Jim Caple said:
Yankee Stadium was in a bad mood Wednesday morning. Even more so than usual.
"Aw, for crying out loud. Just what I need," he said. "Like it's not bad enough I'm gonna have to listen to them diggin' my grave over there for the next two and a half years? Now I gotta listen to you bust my balls, too? Gimme a @#&% break, will ya, and just shoot me in the #&@* head first and put me outta my misery."
I couldn't blame him. I'd be upset, too. Yankee Stadium has been sport's most prestigious venue for more than 80 years, but the team officially broke ground on a $1.2 billion (that's right, $1.2 billion) replacement Wednesday morning. Construction begins Thursday, and the Yankees will abandon their famous home for the new stadium in 2009.
And yet another historic ballpark will disappear from baseball.
"Aw, don't give me that phony sympathy bull -- you've done nothing but rip me for years," Yankee Stadium said, flipping me the bird. "You're going to get all weepy now after insulting my fans and ripping my players and saying I smell like garbage and calling me the Dump That Ruth Built? @#&% that.
"Besides, where the @$#& is your ticket? Do I have to call security on you again?"
Well, I said as I flashed my press credential, you have to admit you have let yourself go a little. Like that beam that fell down several years ago? And have you seen your bathrooms lately?
"If I'm such a @#&% pit," Yankee Stadium said, spitting tobacco on my shoes, "then how come I led the @##& league in attendance the last three straight years in a row? I drew four million fans last year and I'm gonna do it again this year. And you know why? Because I'm a winner and New York fans love a winner."
Maybe. But couldn't you take bit better care of yourself? Like Wrigley Field? She's almost a decade older than you and she still looks great.
"Screw Wrigley Field! The Friendly Confines, my ass. What's so @#%$ friendly about charging fans $54 a ticket and giving them losing season after losing season? And what's so fan-friendly about all these retro-parks like Camden @#$& Yards and Safeco @#&% Field and whatever the @##&% they call that park in San Francisco these days? Skylines and fountains and fancy sandwiches and $9 microbrews are for morons and losers -- the only things real fans want to see when the walk into a stadium is world championship banners. And I got plenty of them."
Championship banners … and concession lines that back up to the Major Deegan.
"Let me tell you something, you @#$& wiseass," Yankee Stadium said, leaning in close enough I could smell seven decades worth of beer on his breath. "Unlike your precious Safeco and PNC and Jacobs Field, the Yankees ain't gouging the taxpayers for the new stadium. They ain't looking for any government handouts, neither. Steinbrenner is paying for it himself. Even you gotta respect him for that."
Yeah, except for the $400 million in public costs for infrastructure.
"There's no pleasing people like you, is there?" Yankee Stadium said. "I hate when all you bleeding-heart, limp-wristed, tax-raising, Clinton-voting, freedom-hating tree huggers moan that public money should be spent on schools and libraries instead of stadiums. You're seeing it all wrong --- as usual. You're not just building a stadium for one owner. You're building a tourist attraction for the whole city. Folks come to New York and they wanna see four things. The Statue of Liberty. The Empire State Building. The Rockettes. And me. I sure as hell ain't never heard one tell a cabbie, 'Hey, take me to P.S. 173! I gotta check out those classrooms!'
"But I will say one thing. The Yankees can spend all the money in the world but they'll never duplicate what I've given New York. That's because I'm a lot more than a baseball stadium."
True, I admitted. People often forget about all the other sports that used to be played here. "That's right," Yankee Stadium nodded. "I've played host to 37 World Series and perfect games and no-hitters and more historic home runs than you could shove into a month of 'SportsCenter.' But baseball wasn't my only gig. When the NFL came of age in the 1958 championship game, who was the host stadium? That's right, me. Those great Notre Dame-Army games? Right here, buddy. Knute Rockne told his team to win one for the Gipper in my locker room. Pope John Paul II said Mass on my field.
"And the fights I had here, geez, let me tell you. Jack Dempsey fought here. Joe Louis fought Schmeling here. Muhammad Ali fought here. And hell, Billy Martin, he fought here all the time. Cripes, I'm still repairing my clubhouse walls."
