I'm pretty sure you've heard by now that they're tearing down Yankee Stadium after this year and the Yankees will move into an adjoining facility with an estimated construction cost of 1.3 billion weak US American dollars. This is fine. Most teams, when confronted with a dilapidated stadium, decide to move into a new one.
The media's reaction is predictable. Rick Reilly waxed as only Reilly can wax about the incredible value of the artifacts in Yankee stadium, suggesting that the pieces of the field are positively sacramental and retain their glorious value for all eternity.
Baseball greats gushed like fruit snacks over their first memories on this hallowed ground.
Goose Gossage: "It was an out-of-body experience,"
Joe Morgan: "When I was running around the bases I hadn't even thought about the home run. I was thinking, I'm running where Babe Ruth ran.
Regular old baseball fans, always suckers for a sob story, got out their purple voices and talked in purple tones about the purple days of Yankee glory. Sportswriters, writing in purple pens, ate it up like it was fucking Grimace.
Peter Caparis was willing to part with "a couple of mortgage payments" so he and his 11-year-old son, Joe, could attend possibly the last major event at the stadium. He never hesitated to pay close to $2,000 a ticket to a broker for box seats close to the visitors' on-deck circle.
Man. I wonder what his wife will say when the bank has to foreclose. I can imagine Mrs. Caparis, in an appropriately shrewish voice, "We could've watched the game on TV! But now we have no house! Good thing you went to that one baseball game and Joe had to stay up half the night just to watch a sacrifice fly while the second-stringers played a longer game than the real all-stars!"
Even Canadians warbled as poetically as their cold Northern hearts can allow. The single-game Canadian RBI record was set at Yankee on Aug. 10, 1935 and tied again on Aug. 12, 1938. This article also informed me that Ferguson Jenkins is the only Canadian-born Hall of Famer, which, according to popular stereotypes about Canadian ethnicity, seems surprising. I bet if you asked most baseball fans who the only Canadian HOFer is, they would guess this guy or this guy.
But here's my problem. It's not with the Yankees, it's with the media coverage of this story:
Why do none of these baseball PURISTS have a problem with the Yankees destroying all this history, sacredness, aura, mystique, and legend for PROFIT?
The sole motivation for the Yankees to move is so that they can make more money than they already have. They can build more luxury boxes, which makes more money. They can have a nicer stadium, so their fans are happier and they can charge more money for seats. Their fans will be more comfortable and thus more likely to buy Scott Brosius vintage t-shirt jerseys.
This is all about the team that gets excoriated on a daily basis for its profit margin and its spending practices. Everyone hates the Yankees for their income and their money. I really don't know why almost NONE of the major media outlets, fans, baseball greats or Canadians has the cojones to say - hey, maybe the Yankees should pour some of their umpteenbillion dollars American into the historic, legendary, sacred stadium so they could keep playing in it?
This is among the most one-sided stories I've ever seen in the media. In all the articles I've read, almost nobody criticizes the Yankees or even suggests that it might be sad that they're voluntarily tearing the "hallowed cathedral" down. Everyone's too busy celebrating and patting themselves on the back about how great Yankee stadium was.
Nobody's noticing that the history is disappearing to make way for the dollar.
Yeah, and more importantly, why hasn't anyone blamed the end of Yankee Stadium on A-Rod yet??
ReplyDeletei think it's funny that cubs fans would rather die than see Wrigley torn down.
ReplyDeleteWrigley--a stadium that, until about 20 years ago was considered one of the biggest dumps in baseball.
Wrigley--a stadium, which, unlike Yankee stadium, which has seen 27 championships in the past 100 years, has seen zero chamionships in the past 100 year.
Wrigley--one of the last stadiums in MLB to allow black people to buy tickets and attend its baseball games.
But yeah, tear YS down. This isn't so much a rip of the media, but rather a rip on douchebag Cubs fans who think their stadium is somehow special (hint: it's not. Yankee and Fenway are both more historic and BETTER than yours)
This is easily the best op-ed piece in FireJay history. I've written like two or three (none of which is worth linking here) that pale in comparison.
