Ring in the New, Tear Down the Old: Yankee Stadium

Sports fans are a notoriously sentimental and superstitious lot, baseball fans not least among them. And so the imminent destruction of Yankee Stadium is a very touchy subject. Yes, destruction. I’m being blunt because sentiment and superstition are always accompanied by denial. If you go to the Parks Dept. website: http://www.nycgovparks.org/sub_your_park/nyy_stadium/html/nyy_redevelopment.html
you will see that Old Yankee Stadium, or as I will soon clarify, Yankee Stadium will begin to be demolished as soon as the baseball season ends. The exact date depends on exactly how deep into November the Yankee season goes. If the Yankees go all the way, the wrecking balls will probably start crashing into the Stadium even as the Yankees are conducted down the canyon of heroes on lower Broadway. Thoughts of the death of Yankee stadium will be drowned out only momentarily by the joyous shrieks of delirious fans celebrating Worlds Championship No. 27.

They will be tearing down not OLD Yankee Stadium, but Yankee Stadium. That will be gone forever. That will be devastating. Yes gone forever because the place where all that greatness unfolded, the ground were august Popes and great boxers and splendid ballplayers prayed, punched, batted, jumped, ran, and won, will be gone. No, that trapezoid of holy ground will not be ripped eternally from the space-time continuum. It will still be the land south of 161st street. The context that defined it and the stone, steel and concrete that delineated it will be gone. The Yankees will be playing elsewhere and the structure will be carted away, melted down for scrap and dumped into a landfill, maybe to stabilize the endzone in the former swampland that is to be the new Giants & Jets stadium in New Jersey. I wonder if Jimmy Hoffa was a Yankee fan.

There is something we can do mitigate the worst of the pain and sadness, but that later. Now I want to suggest that the grieving process all Yankee fans will go through will be facilitated by a piece of honesty. It is a great tribute to the intelligence and I think the decency of the Yankee ownership that the new stadium’s name will not be sold to a corporation. Thank God it won’t be Yankee Stadium at Con Edison field or something equally atrocious. Thank God Cheney is not a Yankee (don’t laugh too hard, especially my Greek and Cypriot friends: Evil Empire types abound in Yankeeland: Henry Kissinger is a well-know devotee. So imagine if Cheney, the man known for getting his ways against all reason would have imposed Halliburton Field on the people of the Bronx and Yankeedom. Yes, there will be sections of the new place sold (but lets not say “sold out” the Yankees are a capitalist enterprise after all , so lets not be hypocrites) to various corporations. The left side of the bleachers might be “Appleland” with a Yankee version of the Mets apple poised on a giant I-pod. The right field bleachers might be WAMUland. The Great Hall, the vast concourse on the first base side of the stadium might be “The Great Hall of Merrill Lynch”. If Hideki Matsui is still on the team, he might be the featured Yankee in Hondaville or ToyotaTown. You get the idea.

But the name of the place cannot be Yankee Stadium, because Yankee Stadium will be gone. The renderings of the new stadium show “Yankee Stadium” in huge letters placed atop the upper deck behind home plate. It’s nice. They will probably be lit up and visible for miles. But honesty is a vital part of the grieving process. Calling the new place Yankee Stadium will not bring back the real Yankee Stadium. Yankee fans must call upon, petition and push the Yankees ownership, meaning Hank and Hal, to call it “New Yankee Stadium”.

“New” is a wonderful word. It is the essence of our world and our time, the modern world. The modern is different from the revered ancient and – classical. The modern is vital because it is alive and thriving and evolving. It is us, and the core of the modern is “the new”.

“New” is a noble prefix. History abounds with honorable uses. First of all, the city of the Yankees is “New” York. I haven’t been there and I’m sure old York is a wonderful town, but what place on earth approaches New York for energy and creativity? Maybe Shanghai or Bombay will become the “New” New York, but not yet. And our town was born with a different name, but still was “New”. New Amsterdam! And numerous other famous and glorious places were named new. Constantinople was the “New Rome” the greatest city in Christendom for almost a thousand years. During those thousand years that city had its ups and downs, at times the greatest city in the whole world, at times barely holding onto first place in Christendom, but its people and leaders were resilient and filled with imagination. When it emerged from its one “dark age” after attacks by mother nature (plagues and earthquakes) Persians and then the Arabs shattered the urban fabric of the classical world, they re-invented themselves, changed from Roman Empire to Byzantine Empire, and began to build and live on a grand scale again. The word “new “ marked their resurrection and resurgence in many contexts. One large church which was one of the models for the magnificent St. Marks of Venice was called the “New Church” “Nea Ekklesia” . An audience hall in the imperial palace was the “kainourgion” “The New Hall”. St. Symeon around the year 1000, who wrote of experiences of the “light of God” and who inspired the great mystics of the West was the “New Theologian.”