It's amazing you're still standing after all that. "They say Babe Ruth built me, but that fat SOB didn't lift a single hammer or dig a single shovel of dirt," the Stadium said. "He didn't make me -- I made him. He would just be a drunken slob with bad gas had it not been for my short porch swallowing up all his long flies. And not just him. Gehrig, DiMaggio, Mantle, Jeter -- none of them would be squat if it wasn't for me.
"Trust me, you ain't @#&% until you play Yankee Stadium. A-Rod can tell you about that."
The Beatles, I pointed out, played Shea Stadium.
Yankee Stadium glowered at me until I took a step back toward the No. 4 subway station for safety. "Why don't you just eat me, huh?" he said.
But really, I continued, what do you make of all this? After all you've done for the Yankees and baseball, how does it feel to be replaced?
"Like I want to kiss a nurse in Times Square and hold a ticker-tape parade down Wall Street. What, are you as dumb as you look? How the @#&% do you think I feel about getting torn down and turned into amateur ball fields for players who couldn't hold Don Mattingly's jockstrap? It sucks.
"But I sure as hell ain't gonna sit around and whine about it like some pathetic @#%$ Red Sox fan would, crying, 'Oh, look at me! Look at me! I'm suffering -- Don't you all feel sooooo damn sorry for me?' @#&% that. Winners don't complain. Winners don't explain. Winners just accept the cards they're dealt and then we kick their ass all the way back to Boston.
"And that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna spend the next three seasons the same way I spent the past 83 -- winning. I plan to host another three World Series. Earn three more world championship pennants to fly in the new stadium. Listen to Bob Sheppard say my name and hear the greatest fans in the world salute me with one last roll call. And when they start smacking down my walls, I won't give you bastards the satisfaction of a single tear. Uh-uh. After all I've gotten to see here, I'll just bow out like Gehrig and say, 'I consider myself the luckiest @#$& stadium on the face of the earth.'"
Yankee Stadium paused. "Besides, there are worse things than being torn down. Hell, I could be home to the Devil Rays like Tropicana Field."
"Aw, for crying out loud. Just what I need," he said. "Like it's not bad enough I'm gonna have to listen to them diggin' my grave over there for the next two and a half years? Now I gotta listen to you bust my balls, too? Gimme a @#&% break, will ya, and just shoot me in the #&@* head first and put me outta my misery."
I couldn't blame him. I'd be upset, too. Yankee Stadium has been sport's most prestigious venue for more than 80 years, but the team officially broke ground on a $1.2 billion (that's right, $1.2 billion) replacement Wednesday morning. Construction begins Thursday, and the Yankees will abandon their famous home for the new stadium in 2009.
And yet another historic ballpark will disappear from baseball.
"Aw, don't give me that phony sympathy bull -- you've done nothing but rip me for years," Yankee Stadium said, flipping me the bird. "You're going to get all weepy now after insulting my fans and ripping my players and saying I smell like garbage and calling me the Dump That Ruth Built? @#&% that.
"Besides, where the @$#& is your ticket? Do I have to call security on you again?"
Well, I said as I flashed my press credential, you have to admit you have let yourself go a little. Like that beam that fell down several years ago? And have you seen your bathrooms lately?
"If I'm such a @#&% pit," Yankee Stadium said, spitting tobacco on my shoes, "then how come I led the @##& league in attendance the last three straight years in a row? I drew four million fans last year and I'm gonna do it again this year. And you know why? Because I'm a winner and New York fans love a winner."
Maybe. But couldn't you take bit better care of yourself? Like Wrigley Field? She's almost a decade older than you and she still looks great.
"Screw Wrigley Field! The Friendly Confines, my ass. What's so @#%$ friendly about charging fans $54 a ticket and giving them losing season after losing season? And what's so fan-friendly about all these retro-parks like Camden @#$& Yards and Safeco @#&% Field and whatever the @##&% they call that park in San Francisco these days? Skylines and fountains and fancy sandwiches and $9 microbrews are for morons and losers -- the only things real fans want to see when the walk into a stadium is world championship banners. And I got plenty of them."
