Ellen's, Yankee Stadium

There was rain about in the morning and there were occasional flashes of lightning, so I decicded to not go up to Yankee Stadium for the advertised 13:35 game, but instead went to a local diner for brunch having not bothered with the $35 breakfast at the hotel.  In the past I think I have missed out on eating in nice places by sticking with hotel breakfasts, but especially when you've on Broadway, there's a huge choice of places.

I chose Ellen's Stardust Diner, albeit a little sceptical of the promise of singing serving staff, but I needn't have worried, as it was great.  All the serving staff are looking for their big break to get into a show.  You can also donate towards the scholarship fund that pays only for the staff's acting, singing and dancing lessons.  However, they take it in turns to perform right there in the middle of the diner up on a small catwalk or on the upper flor balcony - or sometimes walking around, one of them even delivering the bills to tables as he performed.  One minute my server Kayleigh was taking my order and submitting it and 30 seconds later, she was performing a duet of a Whole New World from Aladdin with another of the servers.  If you like the songs from the shows, you'd like this place: you get a nice mixture of older show tunes and newer ones, including whilst I was there: The Time Warp, YMCA, Circle of Life, Time to Say Goodbye, Come Fly With Me and many more.

I've not always had excellent weather in New York, notably being there for a tornado a few years back.  This time the problem was thunderstorms - and heavy ones.  Unfortunately, the Weather Channel app was incredibly inconsistent with its forecasts - it was far more reliable to just look out the window for the current conditions.   As I expected, the start of the game between the Milwaukee Brewers and New York Yankees was delayed due to the lightning - the one form of weather they never take any risks with.  Having told me that there were going to be severe storms all afternoon, maybe drying up as it got dark, the weather cleared suddenly and the Weather Channel app suddenly changed it's mind and told me that there was no more rain due for the rest of the day.  Once they had a start time, I decided to head up to the stadium and buy a ticket there.  With the 2023 rules changes, notably the pitch clock, the games run much more quickly.  However, in the game, the pitching was on top and although Milwaukee had three hits, New York had none, so the game was already in the 6th inning of the scheduled 9 by the time I got to my seat.

 

In this stadium, I like the view from slightly higher up, and it was only $59 for this great view.  It probably helps that the Yankees are bottom of their division and totally out of the playoffs this year that meant it wasn't jam-packed.  In the end, despite having pitched 8 hitless innings, the Milwaukee starter Corbin Burnes was pulled from the game after those 8, as his team hadn't scored, so there was no officlal 9-inning no-hitter opportunity.  The game continued on into the 10th and then finally in the 11th inning, the Brewers managed to eke out a run, only for New York to finaklly get a hit and match it in the bottom of the inning. On to the 12th and the Brewers scored twice, only for Giancarlo Stanton to hit a 2-run home run to level the scores again.  On to the 13th, where New York finally held Milwaukee off the board and scratched out a run themselves to win the game 4-3.  So in the end, I still had 8 innings of a ballgame.

Sunday evening, I went to Virgil's Real BBQ for dinner and it was lightly drizzling again, contrary to the forecast, but it was only very light.