That is my case for calling the new building “New Yankee Stadium”.

The “new” is not always better. Man’s natural curiosity and hyperactivity will always generate new stuff and new ways. Some will be good and move humanity forward and make the world a better place, and some will not. Do we really need cell phones? Are we sure all that extra electromagnetic radiation is not harmful? Are new mini-states better for its citizens and neighbors than the larger states that were broken up? As the states of former Yugoslavia are trying to figure out what to do with themselves, I was informed by one of my favorite professors that it was a mistake to break up the Austro-Hungarian Empire. I politely disagree—I know people who pine for the Glucksbergs but no one who mourns the Hapsburgs. But will Europe be better with an independent Kosovo? Yes, as I write and you read, the geniuses in Washington in Europe are trying to create a new Kosovo. They have a brilliant new plan to “stabilize” the Balkans by taking away from the people of Serbia their most sacred land. The Serbians seem willing to compromise on borders and access, but geniuses do not compromise.

From the sublime to the ridiculous—or vice versa. Maybe the new Yankee Stadium is not in all ways better than the old: yes more spacious (those aisles and seats were cramped even for a little guy like me). There will be more luxury boxes and gourmet food stalls and all kinds of revenue-raising enterprises and tricks to make sure my team will always be able to afford the best baseball talent. It is an upgrade, a modernization of the original Yankee Stadium, but the drawings for the place seem a bit cold and sterile. Maybe it’s the style of the renderings. Its funny, sometimes your get architectural drawings that are spectacular but the finished buildings look pathetic (or at least disappointing, like the otherwise impressive Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle in New York) and sometimes the opposite occurs: the renderings understate the warmth and elegance of the design and the actual building. We shall see.

My little detour into history and current European disputes reminds us that this is all about memory. Memory preserves that which we need to hold onto, what we must retain after the mourning is completed and the soul has healed. We must retain what promotes healing and enriches our future. Not denial but appreciation. We can retain something of that wonderful place called Yankee Stadium. When the city and Yankees first made their deal to build “New Yankee Stadium” the plan was to retain a portion of the stands of the original Yankee Stadium between third and first base. It would have been a nice touch—the high school students who use the field—whose form will be retained—could be cheered on by classmates, friends and family sitting in the actual seats of the original stadium. Some of the physical presence and structure of the old great stadium will still be there to frame their current achievements on the field of dreams.

It’s not too late for the Yankees and their fans to go back to the community leaders in the Bronx and enlist their support to return to the original plan to keep up some of the stands of the great place. I completely understand the motivation of the local residents to maximize their parkland. They WERE robbed by the Yankees and the city when the Stadium was renovated in 1976. The people of the south Bronx were promised much more than they received. Yes, New York was nearly bankrupt, but just as money was raised by philanthropists to improve Central Park, former Mayor Lindsay, who approved renovation plans and made the promises to begin with and who genuinely cared about the poor in New York, could have raised funds among his rich friends for south Bronx parks, but he is now gone.

The point is, the people remember they were cheated. But as we speak, old parks in the area are being upgraded and fantastic new parks will be built soon, some beautifully sited along the Harlem river. In the coming months, the community around Yankee Stadium will see some of these projects coming to fruition. A coalition of influential Yankee fans and politicians should approach the local leaders again to see if an agreement can be reached to preserve a little piece of Yankee Stadium as “New Yankee Stadium” rises next door. Our local geniuses may be able to craft a compromise. Maybe Mayor Bloomberg can make a modest donation. So the fans and local residents can visit and their children and grandchildren can play – at the genuine, original, beloved, Yankee Stadium.