Championship banners … and concession lines that back up to the Major Deegan.
"Let me tell you something, you @#$& wiseass," Yankee Stadium said, leaning in close enough I could smell seven decades worth of beer on his breath. "Unlike your precious Safeco and PNC and Jacobs Field, the Yankees ain't gouging the taxpayers for the new stadium. They ain't looking for any government handouts, neither. Steinbrenner is paying for it himself. Even you gotta respect him for that."
Yeah, except for the $400 million in public costs for infrastructure.
"There's no pleasing people like you, is there?" Yankee Stadium said. "I hate when all you bleeding-heart, limp-wristed, tax-raising, Clinton-voting, freedom-hating tree huggers moan that public money should be spent on schools and libraries instead of stadiums. You're seeing it all wrong --- as usual. You're not just building a stadium for one owner. You're building a tourist attraction for the whole city. Folks come to New York and they wanna see four things. The Statue of Liberty. The Empire State Building. The Rockettes. And me. I sure as hell ain't never heard one tell a cabbie, 'Hey, take me to P.S. 173! I gotta check out those classrooms!'
"But I will say one thing. The Yankees can spend all the money in the world but they'll never duplicate what I've given New York. That's because I'm a lot more than a baseball stadium."
True, I admitted. People often forget about all the other sports that used to be played here. "That's right," Yankee Stadium nodded. "I've played host to 37 World Series and perfect games and no-hitters and more historic home runs than you could shove into a month of 'SportsCenter.' But baseball wasn't my only gig. When the NFL came of age in the 1958 championship game, who was the host stadium? That's right, me. Those great Notre Dame-Army games? Right here, buddy. Knute Rockne told his team to win one for the Gipper in my locker room. Pope John Paul II said Mass on my field.
"And the fights I had here, geez, let me tell you. Jack Dempsey fought here. Joe Louis fought Schmeling here. Muhammad Ali fought here. And hell, Billy Martin, he fought here all the time. Cripes, I'm still repairing my clubhouse walls."
It's amazing you're still standing after all that. "They say Babe Ruth built me, but that fat SOB didn't lift a single hammer or dig a single shovel of dirt," the Stadium said. "He didn't make me -- I made him. He would just be a drunken slob with bad gas had it not been for my short porch swallowing up all his long flies. And not just him. Gehrig, DiMaggio, Mantle, Jeter -- none of them would be squat if it wasn't for me.
"Trust me, you ain't @#&% until you play Yankee Stadium. A-Rod can tell you about that."
The Beatles, I pointed out, played Shea Stadium.
Yankee Stadium glowered at me until I took a step back toward the No. 4 subway station for safety. "Why don't you just eat me, huh?" he said.
But really, I continued, what do you make of all this? After all you've done for the Yankees and baseball, how does it feel to be replaced?
"Like I want to kiss a nurse in Times Square and hold a ticker-tape parade down Wall Street. What, are you as dumb as you look? How the @#&% do you think I feel about getting torn down and turned into amateur ball fields for players who couldn't hold Don Mattingly's jockstrap? It sucks.
"But I sure as hell ain't gonna sit around and whine about it like some pathetic @#%$ Red Sox fan would, crying, 'Oh, look at me! Look at me! I'm suffering -- Don't you all feel sooooo damn sorry for me?' @#&% that. Winners don't complain. Winners don't explain. Winners just accept the cards they're dealt and then we kick their ass all the way back to Boston.
"And that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna spend the next three seasons the same way I spent the past 83 -- winning. I plan to host another three World Series. Earn three more world championship pennants to fly in the new stadium. Listen to Bob Sheppard say my name and hear the greatest fans in the world salute me with one last roll call. And when they start smacking down my walls, I won't give you bastards the satisfaction of a single tear. Uh-uh. After all I've gotten to see here, I'll just bow out like Gehrig and say, 'I consider myself the luckiest @#$& stadium on the face of the earth.'"
Yankee Stadium paused. "Besides, there are worse things than being torn down. Hell, I could be home to the Devil Rays like Tropicana Field."