ReplyDeleteYou could've also pointed out that for a couple of years, the biggest sticking point in building a new Yankee Stadium was where to put it. George Steinbrenner threatened to move the Yankees to New Jersey, then Rudy Giuliani handed over the city's wallet to the Yankees to allow them to build a stadium on Manhattan's west side near the Javits Center (and oh, what a traffic nightmare that would've created). Only when that particular rug was yanked out from under their feet and it was obvious that the city was calling their bluff on a move to Jersey, did they decide to build the new Stadium close to the old one.
ReplyDeleteYeah, that is the sort of experience that gets you all warm and fuzzy for baseball. It's as American as Enron!
First, the destruction of Yankee Stadium is obviously more Madonna's fault than A-Rod's.
ReplyDeleteSecond, the nostalgia for Wrigley has allowed the Tribune Company to avoid upgrading the stadium because it is so "classic."
Now that Sam Zell is branding everything that he can before he sells the team to Cuban, I would like to see something like what the Bears had when they couldn't sell the naming rights to Soldier Field:
"Chicago Cubs Baseball - Presented by Starbucks."
This could codify the douchebag factor that has been present in Wrigleyville for years.
I think it woudl either be presented by Izod, Hummer, or Ray-Bans.
ReplyDeleteI had not thought about this side of Yankee Stadium being torn down at all. I haven't even read some of the articles that are being written about it but you would think that if it is such a great ball park and contains so much history, they would improve it and not tear it down.
ReplyDelete"This stadium has had hundreds of wonderful memories for the Yankees and also happens to contain a lot of Major League Baseball history. There is no way we could replace all the wonderful events that have occurred here and it is a shame it does not have enough sky boxes for corporate executives to watch a ball game with their mistresses while they are served finger food and leave in the sixth inning."
Whoa there, Yankee fans! Can't let you get away with the "Cubs fans are douche bags" lingo without some form of retribution:
ReplyDelete"Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome...to...Yankee Stadium...presented by, Yagah Bombs!"
Fair enough Mr., but none of us are Yankee fans. We hate the Cubs because two of us are ChiSox fans, one of us is a Reds fan, and one of us is a Rockies fan who fucking hates the Cubs. Still, I like your style. Yagah bombs. Muscle milk. HGH!
ReplyDeleteIIII WUUV the Yanks!
ReplyDeleteA Hydrogen-Bomb! From A-Rod!
Too soon?
opposite-field singles make me giddy.
that said, yankee stadium sucked.
I can't believe there was an accusation of being a Yankees fan. I called them "the fucking Yankees" from 1996-2005. I have pretty much hated them my entire life. That being said, I have gone to Yankee Stadium and it is something that is pretty fun and interesting to do.
ReplyDeleteThat is about the nicest thing I will say about them. If everyone who wrote on this blog was a Yankees fan it would be called "FireHatGuy."
Since this is the blog on all the interwebs and since the NYY are my hometown team even I am a NYM fan I must weigh in...I am thrilled that there is no anti new NYY stadium setiment arising. Sooner folks realize the bottom line is the only thing of importance the better off we'll all be. NYY tradition etc went bye bye for good a few years back. This is just natural progression. Amen. Go Mets and all other AL East teams.
ReplyDeletei'm with awesomesean
ReplyDeletethat's not to say I disagree with Danbob--I too have been shocked that there hasn't been much backlash against the new Yankee Stadium.
That said, I've been kind of pleasantly surprised. I don't see why it has to be holy hell to tear down a stadium in disrepair and give your fans a decent place to watch a ballgame (cough, wrigley, cough cough)
I hate the Yankees and everything about them. They get too much publicity just beacuse their a New York team. They don't even play that good to be said so much about on ESPN, or other sports news. They need to just build the new thing and get it over with.
ReplyDelete