Blue JS broadcaster (and former Blue Jays, Royals and Brews catcher) Buck Martinez largely ate his lunch at the tabletop and grew up Looked at; Only one gentleman, wearing a blue jersey jersey, approached Martinez to say hello.
A recording by Yankees public-announcer announcer Paul Olden played outside the ballpark, alerting fans to wearing masks and rules about social disturbances. Folks wore masks as they left their cars and moved to their seats, then massed unmasked as they sat, then masked again, mixing in between the crowd as they were. Jim Lafflin, who grew up with a Yankees fan in Milford, Conn., And now lives in Venice, about a 90-minute drive from here, said relative emptiness eased maneuvers.
Laughlin, who participated in the game with his long-time pal Michael “Motown” Lagaipa (originally also in Bridgeport, Conn. And now Venice), said it was the first game of any kind in which he closed after However, he did not go. The “NFL Experience” at Tamta before the Super Bowl.
“What could be better than that?” Laughlin asked, literally, accepting nearby palm trees and a first pitch temperature of 82 degrees. “We are calling people on the way in Connecticut. They’ve got a foot of ice, and they are doing nothing. “
Judge and his Blue Jace counterpart Josh Palacios threw both balls to young fans behind the right field, as they ended their midst warm-up; The judge said he did not play with such people as they usually do for sanitary reasons.
“In the past, I could play catch with them, get around the wall with them, ask them questions, sign autographs”. “Must be old school and put on a show just for fans.”
Buzz cannot be compared to last year’s World Series, when 25 percent of the Globe Life Park roared in the form of Dodgers and Rays, which were closed at the neutral spot. And you wouldn’t expect it. We are at the beginning of the season, not the end.
The exhibition opener is about hope and promise, and not just for the Yankees for this year. It was no apology for manhood, for all of us. Like Andujar, we will keep digging until we get out of it safely.
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