The $1.3 billion project - built during the most crushing recession in recent memory, mind you - is a gigantic slap in the face to not only Yankees fans and New York taxpayers, but to baseball fans in general.
The most historic baseball sanctuary has been replaced by a generic, stiff, lifeless new baseball stadium.
It's hard to predict how the "new" Yankee Stadium will compare to the old one, but I'm not exactly going out on a limb by predicting it will come nowhere close to The House That Ruth Built.
If you think about it, Major League Baseball needs the Yankees to do well. Not only that, the MLB needs {gulp} Yankees fans. It's just like how the NBA needs the Celtics and Lakers to do well and how the NFL needs the Patriots and the Cowboys to do well. Their respective fans take the whole game to whole 'nother level. Their devotion, their pride, their encyclopedic knowledge of the game and quite frankly, their lunacy elevates any game involving their team to an unmatched level.
Rivaled only by Red Sox fans, Yankees fans are the most ignorant, big-headed, bias fans in all of sports, but you gotta give it to them - they know their history. They may not be the most humble fans in the world but their unrelenting Yankees pride speaks for itself. I never went to the old Yankee Stadium, but I can only imagine it was the mecca of crazed fandom.
So what made it that way?
Well, the design of the old Yankee Stadium allowed the fans to make a noticeable difference in any home game. Yankees fans had the uncanny ability to push their team to a We're Not Losing This Game mentality. It was vastly different from McAfee Coliseum (Oakland A's) and Dolphin Stadium (Florida Marlins) which both double as football stadiums. The problem with these fields is that the make of the stadium separates the fans from the field which in turn drowns out their would-be raucous and motivating cheers. (I say "would-be" because the A's and the Marlins haven't mattered in years.)
Now, the "new" Yankee Stadium falls victim to the same disease.
Though the design of the "new" stadium may not mirror the designs of McAfee Coliseum or Dolphin Stadium, I'm watching the Angels/Yankees game right now and there's no excitement in the park whatsoever. As a matter of fact, the 10 or so rows surrounding the field look like a graveyard site.
What's head-scratching is they look like the plushest, comfiest, most luxurious seats in the whole damn stadium, yet they're not remotely full. Why?
Simple. {clearing my throat} BECAUSE THEY'RE GOING FOR $500-2,500 A POP!!! Compare that to the $125 and $128 price-tag that comes with the same seats at Fenway Park and Angels Stadium, respectively, and you're talking about an exponential difference. I mean, those Red Sox and Angels tickets are some pricey tickets in and of themselves, but they seem like pocket change tickets compared to the seats at the "new" Yankee Stadium.
This week in fact, Hank Steinbrenner needed to lower the prices of those same seats so the stadium would appear more full in television broadcasts. That would've NEVER happened in the old Yankee Stadium, even if we are in the worst economic depression in years. It just wouldn't have happened.
On the field, the old Yankee Stadium wasn't exactly AT&T Park or Petco Park, but it wasn't necessarily Coors Field either. Now, it's a mix of Coors Field and Little League Volunteer Stadium (where the Little League World Series is played). Put it this way, if the new Yankee Stadium had hosted the 2008 Home Run Derby, we'd still be watching Josh Hamilton hit jacks into the New York City skyline. If we're going to put an asterisk next to all the questionable stats accumulated during the Steroid Era, we're going to need to put an asterisk next to all stats accumulated in the "new" Yankee Stadium.
I mean, the measurements to Right Field and Left Field are 314' and 318' respectively!!! The aforementioned Little League Volunteer Stadium's measurements are 225' to both fields - 12 and 13 year olds play on that field!!!
So what can we do to fix this monstrosity known as the "new" Yankee Stadium? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
The diehard Yankees fans have been priced out by corporate sponsors and CEOs which has simultaneously sucked all the life out of the venue. Will we ever see another 96', 98', 99' or 2000 World Series-like atmosphere in the "new" Yankee Stadium, I doubt it.
Sure, the park will feature millions of high-scoring, mildly entertaining, home-run derby like games, (shoot, in two weeks the park has already seen a 22-4 shellacking by the Indians and a 11-0 victory over the Tigers) but will we be talking about the mystique of the "new" Yankee Stadium years from now like we do for The House That Ruth Built?
I say no, and that's the real monstrosity.
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