aaron judge yankees
Wendell Cruz | USA TODAY Sports

If the start of 2023 is any indication, Yankees home games should be exciting this year. Winning four of five in the Bronx to begin the regular season will do that. But there’s another attraction for fans descending upon Yankee Stadium this year: The 99 Burger.

Aaron Judge has gained a bunch of things since his record-setting 2022 campaign. He took home AL MVP honors, signed the richest contract in franchise history, and became the Yankees’ 16th captain. The biggest honor of all has to be getting a burger named after him, right?

From the moment it was announced, we all knew it’d be one of the toughest things to do at Yankee Stadium. After all, only 99 of those glorious burgers are going to be sold at each home game. So if you’re headed to the Bronx and getting one is on your bucket list, you need to plan your whole outing around it. And probably get to the ballpark the moment it opens.

However, I saw the following video on Instagram and it got me thinking: if you’re stuck in line waiting to be one of those lucky 99 fans, how much of a Yankees game will you miss by not sitting in your seats?

Most fans appear to have a vantage point of the field while they’re waiting in line, but they also didn’t spend their money to stand in line at the Stadium while a baseball game is played, right?

With the new pitch clock rules in effect, it made me want to do some math. Bear with me for a little bit.

As we sit here on Tuesday morning, the Yankees have played four games. Here’s how long they’ve taken to complete:

  • Game 1: 2 hours and 33 minutes
  • Game 2: 3 hours and 12 minutes
  • Game 3: 2 hours and 27 minutes
  • Game 4: 2 hours and 41 minutes

If we put that all together, the average time of a Yankees game so far this season is about two hours and 43 minutes. Accounting for a nine-inning game, it takes somewhere around 18 minutes to complete an inning (top and bottom half).

Let’s say you stand in line for about 30 minutes waiting to get yourself a 99 Burger. There’s a good chance you’d have to watch close to two innings from the line before heading back to your seat. And hopefully, with a 99 Burger in your possession.

Of course, this is working under the assumption that these burgers aren’t sold out before the first pitch. Either way, you need to sit down and do some legitimate scheming before heading to the Stadium if you want to ingest one of these beautiful-looking burgers.

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You can reach Matt Musico at [email protected]. You can follow him on Twitter: @mmusico8.

Matt Musico is an editor for ESNY. He’s been writing about baseball and the Mets for the past decade. His work has been featured on numberFire, MetsMerized Online, Bleacher Report, and Yahoo! Sports.