A sinister and cynical plot to destroy the long tradition of the New York Yankees is being managed and led by a Boston Red Sox fan right under the noses of New Yorkers, and no one seems to care. The conspiracy involves a billionaire politician, an aging principal owner, the seizure of a neighborhood park, and the destruction of a field that opened for business on April 18, 1923 with a Babe Ruth homerun.
This is a story that involves the near-death of any real political opposition in this town. It stands for everything that's wrong about government give-aways to corporations - particularly monopolies - and it shows the franchise known as the New York Yankees for what it really is: a heartless media megalith that would spit on tradition to obtain a few luxury boxes.
And it's a story that almost no one's covering.
Any baseball fan who actually believes in "Yankee tradition" after the Bloomberg administration's vacant deal to tear down Yankee Stadium and construct a shoddy replica across the way in Macombs Dam Park is a fool. There is no Yankee tradition in Macombs Dam Park. When the Yankees move into their new stadium in 2009, they will abandon the field of history forever.
They will never again play baseball on the field where Dimaggio chased down long flyballs, where Jeter ran for pop-ups, where Reggie went yard, where Mantle limped. They will destroy the spot where Gehrig said farewell, where Munson was remembered, where Babe Ruth said good-bye. No Yankee will ever again toe the rubber where Larson pitched his perfect game, where Whitey Ford and Ron Guidry and Goose Gossage and Mo Rivera hurled. There will be no view of the Bronx County Courthouse, no actual Monument Valley beyond the fences, no real short porch next to the subway in right. Don't hang the championship banners; they weren't won in Macombs Dam Park.
All of that, every last trace of it, will be erased by Michael Bloomberg's sucker deal - a deal that could only have been engineered by a Red Sox fan hell-bent on destroying the Yankee Stadium mystique forever.
This new stadium is good for no one - not for Yankee fans who will lose their prized history, not for Bronx residents who lost their park, not for New Yorkers who will fork over at least $160 million in subsidies, not to mention the hundreds of millions that the subsidized Metro-North will pay to build a new train station. The Village Voice has been reporting on cost overruns to the project, which already stretch into the tens of millions in the city budget. Said Lukas Herbert, one of the Bronx Community Board 4 members who warned that the city would face likely cost overruns on its share of the Yankees project: "This is almost like an 'I told you so' - it just goes to show that once a big corporation like the Yankees gets an approval from government, the cost just goes up for the public."
But even to a baseball fan from New Jersey or Manhattan or Westchester who doesn't give a hoot about city subsidies, the psychic cost of this amazing boondoggle is stunning. Say these words slowly: "Tear down Yankee Stadium and build a new one across the street in a city park." Incredible, isn't it? Yet this plan was hatched by the Yankees and financed by Bloomberg and Pataki with near-uniform complicity from the so-called press in this town. Why don't we just move the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center, or Grand Central?
This is Pennsylvania Station all over again and there's no Jackie Kennedy in sight. The sports columnists don't seem to care. The big-time Yankee fans you see in the box seats are silent - where's Billy Crystal now? Are there no traditionalists, no guardians of baseball lore?
Sure, the current Stadium has its problems; the 70s renovation that brought the old stadium down nearly to the ground and rebuilt it in place using much of the same steel is showing its age. Another renovation should be in the plans. But actually abandoning the most famous playing surface in the history of professional sports? That's insanity, folks.
Now, some of you may be asking - Tom, why do you care? You're a Mets fan. And the Mets are getting their new Ebbetts-style stadium Citi Field in 2009, when they'll say good-bye to Shea Stadium. Never again will Mets fielders roam the grass once patrolled by Don Hahn or toe the rubber one nudged by Pete Falcone. I have to admit, I'll actually miss Shea because I grew up there. But Shea Stadium is to Yankee Stadium what a suburban Holiday Inn is to the Waldorf-Astoria.
Throwing away the history of Yankee Stadium is a crime, a massive mistake that New York will regret for generations. As a New Yorker and a baseball fan, I find it outrageous - almost as outrageous as the silence of Yankee fans, the people always touting their tradition. Well, after next season, their tradition will be ground into the dust.
And it was all engineered by the Red Sox and our resident Bostonian.
