The New York Post has reported that our man Freddy Sez, subject of the immensely popular short documentary Bangin’ Pots, is being denied his customary gratis entrance into the new stadium. I spoke to him just before this past opening day, and Freddy was afraid the Yankees wouldn’t let him into the stadium. I thought he was just being paranoid. Twenty years into his run as the self-described “unofficial Yankees mascot”, the guy is an institution. I figured even if the Yankees didn’t really want his somewhat ramshackle vibe corrupting their gleaming monolith, they wouldn’t risk the avalanche of bad PR they’d be certain to get if they shut him out. Obviously, I thought wrong.

Come now, young Steinbrenners. Do we really have to tell you the right thing to do here? In his more volatile days, your pop played the mean-spirited bully better than anyone, but he’s also an intensely sentimental man who prizes loyalty above all else. Does anyone honestly believe that Freddy was allowed to roam the stadium for twenty years without the boss’s blessing? If George was healthy and at the new stadium every day, he would never allow shutting Freddy out. It’s profoundly ungenerous, it’s bad PR, and worst of all–just ask a Cubs fan–it’s just the sort of thing that pisses off the baseball gods.

LET FREDDY IN!

Further reading: The Freddy Sez Q&A

As a tribute to the old Yankee Stadium (or the newer incarnation of the old Yankee Stadium) we made a short documentary last year about Fred Schuman aka Freddy Sez. On the way from his Upper West Side apartment to the Bronx for the Stadium’s last opening day, the eighty-three year old tells tells the story of his transformation into the Yankees’ pan-and-spoon-carrying unofficial mascot. We’ve saved it for this moment, and we hope you enjoy.