YFSF

Uno Memento

As noted on this site yesterday, both players and fans are itching to get their sticky fingers on a piece of good old Yankee Stadium before it comes down for good. Memories! Moose wants to buy the flagpole. Damon wants the foul poles. Those orders have been getting a good deal of play in the media. Thanks to an anonymous source in the Yankee front office, YFSF has learned about some other requests:

-Carl Pavano: First-Aid kit
-A-Rod: Clubhouse mirror
-Paul O'Neill: Dugout water cooler
-Willie Randolph: A job
-David Wells: Babe Ruth monument
-Reggie Jackson: Reggie Jackson plaque
-Derek Jeter: The sound of Bob Sheppard's voice
-John Sterling: The sound of his own voice
-Rudy Giuliani: Ronan Tynan

So Long Old Friend: Yankee Stadium, 1923-2008

Every member of this organization, past and present, has been calling this place home for 85 years, There’s a lot of tradition, a lot of history and a lot of memories. Now the great thing about memories is you’re able to pass it along from generation to generation. Although things are going to change next year. We’re going to move across the street. There are a few things that New York Yankees that never change. That’s pride, tradition and most of all we have the greatest fans in the world. We want you to take the memories from this stadium, add them to the new memories that come at the new Yankee Stadium and continue to pass them along from generation to generation. So on behalf of the entire organization, we want to take this moment to salute you, the greatest fans in the world.—Derek Jeter

A Night in the Bronx

As we mentioned in an earlier thread, last night we were treated to the pleasure (never thought I'd write this, but hey, 12-6 loss perks one up, right?) of a night in Yankee Stadium. It is likely to be our last trip to the fabled park, and it was a lovely night for baseball.  Our host, longstanding possessor of some of the best seats in the house, was generous to allow an enemy on such territory, and for that we are thankful.  A few more pics after the jump.

These Dogs Bite

Last month, the Yanks announced they would place a Hard Rock Cafe out in the right field stands of the new Yankee Stadium. It seems a sad fit for the park: crappy food served up to tourists in a kitchy memorabilia-laden atmosphere. There are also plans for a steak house in the new park, but from what I hear from industry insiders, the Yanks are asking for such exorbitant fees that no local restaurant is willing to take the lease. (So you can pretty much forget about Peter Luger at Yankee Stadium.) In their efforts to wring every last dollar out of the new park, it looks like the Yanks will turn it into a bland corporate playground. The Mets, meanwhile, are doing a good deal better. In today's NYT, we learn that they've teamed up with Danny Meyer, NY's pre-eminent restauranteur, and a man capable of producing winner's both at the luxury and the populist ends of the dining spectrum. It's tempting, for this baseball purist, to dismiss all of this stadium dining talk—I go to the game for the game, not to eat, dammit!—but its naive to look at these new parks as anything but "entertainment venues," in the broadest sense. The danger that comes along with providing "entertainment," is that when the entertainment isn't good, there's not much reason for anyone to show up. How loyal does a fan need to be, when his seat price jumps up 40 percent, a lousy burger costs $19.95, and the play on the field doesn't improve?

Rooting For Laundry

The New York Post reports that a contractor working on new Yankee Stadium buried a Red Sox t-shirt in the concrete beneath what will eventually be the visiting team's locker room. The thought was that this piece of poly-cotton blend will have some sort of hexing effect on the Yankees once they begin play in their new park in the 2009 season. I don't get it, but it's a funny gesture, if nothing else. Unfortunately, Ben Affleck was not wearing the shirt at the time.

Update: Pete sez it's a hoax

Patched Up

While we're on the subject of Yankee Stadiums, let it be noted that the Yanks have released the handsome sleeve patch (above) they will be wearing on their uniforms to comemorate the old ballpark's last year. It's an interesting design, inasumuch as it foregoes the two signature visual elements of the stadium—the famed ballustrade and the pinched horsehoe shape of the park as seen from above—in favor of the largely unremarkable concrete facade. As a fan of the architectural quotidian, I have to say I think this is a great decision that pays off quite elegantly. Incidentally, the team will also wear a sleeve patch on the opposite arm with the pinstriped All-Star Game logo.

The Banality of The Evil Empire

The Yankees have posted some new digital renderings of their under-construction stadium. Above is the "Club Suite Lounge," which looks like something from the Albert Speer School of Stadium Design, only a bit shlockier. For the most part, the spaces are comfortably banal in a corporate way; if not for the logos and the baseball imagery, you might be in a new airport. A ticket to one of these places will cost you about as much as an international flight, so it's about appropriate.

