Tuesday’s game between the Yankees and Houston Astros may have just been a regular-season matchup in early May between two teams right around the .500 mark, but don’t tell that to the 10,850 fans who were in attendance at Yankee Stadium.
After the COVID-19 pandemic kept fans out of the stadium for all of 2020, Tuesday’s game was the first chance Yankees fans had to really give an earful to the Astros following MLB investigating and finding evidence of the Astros stealing signs against the Yankees and other teams during their 2017 World Series run.
Giving them an earful is probably a nice way to say it. Yankees fans were relentlessly booing and jeering Astros hitters all night long, and the fans went home happy at the end of the night, as the Bombers came away with a 7-3 victory.
“It felt like a playoff atmosphere. Amazing 10-12,000 fans, whatever was in there. The energy that was created, we haven’t seen that since 2019,” manager Aaron Boone said after the game. “It was a fun game to be a part of. Guys did a lot of really good things tonight defensively, some big at-bats, some big pitching performances, so it was a fun night to play the game.
“You have games every now and then in the regular season that feel big, feel important, and obviously the crowd being as engaged as they were from the onset, I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t an extra level of energy.”
It’s fair to assume that not everything said towards an Astros player had a PG rating, but nothing ever escalated further than that.
“Nothing surprised me. At least there wasn't any violence,” Astros manager Dusty Baker said after the game. “They can say whatever they want. It sounded like a packed house tonight even though it wasn't. We kind of expected that reception. We’ll probably get more of the same tomorrow and the next day.”
The emotion of the night was not lost on Yankees players, including those who weren’t even in pinstripes in 2017, when the Astros’ trash can-banging scheme was in full effect.
“That was intense. I wouldn’t want to be on the other side of that,” said Giancarlo Stanton. “They brought something heavy.”
“This series has kind of been circled by a lot of people for a while now,” added DJ LeMahieu. “It was a wild atmosphere, but at the end of the day we’ve got to take care of business and get wins. We’re not in a position to be getting caught up in the moment. We need to take care of business.
“When fans are into the game like they are, it makes it easy to play and makes it a lot of fun for us.”
