Old New Yankee Stadium

I should be commenting on how the Bush Administration has gone socialist for the banking industry. Can anybody not remember how these same folks kept yapping about NEVER INTERFERE WITH THE MARKET! Wow, talk about bailing out Bear Stearns, Freddie, AIG and the rest of the 40 thieves. It’s totally okay. The real strategy however is a continuation of Rove. If you want to make sure there is no money for any of our social programs, like Universal Health Insurance, create the biggest debt in the country’s history. Then we ain’t got money for anything. Oh this stuff is getting boring. Let me write about the old Yankee Stadium.

As old Yankee Stadium goes to the wreckers’ ball, I am reminded of growing up in the Bronx and thinking of the Stadium as just another ballpark to play in. I grew up in the northeast part of the Bronx next to the Zoo. My family’s constant attendance at the Zoo had a great influence on how I think about the human condition. My Papa never ceased in pointing out the similarities between us and our distant forbearers in the monkey house. The major activity of the Baboons, Chimpanzees and Orangutangs was to compete for being in charge. We haven’t made much progress on that score.

Because the Bronx was a working class community, we were mostly Giant fans. But the Harlem River was a barrier between us and our favorite team. The problem was that we could make it over to Yankee Stadium on our bicycles, but getting to the Polo Grounds, where the Giants played, would put us in “strange territory.” That included more black people than we were used to seeing. They were strangers to us, therefor to be avoided. That left us with the Yankees.

There was no such thing as night games back then. All games were in the afternoon sun. That created a very different atmosphere, more like a picnic in the ballpark. After school we would get on our bicycles and ride over to Yankee Stadium, drop our bikes by the right field bleacher doors, and start banging on the doors. Sometimes it took a little while but eventually the doors would open. Standing there was our friend Babe Ruth saying, “Now get in there in a hurry and behave yourselves or I’ll throw you all out the same way you came in.” It was somewhere around the 7th inning and we’d run into the bleacher seats, put our feet up on the rail, and puff ourselves up like we were the “Kings of the Stadium.” We loved the Babe for being our pal and so we had to love his team as well, even though our true friends were across the river in that “foreign land.”

Now here comes the new stadium in Macombs Dam Park. That’s where we used to take part in the P.S.A.L. games (Public School Athletic League). I ran in the 100 yard dash, the 220 relay, the Shot Put and the broad jump. That Park is now gone.

The new Yankee Stadium is reflective of the era in which we are now living. It is the time of “The Dude.” It is for the new masters of the universe who are going to pay in the thousands for golden boxes, fancy martinis, special entertainment areas that will cost a mere few thousand to rent for a game. The whole orientation of the new Yankee Stadium is the antipathy of how Babe Ruth saw a bunch of working class kids who could not afford even the .25 or .50 cents to come in the front gate, and whose grown-ups drank beer and ate hot dogs.

I had the rare opportunity of meeting Lou Geherig on a number of occasions. I was 18 working at the Packard Service Station on Fordham Road in the Bronx. Geherig owned a 12 cylinder Packard Roadster and periodically I would get to service it. He always had some baseballs with him and would toss them to guys working in the garage. He gave me one. Stupid me, I gave it to a far more ardent fan than I ever was. (At the time I was an ardent fan of the U.A.W. and was subsequently fired for trying to organize the place. That became case number one before the New York State Labor Board. I lost the case and my job.)

How about the $1.4 billion cost of the new playground? You guessed it. That will be born by the taxpayers of New York. The very people who won’t be able to afford the $29 to park the car. Season tickets, forget it. The whole place is designed for the new rich. They are always the worst because they can’t stop letting the world know, “look at me with my Rolex watch, my Lamborgini, or Bentley. Ain’t I great.” What a far cry from what that place used to be. Babe, Lou, and Hank, the kids in the Bronx are sure gonna miss you guys and the old ballpark.

Thanks Kate. N.H.W.Y.