Adventures in New York City Part 13- Yankee Stadium

Yeah, I love baseball, and I have visited around 80 professional parks in my travels, including about half of all of the Major League ones.  You know Yankee Stadium was big on my list of parks to see!

It was funny, most of the people on our tour said they weren't Yankees fans, but they wanted to visit the Stadium while in town.  You could put us in that category.

I may have said this before, but I really appreciate being at a minor league game over one in the Majors.  The crowds are smaller, parking is usually easier, and the whole experience, to me, is simply more enjoyable.

Still, getting to visit any park is always a treat.

So, we didn't actually see a baseball game while we were there, but we did do a stadium tour.

The ticket to do the tour was $25, on the high end for a simple stadium tour.  It is the New York Yankees though, so this is to be expected.

As far as stadium tours go, this one was frankly weak.  I mean, I was happy to be at Yankee Stadium, and I am glad I did the tour, but the "tour" covered 3 basic areas.

First, we went in to the New York Yankees Museum.  The museum was pretty cool.  There are World Series Rings and Trophies.  Jerseys worn by legends, along with bats and balls.  Items associated with Ruth, DiMaggio, Berra, etc are on display.  It is all very cool, but the museum felt small.  Considering that this is the home of the Yankees, I just expected more POP. 

Here are a handful of baseball museums that I thought had a LOT of POP- Kansas City Royals Hall of Fame and Museum, The Atlanta Braves Museum and Hall of Fame, Sports Legends at Camden Yards, the HUGE Reds Hall of Fame and Museum, the very well done Babe Ruth Museum in Baltimore, Van Meter Iowa's Bob Feller Museum, and Georgia's Ty Cobb Museum.

After that we went to Monument Park, which is a section of monuments and retired numbers associated with past members of the Yankees.  This is a nice area behind the outfield wall.


From there, we did walk through the concourse, and visited the Press Area.  This was cool, and it did give a nice view of the field.

That was it though.  Again, it was nice getting to see Yankee Stadium, but as far as baseball stadium tours go, this one was not the best.  I have taken tours in other places that included a quick peak into a locker room, a brief walk through a dugout, etc.  There really wasn't any "behind the scenes" kind of stuff on this tour.

We did have a great tour guide (who looked a bit like a young Babe Ruth).  Also, they gave out Yankee Stadium key chains at the end of the tour, which was a nice bonus.