PHILADELPHIA — Yankee Nation moved in last night for the kill, risking the desperate Philadelphia resistance of Cliff Lee, thrown foodstuffs, profane insults, even physical threats.
“This is too good,” said Phil Robinson, business-tech marketer, wearing a Yankees jacket outside the left-field gate at 4:30 yesterday afternoon. “I’m driving home from Nashville to Long Island, watching last night from a hotel room in Roanoke, when they won and had a chance to win it [last night]. I reset the GPS.
“Usually when I tell people I need just one ticket for me and I’m not going to scalp it, they show mercy. We’re all baseball fans, right?
“But here a guy just told me three minutes ago, ‘Yeah, I have a hospital ticket for you.’ Tough guy, why don’t you come up to New York?
“Hit Alex Rodriguez three times, Mark Teixeira twice? These guys are all punks. There’s only one place worse for a Yankee fan than Broad Street in Philly and that’s Yawkey Way in Boston. Classless yokels.”
The classless yokels knocked out A.J. Burnett, held off a late rally and sent Yankee fans home disappointed and still defiant.
“We have Andy Pettitte, the winningest postseason pitcher ever, going in Game 6,” said Tom Heyliger from The Bronx. “We’re unbeatable at home. Even tonight, down all those runs, as long Brad Lidge is their closer we had a chance.”
But what a chance to dethrone the champions before wearers of red increasingly enraged by the midnight blue creeping into more seats here every night and taking up more standing (and squirming) room of Lidge-fearing fans.
Some bailed, enabling Yankee fans to hit StubHub and Craig’s List hard. Matt Sedita and Chris Coyne of Bergen County forked over $200 apiece for their standing-room tickets, half the cost of a few days ago.
Even the once-in-a-lifetime privilege of seeing your team win the World Series on the road was not priceless. But Temple University freshmen Erin Fedirko and Kelly Fowler, daughters of longtime Yankee families from Bethlehem and Allentown, Pa., and, in Fedirko’s case, a great-niece of Yankee Hall of Famer Bob Meusel, found two in the morning on Stub Hub for $600.
In left field, where about 250 Yankee employees holding seven consecutive rows performed dutiful role call, and Heyliger was holding his mouth — sort of, after security erroneously warned him for using profanity — Yankee fans did not leave early, or bitterly.
“Have a good trip back,” taunted one Phillies fan.
“Yeah, I’m sure we’ll see you in The Bronx, you [bleep],” answered a Yankee fan. “You just lost two out of three here. And you’re feeling good with that bullpen?”