As you previously read within the pages of Eye On Baseball, John Oliver, host of HBO's "Last Week Tonight," was rather appalled by the rank elitism of the Yankees when it comes to their premium seats, and he decided to do something about it.
First, some quick background. This all started when Yankees COO Lonn Trost said, in so many words, that the Yankees want only a certain quality of paying customer when it comes to the premium seats behind home plate. Said Trost:
“The problem below market at a certain point is that if you buy a ticket in a very premium location and pay a substantial amount of money. It's not that we don't want that fan to sell it, but that fan is sitting there having paid a substantial amount of money for a ticket and [another] fan picks it up for a buck-and-a-half and sits there, and it's frustrating to the purchaser of the full amount. And quite frankly, the fan may be someone who has never sat in a premium location. So that's a frustration to our existing fan base.”
Elitism! This did not sit well with Mr. Oliver, who announced to his viewers that he was selling two premium tickets to each of the three Yankee home games this week and was doing so at the non-elitist price 25 cents a pop. The catch? In Oliver's words, the purchaser must dress "like you never sat in a premium location before. What that means is up to you."
This led to a flood of entries (entries necessarily involving an example of what you'd wear to those premium seats) on Twitter under the hashtag #IHAVENEVERSATINAPREMIUMLOCATION.
For Tuesday's Astros-Yankees game, we had a couple of Ninja Turtles crashing the premiums. For Wednesday's tilt, we got ...
Sharks and Unicorns tonite. #IHaveNeverSatInAPremiumLocation #LastWeekTonight Hahahahahaha Yankee's. pic.twitter.com/1IF5tHYkyh
— La (@Randomizery) April 7, 2016
Unicorns and Katy Perry-inspired sharks!
That brings us to Thursday's series finale in the Bronx, and your lucky-best interlopers are ...
(Screengrab via MLB.tv)
A purple dragon and green dragon, maybe! Overhead shot for additional confirmation ...
Today's @LastWeekTonight fans have arrived. I see what appears to be a purple dragon. pic.twitter.com/HnnXNCvooW
— Jared Diamond (@jareddiamond) April 7, 2016
Good job by purple dragon getting to the park early, maybe even in time for some BP. Green dragon? He just wants to be seen.
The shame of it, though, is that these Modern Buccaneers didn't get selected ...
Clearly I want these Yankees tickets bad @LastWeekTonight #IHaveNeverSatInAPremiumLocation #Wednesday pic.twitter.com/01mbZj1Arm
— thomas G hogan (@tommy_hogan_911) April 5, 2016
The Yankees, by the way, took Oliver's prank in stride:
Yankees just put on video board: “Thanks, John Oliver. Everyone is welcome at Yankee Stadium.”
— Danny Knobler (@DannyKnobler) April 7, 2016
As always, The People will not be denied this, our baseball.