There are couple time-worn clichés in the world… You can’t beat City Hall, and You can’t stop progress.

Instead of beating around the bush, let’s just get to the subject at hand:

If the New Yankee Stadium is built, the House That Ruth Built will be torn down.

I don’t have enough space here to fill in all the history that’s transpired at Yankee Stadium. Hundreds, if not thousands of books have been written about the Yankees and the baseball history that has transpired in the hallowed grounds since it opened on April 21, 1923.

The question is, will the New Yankee Stadium be that much better? In the opinion of this author, the answer is no.

Look, all things come to pass, but the facility being proposed by the Yankees is smaller is total seating capacity, and the design is based on, of all things, the original Yankee stadium design, replete with the limestone walls and distinctive copper frieze to the placement of the bullpens in the right field that adorned the ballpark before renovation to the park in 1974 and 1975. The main reason for the Yankees wanting a new stadium boil down to four issues:

• The construction of the stadium by the Yankees will allow them to dodge a considerable portion of their revenue sharing payout;
• The maintenance costs on the current Yankee Stadium is increasing;
• The expanded use of luxury suites in the new design will garner more revenues, and;
• The new facility will allow the Yankees to increase ticket prices.

In June of last year, the NY Times reported:

Most of the current Yankee Stadium will not fall to the wrecking ball. The city plans to preserve at least the existing baseball field, the dugouts and the first level of the stands for Little League and high school use.

“I’m sure they’ll have limos or vans to take the ghosts over to the new ballpark,” Yankees Manager Joe Torre said.

That has since changed. On Nov. 18th of ‘05, the NY Post ran an article entitled, WRECKING-BALL GAME – CITY MAY TEAR DOWN ALL OF YANKEE STADIUM. As the article details:

Yankee Stadium would be completely torn down to expand parkland for the South Bronx, in a proposal revealed by city officials last night.

The proposal to tear down Yankee Stadium came about because of community concerns that the plans for a new stadium threatened area parkland, [Joshua Laird] said.

Burried within the Final Environmental Impact Statement (PDF document 730 pgs.) conducted by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, under “Alternate Park Plan” the details of the partial tearing down of the House That Ruth Built, but as mentioned, the idea of completly razing the historic ballpark is not completely out of the question. The Parks Department has said over and over that the total razing is the plan.

As Neil DeMause of Field of Schemes writes today:

The real showdown comes next Thursday, when the city council holds its single solitary public hearing on the project before it votes. (I’m hearing March 22 or April 5 as possible council vote dates.) If you’re interested in having a say and can’t make it in person, I’m sure the office of councilmember Dan Garodnick, who’s chairing, can explain how to submit written testimony.

So, there are two suggestions…

If you are against this project, and have the ability, get to the meeting on Thursday. If you can’t and have resigned yourself to the fact that the House That Ruth Built is going the way of the bulldozer, get your tickets while you can, and suck in the history before it’s gone. After all, it’s not like the Red Sox could save Fenway, and make it profitable, right?

UPDATE:

See Neil DeMause’s comments in this thread. Reference the following image to further illustrate:

This entry was posted on Friday, March 3rd, 2006 at 8:11 am and is filed under Baseball Insight. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.