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Video by Alexandra Zuccaro

Thousands of people should have milled about, buying concessions or taking quick restroom breaks; the stadium should have been filled with the cheers of passionate baseball fans; the New York Yankees should have held their first game of the 2016 season yesterday.

Instead, the field at Yankee Stadium in the South Bronx, grew soggier by the hour as unrelenting cold rain poured on the city, driving organizers to postpone the game and leaving fans to forge their own entertainment.

Alex Jennings came to New York from Philadelphia with two friends. It was a spontaneous trip, planned after they got free tickets. Although they knew the weather looked “iffy,” when the game hadn’t been cancelled before they left Monday morning they decided to go ahead with the trip.

The three men were on the train into the city when they heard the news: the game had been postponed.

“We figured since we’re already on the train we’d make an afternoon of it, have lunch, come up to the stadium,” Jennings said. “We’d never been up here.”

When Jennings reached the city he couldn’t help but wonder why the game had been cancelled for weather that did not seem, to him, too forbidding.

“It doesn’t seem that bad to be cancelling the game,” Jennings said. “I thought New Yorkers were a little tougher than that.”

The temperatures Monday dipped as low as the mid-30s, and the rain, while never a brutal downpour, was consistent and heavy.

After spending the afternoon wandering the rain-soaked Bronx streets and eating at the Hard Rock Café at the stadium, Jennings and his friends needed to catch a train home. They were perplexed, though, about what to do with their tickets.

Unable to leave them at the stadium office for a friend to pick up later or to return to the city Tuesday for the makeup game, they resigned themselves to taking the tickets home and letting them go unused.

“I don’t know what to do with four good tickets,” Jennings said. “I feel bad, I don’t want to sell them because I got them for free, so I wanted to pay it forward and give them to someone else.”

Alec Olson from Albany, Oregon was visiting his sister at Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, New York, when he and his father decided to catch a game at Yankee Stadium.

They bought their tickets Sunday night and woke up Monday morning to find the game had been postponed. Worse, they were scheduled to head back home early Tuesday morning, ruining their hopes of watching the postponed game.

Olson, who said he played baseball while growing up in Oregon, did not understand why the game had been cancelled so far in advance (the announcement was posted on the team’s Twitter account before 9 a.m. Monday).

“I was a little upset,” Olson said. “They could have at least waited to see if the rain would stop, just put a tarp over [the field] and see if the rain would stop and then call it. Honestly, it’s not that bad, they could play in it.”

Olson’s father, Derek Olson, added that, while he’s not a fan of the Yankees himself, he has a friend who is a big Yankees fan. He had hoped to buy a souvenir for the friend and was disappointed not to be able to do so.

“It would have been nice to go in and get a souvenir cup, but that’s OK I guess,” he said. “We’re kind of stuck not getting to watch the game.”

The Olsons, like Jennings and his friends, were trying to make the best of the day despite having their plans go awry.

“Now we’re just cruising around the Bronx and cruising around the rest of the city just checking it out,” Alec Olson said. “[We’re] just a little upset that we couldn’t watch the Yankees on Opening Day here in New York. It kind of threw a huge wrench into our gears today.”

Derek Olson said he wasn’t sure how to get his money back for the missed game.

“We got our tickets through a resale site,” he said, “so we’re not even able to get a refund.”

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“N-Y-C, N-Y-C, we are N-Y-C-F-C, from the Bronx all the way down to the Battery, we are N-Y-C-F-C!”

Three floors’ worth of fans, decked out in blue uniforms, hats and scarves, stood jam packed on Sunday afternoon in Nevada Smith’s, an East Village soccer bar, to watch the first regular season match between the two newest Major League Soccer (MLS) expansion clubs.

Celebrating its 20th season, the MLS announced the New York City Football Club (NYCFC) and the Orlando City Soccer Club as its 20th and 21st teams in May and November of 2013, respectively. NYCFC is owned by English Premier League powerhouse Manchester City FC and Major League Baseball’s New York Yankees.

Loyal followers of NYCFC spilled about their fandom, mixed emotions about calling Yankee Stadium home, and New York’s newest rivalry.

“I grew up playing soccer and never really had a team to connect to,” said Nick Ricci, 27, of Brooklyn. He was never a fan of the MLS New York Red Bulls, which have been around since 1994, and thought it was a perfect fit when NYCFC was announced. And as a Yankee fan, what’s better than watching his new team compete at his favorite ballpark.

Alex Sapuppo, 21, of Long Island, said he’s excited to be a part of a team built from the ground up.

“We were just talking about how we hope 50 years from now this team is still around and we can say we were there from the beginning,” Sapuppo said.

