I don’t want to say the men of Yankeeville are overcompensating for something, but wow.
The high-definition Mitsubishi Diamond Vision screen in the new Yankee Stadium is 101 by 59 feet. A beer in a souvenir cup costs $10. The Yankees’ clubhouse is cavernous, and each locker has its own laptop computer. By comparison, there are phone booths bigger than the Cubs’ clubhouse at Wrigley Field, and, yes, I’m aware there are no phone booths anymore.
“I saw the laundry room for the first time — it’s quite large,” Yankees manager Joe Girardi said. “Big dryers.”
The Great Hall, which is filled with banners featuring the images of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, among other Yankees greats, is 31,000 square feet. The Yankees would like you to know the room is as green as can be.
Nobody does big like the Yankees, and nobody does sentimentality like the Yankees. And so, with help from the Cubs, they opened their new, $1.5 billion ballpark Friday night, with a big nod toward the old one that is being torn down across the street. Speaking of green, the Yankees are shelling out $423.5 million for newcomers CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett and Mark Teixeira. When you haven’t won a World Series since 2000, sentimentality will only take you so far here.
The dimensions of the playing field are the same as in the old stadium. Some people are mourning the old Yankee Stadium, which, by the way, was completely renovated in 1974-1976. So they’re actually mourning a 33-year-old extreme makeover.
“The fans of the 20th Century, they like new and better things,” said Cubs manager Lou Piniella, who played, managed and generally managed here.
He meant the 21st Century, but in the way you sort of know what Mayor Richard M. Daley means, you know what Piniella means. And this of course led to talk about what might be done someday to Wrigley Field, which was built in 1914. If the old Yankee Stadium can be turned to dust, why not Wrigley, which hasn’t housed a World Series champion since what feels like the 19th Century?
“Wrigley is a unique place,” Piniella said. “To me, it’s almost like a Field of Dreams-type stadium right in the neighborhood. You have the ivy, you have the Bleacher Bums, you have the people across the street in the rooftops.”
Or, as he put it, “oldness is good too.” He said there probably will be renovations to the ballpark in the next four or five years. It needs it, badly.
Players want to play for the Cubs because of the atmosphere in Wrigley Field and because they would like to be members of the club that won a World Series for the first time since 1908.
The Yankees’ deep pockets always will be the selling point for any free agents looking to change teams, as will the decent possibility of a championship, but the opulence of this ballpark won’t hurt for recruiting purposes.
Two immediate questions come to mind:
*Is it possible Yankees players will become spoiled and soft by the country-club environment of the place?
*Is anyone creeped out by the money spent on this place while the nation is in the middle of serious financial difficulties?
Answers:
*When you’re making many millions of dollars a year, you’re already spoiled.
*If the Yankees ever do anything small, there will be an inquest. The Legend seats behind home plate cost $2,625 each.
“When you look at this ballpark, it gives the players every opportunity to succeed, every opportunity to stay healthy, every opportunity to have an enjoyable opportunity as a Yankee,” Girardi said.
Some firsts. The first pitch from Yankees pitcher Chien-Ming Wang to Aaron Miles was a strike. The first hit in the new building was by Miles, in the same at-bat. The first person to score a run was Miles, in the same inning. And the first person to get lit up like, yes, Times Square was Cubs pitcher Ted Lilly, who gave up three home runs and seven runs in four innings of the 7-4 loss.
More Top Picks Best Elevated Dog Beds For Large Dogs
But this night really wasn’t about the baseball. It was about history and sheer size. The 52,325-seat, belled-and-whistled ballpark is the way team Chairman George Steinbrenner thinks about the Yankees.
The pope has his Vatican. The Boss has his new Yankee Stadium.
What would be the best way to christen the place?
“One of my desires would be to come here in the postseason and play them,” Piniella said.
He meant in the World Series. In this year and this century. Now that would be big.
———–