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September 26, 2008
View From Lodi, CA Pittsburgh, PA: Enough About The Wall Street Bailout—Let’s Talk About Yankee Stadium!
By Joe Guzzardi
Although I promised I wouldn’t watch,
I found myself glued to
ESPN’s seven-hour tribute to Yankee Stadium before
the
last-ever game in the old park.
I had intended to write about my
favorite Yankee Stadium moment last week. But the
financial crisis rerouted me. Under the assumption that
you, like me, don’t want to read any more about the
proposed bailout, I’m returning to the ballpark.
Now that I think about it, I wonder
how many people care about my personal perspective when
the sport pages are overflowing with reminisces from
Yogi Berra, Alex Rodriguez, Wade Boggs and dozens of
other players including many who are or will be in the
Hall
of Fame.
But since I have the stage to
myself, I’ll proceed.
My early recollections of Yankee
Stadium were tales told to me by my father who grew up
in its shadow.
Raised in the Bronx a mere walk away
from Yankee Stadium, Dad saw all the great ones:
Babe Ruth and
Lou Gehrig from the hometown team and
Walter Johnson and
Jimmie Foxx from the long gone Washington Senators
and Philadelphia A’s.
To a baseball-obsessed young boy
growing up in
Los Angeles’ pre-Major League
Baseball, Dad’s stories thrilled me.
When one spring day in 1956 my father
came home and announced that our family would be moving
to
Puerto Rico, and that our routing would take us via
New York, I realized that if the
timing was right, I might be able to watch the Yankees.
And as good fortune would have it, our
layover put us there on
September 6th, when the Yankees took on
the Senators.
During the morning, it rained hard.
I expected the game to be cancelled.
But by mid-afternoon the skies cleared
and we took off for the Bronx
via subway.
My biggest hero,
Mickey Mantle, didn’t get a hit. But Whitey Ford
pitched a great game, shut the Senators down, 2-1, and
struck out eleven during his complete game victory.
Eventually, I lived in
Manhattan
for nearly two decades. During those years, I watched
many games, some at the original site and others at the
1975 renovated Yankee Stadium II.
I loved the 1978 Yankees, generally
recognized as the
George
Steinbrenner/Reggie Jackson/Billy Martin era.
Among my favorites were
Catfish Hunter, Graig Nettles, Chris Chambliss, Ron
Guidry, Thurman Munson and Lou Pinella.
That was
the year the Yankees came from
14.5 games behind in July to overtake the Boston Red
Sox in a one-game play off. While the excitement from my
first game lasted three hours, the 1978 comeback
exhilaration stretched out over four months.
Since the
free agency era that the Yankees have used to their
great advantage, I’ve lost interest. Instead, I pull for
the local teams—until recently the San Francisco Giants
and
Oakland A’s and
now the Pittsburgh Pirates. Those teams challenge their
fans since none of them are close to playing .500
baseball.
My apathy to the Yankees translates
into indifference toward the stadium’s demise.
Like the old Yankee teams and
baseball in general, the stadium isn’t the same.
The new stadium reflects baseball
today—bigger and richer. Unfortunately, that doesn’t
translate to better.
Among the things a fan will be able to
do, assuming he has no interest in baseball, is
host corporate events in luxury boxes, conferences,
business meetings, parties, fundraisers, bar and bat
mitzvahs and weddings at the Sony Stadium Club or the
Johnny Walker Pinstripe Pub.
Of the 150 million fans that have
attended since it was built in 1923, few traveled
further to see his first Yankees game than I did.
Even though I’m in
New York
from time to time, I’ll probably never see a game again.
The 4,300 premium seats located behind home plate cost
between
$500 and $2,500 each—and they are nearly sold out.
Some things—Yankee Stadium is one
—are better left off seen through time’s prism.
JOENOTE to VDARE.COM
readers:
One thing the
farewell made crystal clear is how far baseball has
swung toward Caribbean
players.
As the old
stars—Berra, Ford, Bobby Richardson, Don Larsen, Moose
Skowron and Graig Nettles stood in the dugout waiting to
trot onto the field for their accolades—the
current players looked on—Mariano Rivera, Robinson
Cano, Bobby Abreau, Jose Molina, Melky Cabrera, among
others.
A roster
heavily stacked with Latin players certainly helps to
sell tickets to New York’s rapidly changing fan demographic.
Whether it produces good baseball teams is the subject
off
my on-going debate that I’ll return to in early
October with my post-season analysis.
In the meantime, the Yankees
finished in third place in the Eastern Division, missing
the playoffs for the first time in thirteen years.
Joe Guzzardi
[email
him]
is a California native who recently fled the state
because of over-immigration, over-population and a
rapidly deteriorating quality of life. He has moved to
Pittsburgh, PA where the air is clean and the growth
rate stable.
A long-time instructor in English at the Lodi Adult School,
Guzzardi has been writing a weekly column since 1988. It
currently appears in the
Lodi News-Sentinel.
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