Letter to the Editor: Another Yankees stadium bites the dust

Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, Florida)
February 28, 2010 Sunday

Dear Editor,

One recent morning while eating breakfast at Sadie's Grill in Pompano Beach, on the wall to my left was an 8x10 photo of Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris taken at the Fort Lauderdale Stadium, which is currently and probably will always now be void of Major League Baseball.

For years, I had a box on the third-base side (during the Yankee years). I'm from Columbus via the Bronx. This current situation is mind-boggling. Don't local officials care? It's a shame and a crime that this great tradition is gone. Remember when the Yankee Clipper Hotel was built? Yankee logos everywhere. Nights at Pompano Raceway, when Yankee greats showed up along with the other 5,000 fans. The track will be the next to go, that's for sure. Only the casino, with its unfair returns, will be left.

Even when Baltimore used the stadium for spring training, the ticket lines were long, the crowds were great. The game was the American pastime in all its spring splendor. The good things are going or gone, replaced by drive-by shootings, gang violence, beatings of the elderly, kids sitting on their rumps in front of their games or computers hour after hour. I'm going for a walk.

Dave Stolz
Columbus, Ohio