A Void in Baltimore

The final episode of The Wire aired last night; I'm a season behind, but the attendant publicity has left me a bit nostalgic for Baltimore, where the show is set and where I spent my college years. The Wire is about many things, but its central theme is the tragic deterioration and abandonment of inner-city Baltimore (and by extension, inner-city America). In one of those extra features you get on DVD, Wire creator David Simon mentions that Baltimore "falls down beautifully." From street level, the burned-out and boarded-up rowhouses do have a perverse, Ozymandian poetry to them.

From the air, the picture isn't quite so romantic. The satelite image above shows the site that was once home to Memorial Stadium. An entire neighborhood is oriented in a horsehoe around it. But there's practically nothing on the site now. It's a void. The last remnant of Memorial Stadium came down in 2002. That was a concrete wall dedicated to local soldiers who gave their lives in the First and Second World Wars. It read, "Time will not dim the glory of their deeds."

The Orioles moved into Camden Yards in 1994. You'd think that, when the city agreed to build a new home for the team, there would have been a plan for the old site. But that's not how the development game works. A rising tide doesn't necessarily lift all boats. The money was downtown, and that's where it stayed.

I remember sitting in my freshman dorm room, listening to Jon Miller call O's games from the old stadium. The team dropped 21 straight that year, 1988. As a sophmore, I moved into a classic Baltimore rowhouse on Guilford Avenue with a few friends. (I've marked it with a blue pin on the image above; the campus of Johns Hopkins, where I went to school, is on the left.) We got over to see the Birds kick it around a few times every year back then. It was an easy walk, just a few blocks east down 33rd street and you were right in front of the place. Inside, you could be sure that Cal Ripken would be in the lineup, and Eddie Murray, too. It was a lunch pale type of ballpark, which seemed fitting for the town and the club. The new place is infinitely nicer, but I will always have affection for the old. It's upsetting to see how little value the city has placed on that history, that site, and the people who live there.

Based on my intermittent visits, the past decade hasn't been especially kind to the area around the old stadium. Due to a shortage of housing on the Hopkins campus, in my day most students rented places in Charles Village, the neighborhood surrounding the school. The ghetto was just on the other side of Guilford. After my graduation, the school decided to build more housing. (It was suffering in college ranking guides because "percentage of students who live in university housing" is one of the criteria used to evaluate schools, even if it has zero bearing on academics or even student life.) With all of the new housing, students moved out of Charles Village, and the result was increased segregation between the school and the city, a drop in property values, and the encroachment of the ghetto. (Yes, this seems like a Wire storyline.) A city is a fragile ecosystem. It's easy to disturb, and it's hard to fix.

This is always my favorite time of year in Baltimore. Early spring. It's not long before the cherry trees blossom. All is promise for the Hopkins lacrosse team (they're defending national champs this year). It's going to be a tough year for the O's, but it looks like they may finally be taking steps to build for the future. It's a new day. I hear a new senior center is coming to the old Memorial Stadium site. And maybe the Preakness will be moving to Pigtown. You never know. In Baltimore, hope springs eternal.

Unsolved Mystery

Did Yaz hit the facade?

Red Sox Fan From Pinstriped Territory wants to know.

A couple sources say Carl Yastrzemski  slammed a home run on June 19, 1977 -- the final game of the infamous three-game series against the Yankees in which Reggie Jackson and Billy Martin fought on national TV -- so far that it hit Fenway Park's right-field facade, where now sits Yaz's own retired number (among others). But the game stories of the time don't seem to mention what surely would be a trajectory worth noting.

Famously, no one has ever hit a ball out of Fenway to right field. And, like Jere says in his post, wouldn't a facade blast -- by Yaz no less -- be remembered similarly to Ted Williams' red-seat bomb or Mantle's own facade dinger?

If it did happen, and it's not so remembered, shouldn't it be?

[EDITOR'S NOTE:  Red Sox VP Emeritus and Club Historian Dick Bresciani graciously answered our email with the following note, confirming that Yaz did, in fact, hit the facade.  Mystery solved!

"that is the correct date for Yaz but the Reggie – Martin incident happened the day before during the Sat. NBC game.  Yaz hit it off Dick Tidrow and it is the only ball ever to hit the façade in RF at Fenway.  I have never seen anyone come close.  If a HR is hit into the RF stands 10 or more rows it appears to be quite a blast.  Imagine Yaz’ ball towering high enough to hit the façade!"]

Hot Bod Wins Nods for the Pods

A story worth noting here in NY, where a new Yankee Stadium is rising despite widespread local protest and nearly unanimous scorn among design critics: San Diego's Petco Park, designed by architect Antoine Predock, has been awarded a Citation for Excellence by Architectural Record and Business Week magazines.