Mike Celizic

Immediately after the World Trade Center came down and the world as we had come to know it changed forever, there were a lot of things we assumed would happen. One of them was that getting into a stadium or arena to watch a game was going to be an hours-long process, similar to getting on an airplane.

No one complained about that prospect back then. If that was the price of preventing a repeat of the horror of 9/11/2001, we were more than willing to pay it.

Five years later, security is greater at sporting events, especially at championship events. But day-in and day-out during the regular seasons of every sport, getting into the games is hardly the chore we thought it would be. Other than a prohibition against backpacks and carry-in bags at most stadiums and arenas, it is, in fact, absurdly easy.

I realized that a week ago when I went with a friend to a Yankees game. As a writer, I normally enter stadiums through the media gate. There, guards look inside backpacks and brief cases and, depending on the venue, ask you to turn on your computer. Sometimes, a photo ID may be required to gain entry; that’s the Yankees way of doing things during the postseason.

But for fans, security isn’t even that intrusive. For regular-season games, there are no metal detectors to walk through, no mag-and-bags to scan bulky clothing, not much other than part-time security people eyeballing the crowd, looking for something that looks out of place.

Bags and backpacks are prohibited. After that, security consists of part-time personnel eyeballing the crowd, occasionally patting down a patron’s pockets, but other than that more interested in keeping the lines moving than in checking everyone for murderous materials.

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I walked in wearing a sport coat, and I could have been packing heat under it. But the security guard was more interested in the unlit cigar I was chewing on.

“Get rid of it,” the guard said.

“What?” I said, trying to figure out what she was referring to.

“The cigar,” she said.

In the old days, I would have argued the point. Smoking isn’t allowed in the stadium, and I wasn’t smoking. But these days, you do what the people with the patches on their company-issued jackets tell you to do. So I stuffed the offending cigar in my pocket and walked in.