Baseball in quotes



I guess my feelings on the new Stadium are best summed up by the baseball bat, which is now encircled and encapsulated by a set of stairs. They seem like a set of quotes around it - transforming it somehow from an easy place to meet people into an "historical" monument.

Quotes included.

The new stadium does that to the spirit of the old stadium, and baseball in general - the history is encapsulated in quotes.

But the references to the past are, well, just references. There's no actual history at the Stadium. And in fact that's one of its attractions - many of the people who are talking so positively about it are praising how clean it looks.

In the first weekend, balls were flying out of the park. Maybe that was Babe's revenge. The Yankees have claimed that the dimensions of the field are exactly the same, but anyone who has spent a lot of time there can look at right field and know the wall doesn't curve the same way. It doesn't really matter - unless you're Chen Ming Wang - but the insistence that history is being preserved is irksome.

It's too early to tell whether the park really does encourage home runs . . . and it's too early to tell if the "this park could be anywhere" feel I get walking in is a true emotion, or simply a stubborn reaction from someone who went to games at the old park since he was too young to know the difference between a fastball and a curve.

Or sour grapes at losing my field boxes.

For the moment, I struggle to keep an open mind. And more than anything else, the new Stadium has reminded of this: baseball is baseball, whether you play it at Yankee Stadium, or the sandlot across from your house.