The Eulogy

It’s over. Yes, Yogi did say, “it ain’t over ‘til it’s over,” but it’s over. The legacy of the New York Yankees is dead, and the new stadium is the final nail in the coffin. Mark my words; this franchise is not winning anything meaningful for a very long time.

I had the opportunity (and the good fortune as well) to be in attendance for the first “official” game at the new digs across East 161st Street, and I knew this place is gonna bring a lot of hardships after it was over. I’ve been in shock and denial since Thursday, so much so that I haven’t been paying attention to the weekend games. The new stadium magnificent, splendid, lavish, and every fancy adjective you can think of. Sure, it’s a little overpriced. The steak sandwiches out in left field are $15 a pop (that was worth every penny, though), and I’m still not content with half of that dough going to Jerry Jones. There was a 30-minute line at every single concession stand at any point in time during the game, and there was a 30-minute wait to get into Monument Park 15 minutes after the gates opened. And yes, the ball was flying out of the new stadium while I was watching batting practice. But these little things aren’t the point.

The new stadium trumps the old stadium in everything but two (and in my humble opinion the most important two) categories: mystique and aura. The new stadium completely lacks it. The old stadium had a distinct home field advantage to it. Just ask the late 90s Braves or Tim Wakefield in 2003. In the immortal words of a member of the It Is High…’s 10 Most Wanted list: Kevin Millar, “They always play Yankeeography in New York on the videoboard. As a visiting player, you see that they (the Yankees) get music to hit (during batting practice) and we get Yogi Berra and Mickey Mantle all the time.” This was his reason as to why the 2004 Red Sox didn’t take batting practice on the field during Games 6 and 7. This is why the Diamondbacks couldn’t buy a win here in 2001. We scored 7 runs in an inning off the Padres in Game 1 of the ’98 World Series, and little old Jeffrey Maier stole a homerun from Tony Tabasco Sauce. All this stuff is the mystique and aura of Yankee Stadium from just the past 15 years.

That mystique is now M.I.A. Sure, they still play Yankeeography during the other team’s BP, but there’s no mystique that The Babe once stood in this batters’ box. John Fogerty sang (cause it was pretty obvious he wasn’t playing his guitar) Centerfield here, but the Mick and Joltin’ Joe didn’t grace this park with their play. Don Larsen didn’t pitch a perfect game on this mound (though Danny Almonte probably did), and nobody hit three homeruns on three pitches in the World Series on this field, either. The history of Yankee Stadium that used to spook countless is now in some out-of-the-way museum on the 2nd deck in right field. Any type of home field advantage that came from a raucous 56,000+ fans is gone as well. The bleachers are practically in another zip code, and the guy sitting behind me even yelled at me for standing and clapping when there were two outs and CC had two strikes on some guy. The poor guy was obviously affected enough by Madoff to not be able to sit in the million-dollar luxury suites behind home plate.

We now have baseball’s case of “The Garden Syndrome.” For the non-basketball fans, it’s when an opposing player or team plays extra well against the Knicks because they realize they’re playing in Madison Square Garden on the biggest stage in the world. First invented by MJ and Reggie Miller, it has since been continued by LeBron and Kobe. Sure the Yankees have been susceptible to a few headstrong teams every now and again (‘04, ‘03, a couple of others that I can’t remember), but not nearly as often as the Knicks. The Knicks don’t have nearly as much history to scare opponents, but that was always the Yankees’ secret weapon. The ghosts, the championships, the hostile fans who threw batteries at Jim Rice and forced the NYPD’s riot squad onto the field in Game 6 of the ’04 ALCS are gone. They’re just distant memories.

We’re now just another team. We’ve mimicked our owner’s decline. George is still George, but he’s not the fiery shove-it-up-your-ass owner he once was. And we’re still the Yankees, we still wear the pinstripes, and our stadium is a direct reflection of our “let’s see how much money we can throw around” attitude. But this franchise is a shell of the World Series winning machine we’ve grown accustomed to since 1923. Call me pessimistic, but it's over.