Around the Yankee Universe -- a new era begins

Here is a look around the Inter-Google at the Yankee Universe on the day after the new Yankee Stadium opened in disastrous fashion, with a 10-2 pummeling at the hands of the Cleveland Indians.

• The New York Times opines that despite all of its lavish features and luxurious accommodations the new Stadium can never match the history and the tradition the Yankees walked away from when then they left the old Stadium. 

This was much more than a simple home opener: This was the opening of a lavish new Yankee Stadium, built by a franchise with baseball’s highest payroll, despite the economic collapse around it — a franchise accustomed to winning championships, although it hasn’t won a World Series title since 2000. Old Yankee Stadium represented one of the greatest, or at least one of the most storied, home-field advantages in North American sports. Visiting players routinely gushed about walking into the Stadium and soaking in its history.

With a simple move across the street, that part of the Yankees’ legacy is gone and the franchise, payroll aside, is now on a level playing field with the competition.

I don't know if the playing field is level. I do know that the mystique of the Stadium, the historic significance of the building itself, is now just a memory. We just have to hope the new place creates its own history.

• Peter Abraham listed his impressions of the Stadium following Thursday's game. He had a mixed reaction to the place.
• Steve Politi of the Star-Ledger had a conflicted reaction to the Yankees' new home.

The place feels ... weird.

It is breathtaking and spacious, magnificent and extravagant, massive and excessive in every way. It has anything you could want at a ballpark and more than you could ever possibly need.

It will take time, maybe a season or two, but the new Yankee Stadium will make us forget the old one. But right now? The feeling in the place is overwhelmingly ... odd.

We have never experienced anything like the ballpark the Yankees christened Thursday afternoon -- not even the quainter new home the Mets opened across the Triborough Bridge. The one in the Bronx is familiar and completely different at the same time, at once majestic and unsettling.

• Here is a list of the 'firsts' recorded during Thursday's game.
• Neil Best of Newsday discusses the perception that the Stadium is not TV friendly. He agrees.
• George Steinbrenner made an appearance and received an ovation. Nothing more.
• ESPN's Jerry Crasnick reminds us that one April game will not define the new Stadium. It will be the October ones the Yankees hope to play that will be the true measuring stick.
• Mark Teixeira received a cortisone shot in his ailing left wrist. Cross your fingers that this injury does not linger.