mini baseball rant
last weekend i paid my first of many visits to the city’s two new ballparks. i have been a yankees fan as long as i have been a fan of baseball, but based on my first impressions of citi field and yankee stadium, i may be attending more mets games this summer.
this may have to do with the fact that i hate steinbrenner and his kin basically as much as the many yankee haters out there. my team once was not pure evil - 1996 was the height of greatness for me, with joe, derek, tino, mariano, paul o’neil, ramiro mendoza, jorge, young andy pettitte, later on scott brosius! THEY were not media whores or (blatantly and horrible) steriod abusers (i am blinded by love for andy), and it was actually a team instead of a messy conglomeration of disparate all-stars. as the years passed and giambi arrived, followed by a-rod, the plague embodied, it became clear to me that the team i really loved was in some ways a fluke in the long steinbrenner reign - chemistry does not always last, and it certainly cannot be bought. really starting with giambi, the long string of high profile acquisitions felt like the death rattle for my fan-dom. but i think the final blow may be this stadium.
while sitting in one place (which i will be doing on future visits, mostly likely) there are some very pleasant views. the problem is that it is horrible to walk around, which was really one of the main problems with the old yankee. you never wanted to budge from your seat for fear of gross, cramped cooridors and troublesome bathrooms. the outfield section at yankee, which in so many new ballparks (ahem citi) is open and spacious, has a tiny space for standing room, and a concrete cooridor that is caustrophobic and unpleasant. it is more difficult to get up to the upper deck than in the previous yankee and no one without a ground floor ticket ($300 and up) can even get a hot dog on that level. and the bathrooms, unlike citi (everything is automated) are still pretty gross, even on the second day. the food and drink is incredibly expensive, and still not very good. johnny rockets vs. shake shack, lets see.
but the main problem is that the issues with new yankee represents all that has gone wrong with the economy (and for that matter, the team). the lavish overspending is clearly not for the everyday fan, but for the now-disappeared corporate sponsors who would have been bringing their smug clients to a morimoto sushi dinner with a few innings of watching baseball sprinkled in. the obscene prices (currently going up to $3200 for dugout seats) can hardly be bought out by corporations at this point, even at the reduced-fee exhibition game. and almost all of the amenities for most fans, were almost the same at the old place, which at least made you nostalgic for the many great things that once happened there.
i know that populism is sometimes dangerous, but i mean, with baseball i feel it should be endemic. it is a game, an american pastime. i know that greed is a pastime as well, but sport should still be ABLE to take us away from that. even though the shea replacement does have its fair share of excesses similar to yankee stadium (must have a specific ticket for one mid-level, a smaller exclusive section of seats on the first floor), it seems pretty clear to me that any fan of BASEBALL and not just a specific team could love this stadium. also, blue smoke ribs for $10 bucks…oh my god. but seriously other than danny meyer, i also prefer the new style of parks that promotes openness and in general gives just as great of an upgrade for ordinary fans as for those can shell out over $300 for a single regular season baseball game.
the two entrances to the parks may be representative of why i have serious qualms about one and see myself growing to love the other. at the new yankee, upon entering the “great hall,” any yankee-hater will proceed to vomit all over an excessive display of typically overdone past yankee mythologizing. banners and bland white marble, gaudy and ugly screens pointing to different levels - there is something not that inspiring about it, even for someone who used to really really adore that team. on the other hand,the entrance of citi looks like old ebbets field from the outside, is not done with pomp and circumstance of the yankee, and is entirely dedicated to jackie robinson, who was never even a met. maybe i’m wrong about this being a good entrance because i’m not actually a mets fan, and i have heard that fans are angry that the park does not have a distinct ‘mets’ feel - maybe they miss being directly in the flight path.
but then again maybe i like the entrance because i feel it pays tribute to something more important than just one team and their history. it pays tribute to new york baseball in general, and the tragedy of losing one of the great old new york teams (the mets are supposed to be a combo of the giants and the dodgers.) also, if the dodgers had stayed in new york i probably would have been a fan by family default - my grandmother was from brooklyn and loved them terribly, and though she was pleased that sandy koufax and the rest followed her out to la a few years after their move, it was also devastating that they left their legendary home near prospect park. my dad was a dodger fan fo his entire childhood, but eventually wanted to take his kids to games in the city so fell into the yankee spiral. point is, the reminsinence of the entry to a stadium i never saw with my own eyes but idealized as a tragically lost part of new york (damn you robert moses!) combined with the tribute to that game changing new york ballplayer - it is far more powerful than something that seems far more self-involved. the mets took something that was old and made it new in a universal way, made a stadium that was enjoyable for anyone and affordable to more. the yankees fell deeper into their personal hubris and made a stadium that would be loved only by the obnoxious die-hards (who are too blind to see they are being screwed by excessive prices) and rightfully scorned by the millions of haters.
obviously, venturing to these two places cemented the fact that i have become disillusioned with yankee pride and miss the original team i once loved. i know its now entirely gone. i’m not saying i want to be a mets fan - if i started following a team more rigorously it probably would be the dodgers (not just because of the family stuff, but manny and joe). in fact, i think the thing is that i hate avid fans in general. i just like being in new york and enjoying a game of baseball. and if i have to choose, i will go to citi field to do that.
goodbye, yankee stadium.
