New Yankee Stadium

To disagree somewhat with my dad, here is my take on the New Yankee Stadium. I agree that it will be a great place to watch a game and that they did a great job mimicking the old stadium while updating it with modern amenities, I can't help but feel that something was missing.

The fact that the Yankees can even pretend that the Stadium is not new is in a sense its great success and failure. Colonel Rupert's Yankee Stadium was a grand innovation that essentially dropped from the sky in a few short months in the winter of 1923. It was everything a stadium should be and something no other stadium was. It was huge, reflective of its city and the aspirations of the team that played there. Rupert wanted a stadium that overshadowed the polo grounds across the river and to house his larger than life star, Babe Ruth. He got such a stadium. This was a massive structure, the first baseball stadium with 3 decks, but also one with aspirations of being a modern coliseum. The Yankee Stadium of 1923 was an innovative and grand palace for baseball and the Yankees, it reflected a New York City just then becoming the center of the world.

Little needs to be said of how little of this 1923 structure actually remained after the misguided 1970's renovation, but the feeling of stepping out of the tunnels and into the stands to see the great field at Yankee Stadium was always there.

This new stadium is excellent at replicating the feeling of sitting in the old stadium. You feel like you are sitting in the same old place in many ways, until you realize that certain things are just different. Like the lack of the pennants indicating the divisional standings, the return of the frieze (often incorrectly called a façade) to the grandstand and of course the huge HD videoboard. The new stadium fixes the problems with the 1970's botch job of the old stadium, it has an exterior similar to that of the original 1923 stadium, clad in stone, it has tremendously wide concourses in most places, has improved sight lines (except for a few seats in the bleachers), and has more comfortable seating. The Yankees spared no expense in recreating a modern version of their 1923 stadium. Yet, they missed one thing, innovation. The new stadium has the feeling of an improved Yankee Stadium and no one will feel like the old stadium has been stolen from them, since there old friend is still here. This missed an opportunity to again rethink what a stadium should be. Instead they replicated their old stadium with a little Camden Yards thrown in for good measure. I guess what bothers me is that the Yankees had to copy from places like Baltimore for their new stadium and that it just does not feel like the Stadium is any different from those other parks.

A little could be said about the corporate nature of the place and the love of money that oozes from the field level "legends suites." All I think that needs to be said is that anyone who is paying $2500 a ticket for seats at Yankee Stadium should be ashamed that they could not find a more useful way to spend their money.