LIKE $209 million worth of children let loose in a billion-dollar candy store, the Yankees loved the laptops hanging in each locker and the whirlpool big enough for Boomer Wells, with room left over for Babe Ruth, too. Most of all, the Yankees were impressed by the two clubhouse chefs.
“It’s going to [stink] to go on the road,” said Brian Bruney. And indeed, a sports columnist who has seen most of the new parks isn’t quite so anxious to pack his bag anymore, either, even for the ones picturesquely placed on rivers and inlets.
The design of the new Yankee Stadium, said Hal Steinbrenner yesterday as it opened its doors for the first time, was not to be “ostentatious or flashy, but classy while making the amenities as nice as we can for the fans.” And the Yankees nailed it, almost as perfectly as, wire to wire, they nailed 1998.
The new stadium has some things old: monument Park beyond center field, a peak at the elevated subway in right-center, line scoreboards on the walls in the power alleys, and the signature frieze restored all the way around the top of grandstand. It has something new: a massive center-field video board and a 1,279-foot ribbon board on the facing of the entire upper deck.
It has things borrowed from other retro-parks: out-of-town scoreboards marking outs and men on base, expanded food choices, plus wider seats and concourses. Best of all, the new place has the blue: Yankee midnight blue is the color of every seat, giving the place a symmetry and elegance that the other new palaces, for their emphasis on quirky corners, lack.
The footprint of the new stadium is one-third larger than the abandoned one across the street, yet inside it still somehow retains as much intimacy as possible for a 52,325 capacity. If the exterior looks like the Roman Coliseum, the view from the seats still has a blessedly familiar feel.
“Obviously, the dimensions are the same, and from the playing surface, if you don’t look up into the stands, it kind of looks like the old stadium,” said Derek Jeter of his first view from shortstop.
And essentially, that’s what we wanted, wasn’t it? There was nothing about the multi-purpose Shea, save maybe the saved Home Run Apple, that any Met fan really wanted to see in Citi Field, because no Met fan, despite having experienced just two World Series championships, ever felt that place was particularly charmed.
The Yankees enjoyed at least one hugely successful decade for every generation that lived long enough to not want to see their old stadium go. It was a cathedral of the game, not just the franchise, and it was angering to see the Steinbrenners make no attempt, or be willing to suffer no inconvenience, to rebuild on the same sacred ground.
So as much as possible, the new place had to be like the old place. And anyone privileged enough to attend the first game tonight will see that those memories hardly have been dragged kicking and screaming across the street.
“It feels like Yankee Stadium,” said reliever Phil Coke. “Just from the feeling I got walking out onto that field today, all those worries about the ghosts moving next door?
“I think we can put those to rest.”