Like rooting for U.S. Steel

My love of baseball goes back to the 1968 World Series – Tigers over Cardinals in seven – when my mom introduced me to her favorite sport. Thus began a lifelong love affair with the game. Watching baseball together, especially the World Series, became a hallowed tradition that my mom and I enjoyed until I left home for college.

I settled on the Yankees as “my team” because of the acquisition in 1976 of my favorite player at the time, Jim “Catfish” Hunter. They made it to the World Series that year, won it all in ’77 and ’78, and my affection for the Bronx Bombers was set in concrete. Reading the reams of history and lore surrounding the Yankees has only strengthened my love of the team, and by association, the sport of baseball.

This season, though, I must admit that my allegiance to the New York Yankees has been strained a bit. Not because of the fact that the team has missed the playoffs for the first time since 1995. I lived through the dark years of 1981-1994, 14 seasons of futility where there was no October baseball in the Bronx. My experience as a Yankees fan has always had its down side as well as the championships. So I’ve enjoyed this current run of success with the knowledge that, “this too shall pass.”

No, my allegiance isn’t because they weren’t a very good team this year. It’s because that to some, the Yankees have become a symbol of wretched excess, and by extension, a symbol of American hubris and greed.

Let’s not kid around; the Yankees have always been about the Benjamins. Major League Baseball is a business, first and foremost, and the most successful sports business of them all is the Yankees. It’s always been that way. (Back in the late 50’s, it was said that “Rooting for the Yankees was like rooting for U.S. Steel.”) So ever since I was old enough to understand the economic side of the game, I’ve never been under the illusion that anyone associated with the Yankees was in it purely for the love of the game.

The love of the game is where the fans come in. Yankee followers adore their team like no other fans. (Challenge me on that statement at your own peril.) We acolytes that worship at the Cathedral in The Bronx have a love and a passion for the Yankees that is unrivaled. The players will tell you – regardless of what team they play for – that the experience of playing in Yankee Stadium is unlike that of any other ballpark. (Although this year, many of the Yankees looked as if they could care less about the game.)

Or, it was. The lights of Yankee Stadium have been turned out forever after last night's 7-3 win over the Orioles. Looming beyond the left field wall is the New Yankee Stadium (thank god they didn’t sell the naming rights), the ultimate symbol of greed. A veritable cash printing machine.

To be fair, the old Stadium was trashed with the mid-seventies renovation. They removed the grandstand roof, and with it, the iconic copper frieze that faced it. A plastic reproduction was installed along the top of the outfield wall, but so what? The main entrance behind home plate was befouled with a spiral ramp and the Yankees team store. The field was lowered, the infamous 480 foot Death Valley in left center was brought in, the 295 foot short porch in right was pulled out to 315 feet, and the monuments of Miller Huggins, Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig were pulled off the field of play and installed in Monument Park beyond the left field wall. Also, in a telling sign of how much larger American backsides have become, wider seats were installed, reducing the seating capacity from 72,000 to 56,000. So much was changed that it no longer qualified to be put on the National Register of Historic Places.

The new Stadium will reintroduce many of the features of the original that were lost in the renovation. The frieze is returned to the roof. The exterior is a carbon copy of the original. The dugouts are larger, the clubhouse is grander and more comfortable, the seating has more legroom and cupholders and there are many, many more bathrooms. No more missing a half inning to recycle your $10 Budweiser.

The new Stadium has 57 luxury suites, selling at $265,000 to $350,000 for ONE season! Oh, and 3,000 fewer seats. And, all those luxury boxes push the third deck higher and steeper than the old stadium, so the seats are further from the field. So the common fan gets screwed for the purpose of increasing corporate revenue.

Which leads me to my main point. The Yankees care not one whit about the common fan. They care first and foremost about making as much money as is (in)humanly possible. That means putting big names – Jason Giambi, Roger Clemens, Randy Johnson and the biggest of them all, Alex Rodriguez – on the field in order to attract fans. 4 million of ‘em, in fact.

The big names haven’t led to a championship in 7 years now. But the corporate dollars keep rolling in because, my gosh, just look at all those great players on one field! All those Wall Street fat cats sitting in the seats right next to the dugout – seats I’d relinquish a body part or two to sit in – show up in the third inning, leave in the seventh to beat the traffic, sipping Chardonnay and munching on fancy cheeses and caviar. They could care less about baseball, or the Yankees for that matter. It’s all about impressing clients and being seen with the right people. Those people are not Yankee fans. Yet it is they for whom the new Yankee Stadium is built.

Derek Jeter – bless him – got it right in his post-game address to the fans:

“Although things are going to change next year. We’re going to move across the street. There are a few things (about) the New York Yankees that never change. That’s pride, tradition and most of all we have the greatest fans in the world.

We want you to take the memories from this stadium, add them to the new memories that come at the new Yankee Stadium and continue to pass them along from generation to generation. So on behalf of the entire organization, we want to take this moment to salute you, the greatest fans in the world.”

Jeets wasn’t talking to Rudy Giuliani or some other poser Yankees fan. He was talking to Bald Vinny and the rest of the Bleacher Creatures. He was talking to the crazy guy who beats a frying pan with a spoon at practically every home game. He was talking to the family from Paramus who saves all year to afford one trip to the Stadium. And, I’d like to think he was talking to me. He knew they were getting the short end of the deal. Jeter wasn’t especially happy about the move, either.

Real Yankee fans love the Yankees not because of their $200 million payroll, but in spite of it. We didn’t want a new Stadium, the bandwagon poser fans did. The ones who started showing up at the Stadium in 1997, after they were back on top. The rest of us loved the aura and the mystique of the old Stadium. So many memories were made there and so much history written. The way the old barn would vibrate when the strains of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” would accompany Rivera as he sprinted across the outfield grass to finish driving a stake into the hearts of the opposition. All of the late-inning heroics that were the hallmark of those Yankee teams. The ghosts of Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Mantle, Munson and others that lived there. All of it will be gone. And the game of baseball will be worse for the loss.

So I’m taking a few days to mourn a bit. Sure, it’s just a building. And a building to play a game in at that. But something is being taken away from us that we’ll never get back. And it’s being done so that others can make a few more bucks. But in the off-season, I’ll be monitoring the Yankees’ every move and counting the days until April 16 when the first pitch is thrown in the new Yankee Stadium. I’m in a dysfunctional relationship with the Yankees, but there’s no way I could ever root for another team. When you sign up to be a Yankee fan, it's for life.