Memory of Yankee Ghosts Can't Halt New Stadium

NYT/Reuters: Memory of Yankee Ghosts Can't Halt New Stadium
By REUTERS
Published: August 27, 2006


(Wikipedia)
Exterior of Yankee Stadium

NEW YORK (Reuters) - As work begins on the new Yankee Stadium, critics see the project as symbolically burying more than just the old ballpark, the baseball shrine known as "The House that Ruth Built'' across the street.

What will also be lost, they say, is a metaphor for the American Century; a landmark of New York's emergence in the 1920s among the world's great cities and, during the decades that followed, a focal point in the city's social life.

"Yankee Stadium is the Statue of Liberty of baseball. It's majestic, it represents all the positive aspects of our country,'' said David Gratt, president of Friends of Yankee Stadium, which is fighting the old park's replacement.

"Tearing it down suggests we've moved away from those attributes and are just concerned with making money,'' he said.''

Many Yankees fans disagree. They say "The Stadium,'' is cramped, dingy, and no amount of fresh paint can modernize it....

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/sports/sports-baseball-stadium.html

to be a sad day for baseball when they start tearing the "House that Ruth built" down.

And I don't know anyone who thinks its cramped or dingy, that's Fenway, people say that about. I don't mind a new stadium, but I wish that they would keep the old stadium as a Nat'l or City landmark or a moument. I mean they did renovate the Stadium before, so it's not in the Oringial design.

I used to take my kids to 10-15 ballgames a year at Yankee Stadium and we saw so many memorable games there I can hardly list them: The re-hiring of Billy Martin on Old Timer's Day in 1978, the Bobby Murcer grand slam on Opening Day, the Reggie Bar Game, the last game of the season when Winfield-Mattingly duked it out for the batting crown, bat days, cap days, Coney's Perfecto (which was also Yogi Berra Day).

My kids are grown up now and frankly if they were not I would not be able to afford it anymore. These days I go to 1-2 games a year if I can scrounge up tickets. Heck, we used to be able to get seats behind first base sometimes in the lower deck field boxes. Today that is impossible whether you can afford it or not.

But I imagine that when it happens and the wrecking ball hits the Old Ball Orchard I will get out my scorecards, yearbooks and photos and reminisce, probably get drunk listening to this song over and over again:

There Used to Be a Ballpark

It's like a quickie, but you have to do it yourself.





The Lords of Baseball have always been a gang of the worst of American capitalists. Historically, as a legally protected monopoly, they have exhibited in spades every flaw of robber-baron, laissez-faire, "free-market," crony American capitalism. Just as American capitlaism has reached an all-time level of disdain for people and the planet, so too has the industry of baseball. On steroids.

The romantic lore and tradition of baseball and the value placed on icons like Yankee Stadium live only in the imaginings of baseball fans. Baseball fans matter to the baseball industry solely and in direct proportion to the number of twenty-dollar bills an excursion to the local ballpark can suck out of their wallets. I'm sure the new stadium will be much a much more efficient mechanism for transferring wealth.

As someone who grew up in the Bronx and who has been a crazy Yankees fan since age 10, I have to admit that there is definitely something magical there that can't be replaced.

when is the new one suppose to open so I know how much time I have to try and save up for a trip to New York? (I'm already too late to stay at the Plaza someday - I can't miss this.)