Thinking About Saving Yankee Stadium

From an email I received today:

I’m a Bronx native and lifelong Yankees fan though transplanted to Atlanta for the last 13 years. I think it’s a tragedy that Yankee Stadium is going to be torn down after the season... It should stand so others can appreciate it.

Memories like that just won’t mean the same thing at “New” Yankee Stadium. Babe Ruth, Joe D., Mickey Mantle and Reggie Jackson will never be a part of that place as they are in the original House That Ruth Built.

 

The Stadium is a national treasure, part of our country’s history and our heritage as New Yorkers. It should be a landmark; especially when it is still more than capable of benefiting the community economically. Yankee Stadium could be a museum, a shopping mall, a recreational sports complex or maybe all of the above. They could bring a branch of the Hall of Fame there. The Stadium could create jobs and revenue while allowing us to preserve a piece of our history for future generations.

 

I’ve started a web site called SaveYankeeStadium.org to help gather support for the Stadium and have asked visitors to sign a petition. We would love to have you visit and check it out and we’d definitely appreciate it if you would consider linking to the site from your blog. The site has only been live for a couple of days, but it looks like the word is starting to get around and people have been very generous in sharing their opinions.

While I agree with the sentiment, I'm afraid it's too little, far too late.  Part of the Stadium deal was the agreement that Old Yankee Stadium will become a park and Little League field.

One of the reasons that this deal is happening is that the Old Stadium stands on public ground, so the Yanks pay rent.  If I understand it correctly, New Stadium's land was sold to the Steinbrenners, so once the construction cost are paid off (will the generous support of John Q. Public) the Yankees will redefine "cash cow."

I don't know why Yankee fans never got a grassroots "Save the Stadium" going.

Maybe we'd simply listened to big Stein make so much noise about moving the team over the years that we didn't take the possibility of a new stadium seriously until way too late.  I'd believe any fan who told me that keeping the team in the Bronx was/is enough.

Maybe the remodel in the '70s sapped the place of that much of its nostalgia; it hosted championships in the late '70s and again in the late '90s, but Renovated Yankee Stadium is farther removed from Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, and Mantle than most sports writers will admit.  No one waxes poetic about the '80s.  

Check out his site, sign the petition.  Then gather up you best photos of the Stadium and got buy a couple frames.