Jamie Insalaco
Its great to see that the big bat from old Yankee Stadium is still standing. But, it’s starting to look like crap. It’s time for the Yankee brass to put somebody on a lift with some duct tape as the hand grips are starting to fall off.
June 20, 2012
Win Streak Turns To Losing Streak
I went to today’s game (my first this year), but I didn’t have the magic and now, the Yankees have lost two in a row and their first series in a long while.
My bad.
Anyway, it was still a great day at the ballpark despite the poor pitching. Still, $12 a beer is a bit excessive.
April 27, 2011
George M. Steinbrenner Field as reviewed by Stadium Journey
George M. Steinbrenner Field Tampa, FL Home of the Tampa Yankees
If you’re like me, then making it down to George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa probably isn’t high up on your to do list. Sure, I’d love to go to Spring Training game and I’d even like to check out the Tampa Yankees and see the prospects for myself, but it’s certainly not going to happen this season. Fortunately, Stadium Journey has you covered. Their review by Jim Dietrich leaves no stone unturned: he covers the food, beverages, atmosphere, access, neighborhood, return on investment – even the fans, though you might want to cover your eyes for that part.
Check out the review – it’s as close as I’m going to get!
April 26, 2011
Break It Down takes on Yankee Stadium
The National Geographic Channel’s Break it Down goes to work on ripping down the old Yankee Stadium – stuff doesn’t blow up, but it’s pretty epic… except when they clean out the toilets… toilets are less epic then tons of concrete and steel hurtling toward the ground. The episode debuts on Thursday, April 28 at 10PM.
April 7, 2011
Pass The Hat For Yankee Stadium Area Parks, Heritage Field
If you follow the Yankees (or MLB) closely, you might have heard about a story that occurred off the field concerning concerning Red Sox first-base coach Ron Johnson’s daughter, who was struck by a car while riding her horse, which cost her a leg and nearly her life. Unfortunately, the horse was put down.
The Red Sox didn’t screw around; they passed the hat around and got money to the Johnson family to help with the enormous financial burden being unhealthy in America becomes. Kevin Youkilis bought her a new horse. Yankees hitting coach Kevin Long is a friend of Johnson, and he passed the hat among the Yankee players, and they also sent money to help the Johnson family with their burden. The Red Sox offered Johnson an entire year off with pay if he needed it. Just months after the accident, Johnson’s daughter’s life was heading back to normal, and she’s riding horses again.
Money doesn’t solve all problems, but it sure can help, and when you have the means, it’s pretty deplorable to ignore your obligation towards those in need, especially when its children. I told you that story so I could tell you this one:
In 2006, construction began on the new Yankee Stadium, a $1.5 billion dollar project completed before the 2009 season began. Instead of building the new stadium where the old stadium resides, Macombs Dam Park was sacrificed, but this was only supposed to be temporary.
Five years since the demolition and counting, the replacement park is still not finished.
Now to be fair, part of the park is finished – the section that features the track, a football/soccer field, hand ball and tennis courts has been done for some time, and it’s a lovely spot. But there isn’t a single baseball field to be played on – Macombs Dam Park used to feature four ball fields. (Or was it 5? There seems to be a disagreement about that. I never bothered to count and didn’t spend enough time there to notice.)
So why is it taking so long? No idea; some people think it’s because the city wanted to sell off the old Yankee Stadium as memorbilia, piece by piece, and not just tear the place down in one fell swoop. Heritage Field, which when completed will feature 3 ball fields, is a $51million dollar project and seems small in scope to the Yankee Stadium project across the street, so it’s easy to point a finger at the city and again ask what is taking so friggin long. The over all redevelopment of the parks in the area includes refurbishing 8 other parks, and I understand that all of those parks have been completed, which is great.
However, it just looks bad to have a big hole in the ground next to your building, and it certainly isn’t making Bronx residents happy. Can you imagine being a kid without a ball field for 5 years? That’s essentially half of your childhood. If you were 12 in 2006 and lived in the area, you know where you played? Nowhere, I presume. A local parochial school used to call the Macombs Dam Park baseball diamonds home, but they’ve now been without a field for all these years. I read in the New York Times that during one particular season, they played some of their games in Staten Island… that’s a pretty serious hall from the Bronx.
The Yankees haven’t necessarily sat by idly; they provided money for buses for at least one year and yes, most of the projects are finished, but it’s hard to accept the cold irony of taking away the kids place to play baseball in favor of a new Yankee Stadium and not expediting the construction of the new park.
It’s a bit late in the game, as estimates have the project finishing this fall (too late for this season), but the Yankee players need to pass the hat around the locker room and do something nice for the kids. I’m not saying the Yankees don’t do things for the community, but its time to step up. They have the means, they just need to act.
April 5, 2011
Yankee Stadium Parking Pain
If you read my post that considered the argument between taking mass transit or driving to Yankee Stadium, you know I consider driving to the ballgame an obsolete practice. Now more than ever, there is no reason to drive to the game, no matter where you’re coming from.
Mass transportation options have improved for getting to Yankee Stadium, and that’s good on a lot of levels, but just to sweeten the deal, the price on parking just keeps going up. See, it takes series cojonas to charge both an admission fee and a parking fee to an event, but it’s become standard practice in my lifetime, so nobody really bats an eye at it anymore. However, when you can easily get tickets to an event that cost less than the parking for said event, well, that’s a horse of a different color all together.
In an attempt to brand the ballpark experience as one only for the well to do, parking at a game for the Yankees 2011 season will be $35 per car. That’s insanity – I won’t even call it highway robbery because that sort of diatribe could easily be construed as a reflection on something brought on by a logical chain of events, and it’s not.
