SI: Yankee Stadium is Dying

Apologies if anyone has said this before, but I just got done with the piece and thought it was quite good overall. I wasn't crazy about the "Stadium POV" construct, but thought Verducci pulled it off reasonably well. And I thought the whole Nick Trotta angle was fantastic and really liked the way it tied the story together. The piece hit me on an emotional level, and I'm not a Yankees fan and only made one trip to the Stadium. That was the home opener, 2006, which remains my favorite in-person baseball experience, edging out a Chris Hoiles 2-out, 3-2, walk-off grand slam at Camden Yards and the first game at Comiskey after Tom Gamboa got beaten up.

(For a guy who hasn't really been to a whole lot of MLB games, I've seen some random awesome shit.)

 

Agreed. Verducci didn't get too cute with it, and when he did, it worked (see the Wildenstein line). He got out of the way of the story, which is tough to do with this conceit. Or maybe it's just that the subject matter was too good to screw up. Either way, the story worked in my book.

 

Lots of good information and anecdotes, but writing from the point of view of the ballpark just felt very gimmicky to me. I found it distracting and unnecessary.

 

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?
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Yes, the dimensions of Fenway have changed - outfield fences, exclusive of left field, have slowly come in, and as the wall has changed in left, even it has changed. Truth is, the original Fenway is about as recognizable in contemporary Fenway as the original Yankee Stadium is in the reconstruction that gets abandoned this week - Fenway was renovated in 1933/34, and has continued to evolve ever since. The key to a ball park lasting nearly 100 years is not that it hasn't changed, but that it has

 

I didn't realize there was more than one page.

That's OK, though, I'd read enough.

 

I agree for the most part, but they keep coming. Green Monster seats are actually abyssmal beyond the front row. Ownership did open up extra room under the stands and increased number of rest rooms, etc. Fans are willing to put up with the crappiness because they see it as being uniquely their own.
Point is, I think, that if the Sox could manage in Fenway, I think the Yankees could have done likewise.

 

Yankee Stadium is a dump. All of this remorse coming from people who rarely if ever sit through a game there is pretty silly.

The concourses are too narrow, the bathrooms too few and inadequate, and the food service is horrendous. You can easily wait for half an hour at Beers of the World. Getting out in a car can take more than an hour.

Plus, it lost any charm that it ever had in the '73 reconstruction. It became a totally different and blander park.

 

I have driven to sold-out games each of the past four years. I park in one of the north decks, and have never had a problem getting out in minutes. if you park in the garage directly south of the stadium, that's a big problem.

We usually pack a lunch to skip the lines and cost, and pick up water at the 99 cent store on the way from parking.

The bathrooms are pretty bad. At Shea at least there are diaper-changing family bathrooms that are cleaner and have locking doors.

I wonder how crowded the concourses were prior to the renovation, when the stadium seated 60K or more.

 

The saddest thing about Yankee Stadium being torn down is not the history...rather it's the thousands of loyal fans who will be priced out, people who have been attending games for decades yet no longer can.

Great article by Verducci. I usually love his stuff and this was a nice read.

 

I went to Yankee Stadium this summer. Yeah the concourses, concessions and bathrooms aren't by any means acceptable by today's standard, but considering its physical plant was built in the early 20s, it was better than I expected.

Maybe it's age, but I get less and less wistful in these types of scenarios than I did before. When County Stadium blowed up in 2000, I was damn near in tears. I even shelled out money I didn't have at the time to buy one of the (non-cancer causing) seats. I still have it.

But now? I'm glad I got to see Yankee Stadium, it was a cool experience more so because of the character of the fans than anything else, but life goes on. If the County Stadium scenario played out now, even with my emotional attachment to the place, I doubt very seriously I'd get as worked up about it as I did then.

 

Friend of mine took me to see an Indians game at Tiger Stadium right before it closed. The field was immaculate. The rest, not even close.
We had lower level tickets behind home plate, but we went mobile when we realized our angle wouldn't allow us to see anything in the outfield or above the second baseman's knees -- the pressbox hung down that low.
Everything was dirty, the walkways were cracked and the smell was unbearable (don't know if that was the stadium or just Detroit). Seemed a shame the facility was allowed to run down that much.

 

But what if Lambeau was being blown up?

Made it to four Yanks games during my time in the city. Yanks won all four, and Rivera got four saves. Even as a non-Yankee fan, watching Mo slowly jog in from the bullpen as the Metallica kicks in and the crowd rises is a very cool experience.