Like Metropolitan Diary, but with annoying Yankees fans

Thursday night, I attended the Indians' game at Yankee Stadium, along with a friend of mine who shares my Cleveland roots.

Everything was fine for a couple of innings. The Indians fell behind early, but the awesomely named Jhonny Peralta homered in the top of the second and things were going just fine until we had one of the strangest run-ins with a fan I've ever had in decades of going to sporting events. Bear with me, because this a story that's probably best told in person, but, as a service to our readers, I've tried to recreate it as best I can in blog form.

It was about the top of the third or so, and my friend and I had spread out over the row in front of our assigned seats. Our original row had two seats on the aisle right next to two more occupied by a couple of affable brothers from Jersey who could have played offensive line at Teaneck High, easily. In the cramped, lower level seats at Yankee Stadium, we all felt it wise to spread out. I moved forward a row, my friend took the third seat over from me, and one of the brothers took the fifth seat, leaving his brother in the original row. (This is important.)

So A father and his son arrive, and have tickets for the seat that one of the other dudes is occupying. But because there's still plenty of open seats in that row, so the one brother and my friend ask if they would mind sitting a few seats over. They don't. So no problem, right?

That's when it happens. A 50-something guy behind where the father and his son were going to sit, The new arrivals, it seems, would block his wife's view. He would like us all to squeeze back into our original seats so that he and his wife can have unoccupied seats in front of him. My friend asks him if he's serious. He is. My friend asks him if he realizes that he's asking four people to be uncomfortable so that he can have an empty row in front of him. He is.

It should be noted that this guy is wearing a Yankees-logo denim bucket hat.

My friend still can't believe that the guy is asserting a right to the empty seats in front of him. Politely, he asks him what he planned to do if someone with tickets for those seats were to show up. And why he didn't just purchase those seats if unimpeded sightlines were so important to him.

They carry on like this for a minute or two, but without any real recourse, the four of us squeeze into our original seats. My friend, who has the uncommon ability to sustain a clear and cogent argument without losing an ounce of cool, continues to politely engage Bucket Hat, who having gotten his way, probably should just shut up.

Instead, he stands and summons an usher and a police officer over to our row. He starts off by pointing and saying "these people were where they weren't supposed to be."

Of course we are now, so the officer, an attractive, 20-something black woman whose tolerance for bullshit isn't much higher than my friend's, cuts him off and asks if someone's sitting in his seat.

He admits no one is.

"So what's the problem? she asks.

As this is going on, the guy keeps leaning across one of the brothers, who puts his arm up and gently moves Bucket Hat's body off of his own.

"Did you see that? He touched me!"

"You were leaning on him," the officer says, annoyed now.

She asks him again what the problem is.

"Well, he keeps talking to me because I asked them to move," he says.

After ascertaining that we are, in fact, in our proper seats, she informs him that we paid for the tickets, and that talking is, in fact, permitted at Yankee Stadium.

"Enjoy the game, sir," she says, before apologizing to us.

Of course, after that bout of stupidity, there was no way the Indians were going to win. And of course, they didn't. I blame the gooseberries.