One of the biggest NYCFC names, David Villa, 33, from Langreo, Spain, was the club’s first-ever player, acquired through a free transfer from Atlético Madrid on June 2, 2014. Villa earned his professional breakthrough in 1999 with Sporting Gijón B, scoring 25 goals in 65 appearances. Named the Spanish Player of the Year in 2005-06, Villa went on to score three goals in the 2006 FIFA World Cup, finished as the UEFA Euro 2008 tournament top goal scorer, helping Spain to its title, and overtook Spanish player Raul as Spain’s all-time leading scorer with 59 goals in 97 appearances.

As soon as video of Villa walking in Orlando City SC’s Citrus Bowl flashed across wall-to-wall television screens, energetic fans, tossing up pints and pitchers in the air, sang their NYCFC song to the tune of “This Old Man.”

“[Villa] was the player I watched in college [on Barcelona] and now that he’s on our team it’s amazing,” said Long Islander Mike Greenbaun, 25, draped in an NYCFC baseball hat, scarf, tee and jacket.

NYCFC boasts a 28-man roster, comprised of players from all over the world. Their experiences range from the United States Men’s National Team (USMNT), international leagues and other MLS teams. Thirteen of the players are 25 and younger, with three at 21.

Mikkel Diskerud, who fans called Mix, appeared already a favorite too. The 24-year-old from Oslo, Norway signed on a free transfer from Rosenborg in early January. As a Norwegian and American citizen, Mix has competed on the USMNT and was named to the 2014 FIFA World Cup squad.

“Signing Mix was really cool for us ‘cause it’s something that we were talking about right before they did it,” said Sapuppo. “He’s one of our favorite players for the national team.”

Mix, in his MLS debut, cemented his name in NYCFC history by scoring the club’s first-ever goal in the 76th minute, a low shot to the far corner, driving past goalkeeper Donovan Ricketts. Fans at Nevada Smith’s erupted into cheers, singing to the tune of KISS’ “Rock and Roll All Nite,” “I wanna Diskerud all night and party everyday!” But the party halted when Orlando City SC’s Kaka – 2007 FIFA World Player of the Year – netted the game’s tying goal in the 91st minute when his free kick deflected in. The contest, in front of 62,510 fans, ended in a draw.

NYCFC’s next match on March 15 is another historic one – their first at home. They will host the New England Revolution at Yankee Stadium.

The ballpark will downsize from its current capacity of 49,642 seats to 33,444.

“Every soccer fan loves his own stadium, it’s just part of the culture,” said Peter Siafakas, 21, of Long Island. “[Yankee Stadium] is great for now, it gave us great exposure … but I hope they’ll move out soon.”

Sapuppo, a Red Sox fan, said he’s not excited about home field, but it’ll have to do.

“To be there from the beginning you got to stick out some stuff, right?” Sapuppo said.

Enduring a forced rivalry with Orlando City SC might be something that NYCFC fans will have to deal with for a bit. But Sean Proctor, 22, of Midtown, said he thinks a better rivalry would be against the Red Bulls.

Whether the two will end up rivals this season has yet to be determined. Fans will have to wait until May 10 when the two compete at Red Bull Arena in Harrison, N.J. For now, they’re excited to watch their new team.

“It’s nice to have someone here now,” said Thomas Bruno, 22, of Long Island. “I can support it and have something to really call our own. It is a New York City team.”

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New York Yankees short stop Derek Jeter steps into the batters box at Yankee Stadium in a game against the Minnesota Twins April 5. While the Yankees have high fan attendance, other MLB teams still have trouble bringing in big crowds. Photo by Frank Riolo.

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Baseball fans may have noticed even more empty seats in major league ballparks this season.

Major League Baseball has seen a decline in overall game attendance since 2008. Television viewership is also lower compared to other sports, according to the Nielsen Ratings.

Sports marketing expert Lee Igel of New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies said steroid use among players from the late 1990s to the early 2000s may be to blame. MLB officials have enforced tighter performance enhancing drug policies over the last ten years, but Igel said fans are now just seeing the effect of steroid hearings and MLB’s 2005 and 2007 Mitchell Reports.

“Anytime that there is a significant event there’s a lag in time between that event actually occurring and the impact of it,” Igel said, referring to the rampant use of steroids and declining interest in the sport. “That means that there was something going on in prior years that by 2008 we started to see the effect.”

Little League participation has dropped 24 percent among children between ages 7 and 17 since 2000, according the National Sporting Goods Association.

Andrew Fletcher, a former public relations employee with MLB, said baseball is aware of the problem and has put programs in place to get kids back on the field.

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