I had never been to the new Yankee Stadium, a replacement for the Yankees’ previous home, the original Yankee Stadium, which opened in 1923 and closed in 2008. Friends had purchased a set of four highly coveted Madonna tickets. One of their family, however, was unable to attend, leaving them with one ticket, which I was offered. I am not intimately familiar with Madonna’s music and so, I was somewhat unsure that I wanted to spend $189 to see a woman whom I was not particularly a fan of.  My friends persuaded me to go – after all it would be a Saturday night out, an opportunity to see Yankee Stadium, and an arena concert, something I had not done in many decades. To sweeten the deal, they said that I could decide after the concert what it was worth to me and pay what I like – essentially a ticket on consignment. It was a deal I could not refuse, and so, on Saturday, September 8, I found myself at my friends’ apartment in the Village, readying ourselves for the Madonna concert.

There was a pre-show, but none of us were driven to see it, so a group decision was made to depart at 8:30PM. With travel time, this would leave about an hour before Madonna was to go on stage at 10PM. It was raining, but the concert was rain or shine. We planned and collected our raingear: umbrellas, ponchos, plastic bags, and raincoats, fully prepared for the worst – an evening sitting for two hours in the rain.

We made the short walk to Union Square at 8:30PM, walking briskly in the rain. Our train arrived promptly, however, there was congestion, and our train stopped abruptly. To add insult to injury, the train was mobbed, hot, and humid, and we learned that due to equipment failure, there was no air conditioning between 96th and 125th Streets. Everyone made the best of it as we enjoyed a joint roast. Finally, after what seemed to be an interminable journey, we arrived at our destination in the Bronx – 161st Street/Yankee Stadium. As the train pulled into the station, Hellen, shepherdess of the tickets, made the most disturbing announcement that could be imagined. Yes, she had forgotten the tickets.

So now, with only 45 minutes to concert time, we were in the very unenviable position of being at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx for a Madonna concert with $760 of tickets in Hellen’s closet in lower Manhattan, a distance that, even with the best of train fortune, was a long journey. To make the round trip journey seemed unthinkable, but the tickets were purchased via Ticketmaster, and with no recourse or ability to reprint them, only two options remained. Scrap the concert, or make the round trip and see what remained of the concert. A group management decision was made to do what we could to salvage the evening.

So back on the #4 to Union Square. A nice connection to the #6 to Astor Place was making the affair look more promising. A jog to their home, a swift elevator ride up to their apartment, and a beeline to the closet, where, as Hellen predicted, four tickets laid waiting. It was 9:40PM. I took a quick photo of Hellen gleefully brandishing four tickets, and we bolted out the door to retrace our steps. The subway ride was uneventful, however, we had become quite weary of train travel – this was now our third subway ride between the Village and Yankee Stadium.

We arrived at the stadium at 10:10, not bad, and in our seats approximately at 10:23 PM. Madonna had not gone on stage and so, through a miracle of fate, we had actually arrived 5 minutes before her portion of the concert. We had, with decisiveness and good fortune, accomplished our mission, avoiding what Hellen’s daughter had hoped – that we would not be Tardy to the Party 🙂

See Part 2 here for the conclusion to the story and a video.