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Baseball

The New Yankee Stadium: Championship Shell, No Creamy Nougat Center

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yankeestadium.jpgI recently watched House of Steinbrenner, one of ESPN’s 30 for 30 documentaries directed by Barbara Kopple. It wasn’t remotely as powerful as Kopple’s Harlan County U.S.A., which is a bit of an unfair comparison, since the latter is a chronicle of a bloody clash between Kentucky mine workers wanting to unionize and Big Coal’s hired thugs, and one of the most gut-wrenching docs you’ll ever see. And yet, I was surprised by how affected I was by House of Steinbrenner.* Early in the film, you see fans walking around Yankee Stadium during its last game, knowing this will be their last trip there, tears in their eyes. I was moved by it, and not just in an empathic way. I was surprised by how much of Yankee Stadium, as seen in the movie, was familiar to me.

* I was also baffled by why Kopple seemed to be given a hard time by the Yankees brass in the film, particularly Hal Steinbrenner, even though her movie was basically a love letter to the team and the stadium. Perhaps because, despite being a devoted Yankees fan, she dared to admit that Hal’s dad drove the team into a ditch in the 80s.

I don’t talk about it too much, but my mom became a Jehovah’s Witness when I was a kid. Aside from making you go to “Kingdom Hall” three times a week, there are also two small, local conventions a year that take up a weekend, and another ginormous convention once a year. For many years, this ginormous convention was held at Yankee Stadium. In the summer. This stems from the Biblical precept that being even slightly comfortable is sinful.

Somehow, we always managed to snag seats in the shady mezzanine. Pity the poor folks stuck with upper deck seats for three days of biblical reenactments and two-hour speeches on what the prophet Ezekiel means for us today. At the time, my favorite book was The Sporting News’ Take Me Out to the Ballpark, a collection of the history of various stadiums past and present, each one preceded by a detailed illustration of the park and its notable heroes. So rather than take notes on the sermons, as I was supposed to do, I’d sketch the outfield wall of Yankee Stadium. All of its ads for French’s Mustard and Utz potato chips, the scoreboard, and even the 4 train as it zipped past the gap between the right field stands and the bleachers.

At lunchtime, we’d wade through the sweltering stadium corridors to get chicken sandwiches and juice, the food tables smashed against shuttered concession stands and dusty ads for un-Christ-like products like Budweiser and the New York Lottery. Then we’d stroll the local streets, browse through the sports shops on 161st Street (a real treat for a budding baseball nerd), and get some ice from one of the Bronx’s ubiquitous Coco Helado carts.

So as I watched House of Steinbrenner, and saw fans filing through the royal blue hallways, a melancholy feeling washed over me. Seeing the goopy, pitted paint, those cramped, low-ceilinged corridors behind the stands, those slatted metal windows, and knowing they weren’t there anymore–the absence really hit me.

I saw this just before visiting the new Yankee Stadium. I went there expecting to have one of two reactions: either to be turned off by its ostentation and the team’s huge monuments to themselves, or to be grudgingly impressed. I didn’t expect the reaction I wound up having, which was basically: Oh, this again?
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Decrees for My All Encompassing Dictatorship

Decrees for My All-Encompassing Dictatorship: No More Waves

I attended my first Real Game at CitiField this weekend, after many unofficial sojourns a few weeks ago. It was hands-down the most enjoyable game I’ve been to in a long time. A textbook pitcher’s duel. Johan Santana not allowing a runner to get as far as second base. A Mets run scoring on a series of unfortunate events (for the Brewers). A shutdown bullpen actually shutting things down, including a game-ending strike-em-out-throw-em-out DP.

However, one thing must always emerge to sully a wonderful experience. In this case, it was The Wave.

I suppose there’s a time and a place for The Wave, but most of them remain in 1987. In a joyous, blowout game, The Wave wouldn’t bother me. However, some numbnuts decided to start up a stadium-wide wave in the 8th inning, with the score 1-0, one out, and JJ Putz on the mound. It was like I had an entire stadium of 12-year-olds with their hands in my face, saying “Does this bug you? Does this bug you? I’m not touching you! Does this bug you?”

I hate to pull out the I Pay Good Money Card, but here it is: I pay good money to go to baseball games. I do so because I like to watch guys like Putz (Closer 1-B to K-Rod’s Closer 1-A) mow down the opposition and preserve the slimmest of leads. I don’t go to baseball games to play Simon Says with 40,000 overgrown kindergarteners.

The Wave is the sports equivalent of heckling the band at a concert. You are trying to take the focus of the crowd away from what the crowd is there for, and place it squarely on yourself. If you really wanted to get thousands of eyes on you at once, you shoulda stuck with the guitar or spent some more time in the batting cage. Wow, you made other people stand up! Congratu-fucking-lations! Maybe you can win the World Championships of Mother May I!

Under my Benevolent Dictatorship, Wave Promoters shall be severely fined. If they start a Wave during a critical moment in a close game, like someone did on Sunday, they shall be horsewhipped in public. They shall also be banned from attending any sporting event for one year, and sent to Fan Reeducation Camp, where they learn how to conduct themselves at a public sporting event so as not to ruin the enjoyment of others. They shall also be given extensive courses in reading a scoreboard so they can tell the difference between a close score and a non-close score.

I have spoken.

Baseball, Pointless Nostalgia

Shea It’s Still So

A tweet by mr_met alerted me to this post over at the No Mas Scorecard–which I should have alerted myself to much sooner, as I’m a big fan of No Mas, their t-shirts, and their general outlook on The Sporting World. No matter; I shall endeavor to make up for lost time.

No Mas, Paul Lukas (Uniwatch guru), and The Reverend Vince Anderson have teamed to campaign the Mets to rename their new ballpark after their old one. Or, more importantly, to name it after the man without whom the Mets wouldn’t exist: Bill Shea.

I am totally on board with this movement. For one thing, it would remove the association with corporate cockfucks Citibank, which will continue to dog the team until they change the ballpark’s name. For another, it acknowledges that yes, the Mets do indeed have some history they should be proud of and celebrate.

I have very few complaints about CitiField as a place to watch a ballgame–and as noted elswhere, I think a lot of the criticism of the place is nitpicky and way out of line–but the Wilpons’ lack of acknowledgment of this history within it really bugs me. Supposedly, they’re working on some sort of Mets Museum, but quite tellingly, they didn’t make any formal announcements about it until fan outcry about the lack of Mets material in the stadium.

callitshea.jpgI get the impression that, in the absence of such an outcry, management would be totally happy with the current memorabilia-free state, which is a real shame. Go to any new ballpark, and it has some kind of feature on either the team, or the town, or both. The Nationals have been in DC all of 5 seasons and their new stadium has such a display. If they can do it, the Mets sure as hell can.

The Calling It Shea Project’s platform is a little murky, but part of it involves the sale of the t-shirt pictured here. Ten percent of the proceeds go to Food Bank NYC. Your dough could go to far worse places, so if you think Shea should be celebrated for his efforts in perpetuity, express it in t-shirt form.