No One Expects A 22-4 Drubbing!

In the realm of entertainment — whether it be sports or music or whatever — there is difference between a “game” and a “performance.” With the former, time was, you’d go to the ballpark, pay some nominal admission fee to get into a “game” and watch two teams slug it out. With the latter, you go to Broadway to pay for your Cynthia Nixons or Judd Hirsches and have some reasonable expectation that you’re seeing a performer at the top of his or her game giving you a “performance.” It’s the same in Vegas; you get the Celine Dion “performance” or the Dean Martin “performance” and Celine makes you cry during “My Heart Will Go On” or Deano brings you to years with his routines and bits. That’s entertainment!

But the thing is that when you inflate ticket prices of sporting events to absurd heights, people then start expecting something more than “a day at the ballpark.” In short, they want a performance. And then it becomes a case of Dance, Monkey, Dance:

The new Yankee Stadium was spotless and the weather stunning, but the Bombers stunk it up in The Bronx yesterday, subjecting their fuming fans to a putrid performance against the Indians, who scored an eye-popping 22 runs.

The loss — one of the worst in team history — was the Yankees’ second in three games in their new $1.5 billion ballpark.

But this one stung the Pinstripe faithful, who forked over as much as $2,625 to see the pitiful play, like few ever before.

“It’s a tragedy. This is the worst game I’ve ever seen,” said a seething Erich Wald, 28, of Toms River, NJ.

“You can’t afford to buy anything at this Stadium,” he added, “and the players are going to go out and have $50 steaks when it’s over.”

Jon Brawn, 26, of White Plains, couldn’t agree more.

“I woke up this morning expecting to see something great in this brand-new Stadium,” Brawn said, “and what I got was a calamity.”

. . .

“I paid $10 a beer to see this chop-shop team? They suck!” cried Shawn McCarthy, 28, of Hoboken, as he fled during the seventh-inning stretch.

“George Steinbrenner,” he added, “should take down ticket prices if we’re just gonna see a home-run derby by the Indians.”

A couple that had trekked all the way from West Palm Beach, Fla., to check out their favorite team’s spanking-new digs said they, too, were leaving with a sour taste in their mouths.

“I’ve been a fan since 1958,” said Fred Bingiano, 57. “We used to come back in the ’90s, and it was $36 a ticket. Today, we paid $350 each.”

His wife Deborah, 45, was just as disgusted.

“Families can’t come together anymore,” she noted before speaking for a lot of disaffected fans by tossing out the quintessential New York judgment: “Fuhgeddaboutit.”

Location Scout: New Yankee Stadium.