So how did this happen? It’s simple supply and demand – someone slept through most of business school. See, old Yankee Stadium (YS2) held 56,936, while the current incarnation (YS3) holds 52,325 (that includes standing room) – so, for everybody that finished second grade: which stadium held more, YS2 or YS3. Right! YS2. So if you’re planning YS3, do you need more or less parking than was available for YS2?
If you answered less, then you’re WRONG!
I know, I know; it doesn’t make any sense. Why would less seats (and hence, less people) necessitate more parking? The answer is, it doesn’t, which is probably a taste of the logic that brings you the cost of Yankee Stadium parking more than tripling in the last decade. Apparently, the company that owns all of the parking lots owes all these bonds to the city, and since they aren’t doing the revenue they thought they’d do by flooding the market with more supply than demand (I know, business majors – I know), they are raising prices so they don’t default, which almost happened just recently, but didn’t.
Uhm, yeah. That’s why the parking at Yankee Stadium costs so much – and, to add insult to injury, a lot of the parking is much farther away from the new stadium then it was to the old, so it kinda begs the question: what’s the point of driving to the game if you have to walk a mile once you get there anyway?
Do the environment and your wallet a favor: take mass transit to Yankee Stadium.
March 1, 2011
Luther Petty At Old Yankee Stadium Tunnel Playing Sax, Fife, Flute
According to this article, the guy I passed in the tunnel that connected the parking lot to the old Yankee Stadium all those times was named Luther Petty. I made a serious attempt to study music for several years, and let me tell you: this guy was the real deal. (For all I know, this guy is still around, rocking out, but I haven’t seen him – I watch most Yankee games at home on HD TV these days!)
Now it wasn’t enough that Mr. Petty played the sax (maybe a soprano sax and an alto sax? or was there a different guy who played an alto sax by the parking garage?), the flute and the fife, but outside of “Take Me Out To The Ball Game,” and “Yankee Doodle,” he played a lot of old TV show themes, like “The Adams Family,” “The Flintstones” and “F-Troop.” (I would always ask, “What’s this song?” every single time I heard him play the theme from “F-Troop” as I never watched the show, so it just never sunk in.)
Some people called him “The Flute Man,” but I called him The Guy Who Kicked ASS. Mr. Petty played exceptionally well every single time I heard him play, and that was on many occasions. If he played the theme from, “The Adams Family,” you had to bash the tunnel’s Plexiglas walls when he got to the ‘snap’ parts – it was required, and even more than that, it was irresistible. His rhythm was precise, and even if yours wasn’t and you bashed out of time, you couldn’t mess his beat up. I never heard the guy make a mistake once, and yeah, I’m sure he played the same 10 or so songs at every single game, and agreed, they weren’t exactly Bach, but I bet he could play every song he knew backwards and probably on all three of his instruments – three of them!
Totally weird… the tunnel looks so much smaller in the video than it does in the above photos.
FYI, my photos above are from a Yankees vs Blue Jays game in 2004 – I probably took these photos before or after the Carlos Delgado Protests The Iraq War In 2004 game.
February 8, 2011
Carlos Delgado Protests The Iraq War In 2004
Remember way back in 2004, when Carlos Delgado was protesting the United States invasion of Iraq?
Fervently anti-war, Carlos Delgado quietly carried out his personal protest this season, refusing to stand when God Bless America was played at ballparks across the majors.
Most fans never saw him disappearing up the dugout tunnel or staying in the dugout. And even teammates who disagreed with the Toronto slugger’s political stance accepted his right to call the United States’ invasion of Iraq “the stupidest war ever.”
I went to a Yankees vs. Blue Jays game back at the old stadium that year, and people who fell on both sides of the debate were in attendance:
- Some folks agreed with him: Carlos Delgado For President
- Other folks did not agree with him: Carlos Delgado Is An American Disgrace
Yep, that’s how we used to do it at the old Stadium (YS2) – we’d break out the signs to express our stances on visiting player’s political views. Hells yeah, we would! As for me, I agreed with Delgado – invading Iraq was dumb, but this isn’t really the spot where I drop that kind of truth bomb (word up), so I’ll say this: playing God Bless America during every single game is dumb. First off, it’s not an especially good song, particularly when you compare it to The Star Spangled Banner, which is an excellent song, and is, after all, our national anthem. Not only does the playing of God Bless America bring the game to a grinding halt, but we heard the Star Spangled Banner before the game started – how many pro America songs do we need to hear during one baseball game? It’s a sporting event – its not a concert, and its certainly not some kind of weird pro America pep rally.
It’s just a ball game – don’t try to make it something it’s not. Just play ball!
February 7, 2011
2009 World Series Champions Pictures at Yankee Stadium
If you can say anything about the New Yankee Stadium (YS3), it’s that there is no shortage of pictures of Yankee history all over the building. With the exception of the rest rooms, the stuff is everywhere, and it’s great. As soon as they put up the 2009 World Series Champions Pictures, it got my attention right away. I took two pictures of it – here’s the first one:
OK, looking good… uhm, wait a second, what’s that on the far right? Is that…
Yep. It is:
So this is what sums up the Yankees 2009 World Series title: Jeter looking triumphant, the guys celebrating, and ARod covered in white goo.
Seriously? This is what we’re going with? If it had to be a picture of Alex Rodriguez, couldn’t we have used a shot of him hitting one of those big home runs he hit? Or any other picture of him that was taken, EVER, in his entire life? Just a minor complaint, and I know the pie thing was a big deal in 2009, but I don’t think it summed up the year and out of context… it’s not easy to explain. Oh well. Maybe they’ll replace it someday.
