Yankee Stadium is a Dump. There. I Said It.

Don’t freak out, Yankees fans. For one thing, I am not taking anything away from all of the self-proclaimed great Red Sox games that have taken place in Yankee Stadium. I’m sure the House that Ruth Built was a marvel when it was first built. I’m sure it’s an incredibly intimidating place to play, particularly during the postseason. I’m sure that Yankees fans, as a whole, have a very high baseball I.Q. But–and I’m addressing this in particular to anyone who thinks like the geocentric idiot Yankee fan I met during my trip to Cooperstown–saying the place is better than a complete dump at this point is completely ridiculous. I didn’t have as much time as I would have liked to see the sites in and around Yankee Stadium, but if you’re interested, here are my brief impressions.

The stadium is, of course, located in the Bronx. I was actually expecting worse from the Bronx. Other than a pretty terrifying couple-block walk from some train to the 4 train, the Bronx wasn’t too bad. Granted, it was a day game. On a Thursday. And I had my eyes closed the whole time. And I was rolling along in a bulletproof hamster ball. But the three blocks of the Bronx I saw didn’t look that bad.

The facade of the stadium, despite the sweeping postseason camera shots and pictures taken from intimidating perspectives, really isn’t that special. To be honest, it looked to me like a mall. There’s parking adjacent to one side, with the new Yankee Stadium on the flip side. The 4 runs right along a third side with some (Little League?) park opposite it.

We went to some bar where Yankees fans and Red Sox fans somehow managed to coexist. After all the ESoxPNNY coverage of the two teams’ rivalry, I expected to find two groups of fans growling and biting each other over a steak bone in the middle of the room. But they were civil.

The bar was–well–a bar. Since it was a block away from Yankee Stadium, there was a good deal of great memorabilia on the walls. For the same reason, it was expensive as shit. But they had Yuengling. I don’t know how you East Coasters don’t get drunk out of your minds every day before work in a place where Yuengling is the “cheap” beer. That is a fine, fine beer, and if you haven’t told it you love it yet today, take a moment to do so. We powered a couple of beers, though, and headed to the stadium early to try to get into Monument Park.

My first impression of the interior of the stadium was, “Man, is it dark in here.” My second impression of the stadium was, “Man, is it tiny in here.” My third impression of the stadium was, “Man, does it feel like a Vegas casino in here.” Would it kill them to let some fresh air and sunlight in there? I was reading to bust out my d16 and get busy with some cave trolls (Author’s Note: I have neither a d16 nor any real desire to get busy with a cave troll.) It’s a very claustrophobic, very dark, very dank, and not particularly clean place, and we were among the first people through the gates. I understand that it’s a very old park, but so is Wrigley Field, and I’ve never wanted to use a rock hammer to dig a tunnel behind my Rita Hayworth/Racquel Welch poster at Wrigley. I guess I’m just institutionalized.

We made our way over to try to see Monument Park, and the line to see it had already been closed, only seven minutes after the gates opened. Oops.

Anyhow, we trekked our way over to the left field bleachers to find our seats. I don’t know which mathematician came up with the seating assignments in Yankee Stadium, but I think he should be made to sniff Larry Rothschild’s chode again and again. There was a series of letters and numbers on my ticket which I first assumed was an algebra equation. In the section in which we sat, there were apparently “boxes” which consisted of two rows with no discernible dividers between them. Moreover, the seats and rows are so worn out, we couldn’t even read the numbers and letters that we needed to solve the equation. And we weren’t just stupid. We saw, and spoke with, a couple of other people who were totally baffled by the seating system. We would have tried to hang back in the walkway behind the seats, but let’s just say the “walk” way was more of a “turn sideways and sidle past the people walking before you” way. It was cramped, to say the least.

Then, we started ordering beers. I will hold my complaints about the cost of the beer at Wrigley until they raise it significantly. At Yankee Stadium, it was $9.50 a beer. The beers were big, but if I had a guess, I’d say they were no bigger than 18 ounces. How big are the ones at Wrigley? 16? Come on.

I was not particularly impressed by the interior of the stadium, either. Granted, it was a day game, but the grass looked washed out, the blue seats were obnoxious, and Monument Park was what you’d expect it to be. We could see down into Monument Park from our seats, and it looked like a bunch of plaques on tombstones. Nifty feature, but it’ll be in the next park, too, so no loss there.

The facade was the one cool-looking feature I enjoyed seeing. I can understand why the All-Star Game patches looked like they did.





They couldn’t very well go with their initial plan.





The game started, and the crowd around me was knowledgeable, but not very enthusiastic. I understand that the Yankees suck this year, but because of that fact, this was the last game that the Red Sox were going to be played in Yankee Stadium ever. The crowd was deader than it was at Wrigley last night.

Even the much-anticipated “roll call,” in which the right field bleacher fans shout out each of the Yankee players’ names until they acknowledge the cheer, was sort of disappointing. I thought I’d hear the thunderous roar of thousands of fans shouting out the team’s starting lineup, with a corresponding bow from each player. I could hear the chants, barely, and it was over practically before I realized it had begun. By way of acknowledgment, the players barely flipped their gloves at the fans. Neat?

I had a pretzel and a hot dog, and it was ballpark food. It was perfectly fine for a ballpark, and it wasn’t as absurdly priced as the beer.

The Yankees were down 2-0 pretty much the entire game, and it was hot as hell in the sun, so the crowd may have been justified in being lethargic. But they were honestly pin-drop quiet until Jason Giambi tied the game with a two-run bomb (and I stress BOMB) in the seventh inning. Ronan Tynan sang God Bless America, which was pretty neat, even though I didn’t realize it was Ronan Tynan until my buddy told me so after the game.

The crowd was so out of it, I didn’t even realize that it was the ninth inning when they had runners in scoring position with Giambi up again and a chance to win it. That’s right. I didn’t know who was singing, and I didn’t know what inning it was. It was a Red Sox-Yankees game. What the hell do I care?

Anyhow, Giambi got a base hit and won it 3-2. Frank Sinatra sang New York, New York, and the crowd went home happy. Possibly because they were rehabilitated, and were finally going to break out and cross the border into Zihuatanejo to live out the rest of their days running a little hotel on the beach and fixing up an old boat. I sure hope the Pacific is as blue as it is in their dreams.

I hope.

Anyhow, Yankee Stadium was a dump. Be happy, Yankee fans, that you’re getting a new stadium.

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