A Red Sox Fan’s Requiem For Yankee Stadium

Despite what columnists, commentators, and conventional wisdom have told you this entire baseball season, I’m here to tell you the truth:

Yankee Stadium was a dump.

I had suspected this for much of my childhood, watching baseball games on television. 

Electric blue padding and paint everywhere, bleachers painted black and simply abandoned in center field like a front-yard jalopy, odd netting and Plexiglas in left field, and of course that white frieze, which ignorant New Yorkers have mistakenly called a “façade” for decades.

I got to see this monstrosity up close in 2004.

Great friends scrounged up an extra ticket and I hopped a fight to LaGuardia fresh off covering Hurricane Ivan.

Oh yeah, more truth:

I’m a life-long Red Sox fan.

I arrived for that game, like most fans, on the subway, stopping at the 161st Street/Yankee Stadium station.

One big difference: I had that beautiful classic “B” on my cap, which immediately made me a target for an extra warm New York welcome.

Once inside the stadium, I was stunned at how run-down and cramped the place was.

The concourses were dark, damp and about as spacious as a phone booth.

As for the bathrooms, well, let’s just say comparing them to the lavatories at a biker bar would be an insult to biker bars.

Yankee Stadium looked like the City of New York had ignored it for 30 years, which is basically what had happened.

The most memorable thing from that Yankees-Red Sox tilt (besides enduring Hurricane Ivan’s remnants again during a lengthy rain delay) was the conversation/argument I had with a nearby Yankee fan during the game’s late innings.

“You really believe THIS team is going to win the World Series,” the guy asked as he pointed at the Beantown nine.

“I sure do,” I said.  “It’s going to happen this year, and when it does,” I continued, “I want you to think of me and this conversation we had, and remember that you heard it from me, first.”

The guy laughed like you do when your toddler tells you he just saw a monster under his bed.

Just a few moments later the Sox staged an improbable 9th inning comeback against legendary Yankees closer, Mariano Rivera, and I gave the guy next to me a wink as I said, “good luck with the rest of your season.”

Of course, the rest is history.

The Red Sox lost the first three games of the American League Championship Series before staging the greatest comeback in history, with the Game 7 clincher happening right there in “The House That Ruth Built.”

The Sox went on to win their first World Championship in 86 years against St. Louis, that fall.

As I watched the final game at Yankee Stadium on TV Sunday night, I thought of all the great Red Sox/Yankees games that took place there over the years:

-The Aaron “Bleeping” Boone game in 2003.

-The “Bloody Sock” game and ALCS clincher in 2004.

-Roger Maris’ 61st Home Run game.

-Pedro Martinez’ 18-strikeout masterpiece in 1999.

As I reminisced, I came to a melancholy realization:

I’m sure going to miss that dump.

Every great team needs a foil.  Alabama has Auburn, the Lakers have the Celtics, and the Red Sox have the Yankees.

To us Red Sox fans, Yankee Stadium represents everything we loathe about the Bronx Bombers.

It’s ugly; Fenway Park is beautiful.

It’s huge; Updike once called Fenway a “lyric little bandbox”.

It’s housed more champions than any venue in sports; Fenway hasn’t seen very many.

What would Ohio State hate without The Big House?

What would Athens be without Sparta?

What would the Rebel Alliance do without the Death Star?

Red Sox fans needed Yankee Stadium as much as we needed villains like admitted cheaters Andy Pettitte, Jason Giambi, and Chuck Knoblauch.

Without “Monument Park”, Red Sox turncoats Wade Boggs, Johnny Damon and Roger Clemens would just be admired former players, not hated rivals.

(Well, maybe Clemens would still be hated.  He did enough to thumb his nose at Red Sox fans over the years, that calling Yankee Stadium “home” was just the final signature on his deal with the Devil.)

The people of New York and Boston are as different as our ballparks.

In New York, they tear down their old buildings and call it “progress”.

In Boston, we keep our old buildings and call it “preservation”.

Judging from what I saw on TV Sunday night, for at least one day, Red Sox and Yankee fans were in agreement:  our way is better.

Many people are going to miss that old dump.

At least they’ll always have their memories, including a guy who learned one night in 2004 the Red Sox were going to win the World Series, and another who hoped with all his heart that they really would.