There are a few places in New York where spending $12 on a beer seems like a good deal.
Yankee Stadium is one of them.
It was a beautiful but immensely hot Sunday afternoon in August. Blue sky, a patchwork of white clouds, and a stadium full of people being cooked in the summer sun. But that doesn't stop the cheering or the rowdiness of the fans who have made the pilgrimage to the Bronx.
Walking beneath the high arches and white stone of the concourse, pictures of famous Yankees like Yogi Berra, Babe Ruth, and Derek Jeter watch over people filling cardboard containers with things that bear only a passing resemblance to food. Hot dogs. Extra-long hot dogs. Nachos covered in the most radioactive orange cheese imaginable. And beers galore, most of them roughly the size of what you'd use to store water for a three-day backpacking trip.
The game starts with the sound of an organ and the patriotic standing for the National Anthem. Within a few minutes, the cares of the world seem to slip away.
Laughing and cheering overtake worries about the mortgage, the job, the divorce, the idiot in accounting, and whatever fresh catastrophe is waiting for us on Monday morning.
There's something beautiful about that.
Thirty thousand people suddenly becoming twelve again. Reliving their youth. Singing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game." Cheering to see which subway car is going to win the race on the Jumbotron. And, of course, doing a lot of heckling of Braves fans.
The beautiful dichotomy of people glistening with sweat as they eat their third hot dog, baking in the sun while watching incredibly athletic people play a game, is not lost on me.
That's the thing about baseball: it's slow. You're mostly just waiting for that one play. A lot of the time, not much happens. Often, your team doesn't even win. They play 162 games, which I would argue is far too many.
But then comes the crack of a bat.
The ball soars into right field, and the entire stadium erupts.
There's something magical about it.
In the eighth inning, when Trent Grisham hit his home run, I looked around and saw old men high-fiving, kids wearing jerseys bigger than their bodies, and tourists ecstatic to finally experience a team they'd heard about their entire lives.
It's at a Yankees game that you start to understand why people love this city, and why this team is as famous as it is. Even when there's a good chance we're going to lose, the stadium fills up and everyone has a blast.
Sometimes it takes a game, a sport, a Sunday afternoon in the sun - something completely unnecessary - to remind you how necessary the unnecessary things can feel.
Baseball isn't necessary.
Neither is another beer.
Neither is the ice cream after the foot-and-a-half-long hot dog.
But sometimes you need all three.