SI: Yankee Stadium is Dying

Fell down laughing at that line.

Sometimes you have to throw the pass over the head of the reader, and count on enough of them to draw it down.

 

Happy.

Happy.

Joy.

JOY!

 

My guess is that it would add tens of thousands of dollars to the price.

 

"I couldn't even recognize my own wife up close. She seems to think that you fix a face the same way you fix a house."

 

Looking forward to reading it. Definitely a different way to tell the story, but Verducci is talented enough to pull it off.

It's not a new storytelling gimmick. Someone used it a few years back, but I can't remember who and when. Anybody?

 

The improvements to Fenway are putting lipstick on a pig. The only quality improvements that have been made is to the upper deck/pavillion seating. Monster Seats are a polite way to say ridiculously obstructed view from the upper deck. The Budweiser area in RF may as well be the 20th floor of the Pru they are so far away. Concourses inside between first and third are abymisal. They strong-armed the city into making Yawkey Way private around gametime.

 

The difference, as Verducci points out, is that the Yankee Stadium of today looks absolutely nothing like the park that opened in 1923.

The dimensions of Fenway haven't changed since the park opened, have they?

 

About eight years ago or so - I think it was when Sid turned 80 - Patrick Reusse wrote a column about Sid Hartman's career. He told the story of when Ira Berkow was beginning his career at the Minneapolis Tribune. Ira's writing occasionally went over Sid's head, as you'd expect. Berkow got sent to the Kentucky Derby, and sent back a feature that was written from the perspective of a horse. The story came over the teletype or however stories came back then. Sid grabbed it, read it and said, "Jesus Christ, he interviewed a horse."

 

Just reading that little anecdote made me shudder. The Kentucky Derby from the horse's mouth angle is the oldest, lamest device out there. Furman Bisher ``interviewed'' one of the horses for his Derby preview column every freakin' year for what seemed like decades when I was growing up in the Atlanta area, and it was nauseatingly bad every time. Perhaps that is why I despise the old inanimate-objects-telling-their-own-story trick so much. I haven't worked up the courage to read this one -- Verducci is very good, so perhaps it will be different (tolerable) --but this type of story rarely works. Usually, they are roll-your-eyes awful.

 

I didn't think it was roll your eyes awful.

The thing I liked about it is it allowed Verducci to state things without having to use too many quotes. It gave him a vehicle to get a lot of information into the piece.

Not saying this method should be used very often, but that was a damn good piece.

 

In my unqualified opinion, I thought it was a good story. I enjoyed it.

Let me add that the article being from the POV of the stadium is probably what kept me reading the story past the first page. It was an angle that kept me intrigued enough to continue reading.