I stood at my seat at Yankee Stadium on Saturday afternoon and couldn't move. Standing there with friends, having just witnessed Cano's walk-off hit to win it for the Yankees in the bottom of the ninth, the moment had to be savored.
I was taking it all in. Frank Sinatra's "New York, New York" kept echoing out into the Bronx. Decorated Yankees fans proudly snapped their last photos together in the most celebrated, storied baseball stadium in the world. And my $9.50 beer wasn't quite finished yet. Since each sip was worth about 75 cents, I had to finish every last drop.
My friends and I eventually headed for the exits, and said goodbye to yet another treasured gem of both sports and American history that was about to turn off its lights and close its doors. Change (especially in regards to new sports stadiums) is often a welcomed and exciting thing. But, in my opinion, the closing and imminent demolition of Yankee Stadium is not.
My friend, Bob, put it best. What a tragedy, he said, that the "House that Ruth Built" will soon be reduced to rubble. The Roman Colosseum has stood proudly since the days of Jesus. The great Parthenon still towers over Athens since its construction in 5th century BC. And here, one of our last, great American sports arenas will be torn down after just 85 years.
Does anything endure in America? The demolition of Yankee Stadium? It's just not right. It's sad. It's the death of nostalgia. And forget even that this is the Steinbrenners' decision... what does this gesture say about our larger society?
So many of Europe's structures endure; America's structures are so often built up quickly and torn down quickly. Europeans are great at good urban planning; Americans are great at building strip malls and cookie cutter structures. Europeans are reflected in their structures, and so are we.
As Derek Jeter grabbed the microphone for one last, memorable speech before the national audience tuning into the last ever game on Sunday night, we realized this great era of throwback baseball was really, truly coming to an end. This was the same field where Lou Gehrig's words were spoken-- and still pull at our hearts for decades and decades after that "Luckiest Man" speech. This was the same field that Reggie and Chambliss and Maris and Mantle and Brosius and Boone seemingly channeled the Baseball Gods and hit dramatic, clutch home runs that brought many of the 26 championships to New York. This was the same field that saw miraculous perfect games and no-hitters by Larsen, Righetti, Wells, and Cone. This was the same field that baseball's patron saint, Babe Ruth, christened since nailing the park's first-ever home run. This was the same field occupied by three popes, hundreds of rock stars, and Mohammad Ali. This was the same field where millions of memories were made: players with players, fathers with sons, friends with friends, and Major League Baseball with a grieving nation after 9/11.
This was Yankee Stadium... the Vatican of baseball, the gem of the Bronx, a connection to glory days of our nation's history, a product of the Industrial Revolution... and simply, a place where we could all flock to for a taste of friendly competition. It has not been just a sports venue for the world's most popular sports franchise but also a treasured and revered national monument. It has been the true, authentic "Field of Dreams."
Sure, the new Yankee Stadium will certainly be a site to behold. It will be a product of new jobs created and hundreds of thousands of labor hours. It will also be a powerful symbol of the 21st century ballpark. But the magic of the true, one-and-only Yankee Stadium will cease to exist but in the recesses of our memories and history books. The magic has largely faded along with the lights, and it's that magic that will be so hard to replicate again.
