The Yankees officially reversed the jersey curse yesterday – extracting from the new stadium’s concrete a David Ortiz shirt planted by a Red Sox-obsessed hardhat hoping to hex his team’s arch rivals.
Then they warned the traitorous construction worker, Gino Castignoli, to watch his back, saying criminal and civil charges could be on deck.
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“I spoke with a [prosecutor]. There may be criminal issues,” Yankee Chief Operating Officer Lonn Trost said.
Trost speculated that Castignoli could be on the hook for criminal mischief.
A spokesman for the Bronx district attorney said, “We can’t speculate” on possible charges.
Trost said that even if Castignoli ends up safe from charges, “we’re thinking of a civil case, looking for money damages.”
Yesterday’s excavation alone cost the team $50,000, Trost said, even though the actual digging took two workers just 15 minutes.
The jersey was partially unearthed Saturday after five hours of digging at the site near a planned restaurant behind home plate.
It had been buried two feet beneath the surface.
The recovery did double duty – not only taking the hex off the Yankees, but also putting one on Ortiz. The Red Sox kept the slumping slugger out of the starting lineup for last night’s game against the Bombers, saying he was taking a “mental day off.”
Yankee President Randy Levine yesterday proudly held up the tattered shirt, which he said would be donated to Boston’s Jimmy Fund for auction to raise money for cancer treatment and research.
“We turned this dastardly act into a positive one,” Levine said. He lavished praise upon The Post for bringing it to the team’s attention.
“We want to thank The Post for raising this issue,” Levine said. “Two heroic construction workers gave us a tip where the shirt was, and we acted immediately.”
One of those workers, Frank Gramarossa, who led the removal, said: “I’m glad we got it out. I was angry and upset and wanted to find the jersey.”
Castignoli, a self-professed Yankee hater, yesterday said he had spent just one day on the site, working strictly to plant the jersey. “A lot of my friends work there, and they said it was easy work,” he said outside his Bronx home. “I told them I wouldn’t work there, but then one day a few months later, I said, ‘I could just go and jinx that stadium.’ ”
Castignoli said workers at the site long knew of his devilish doings.
“Anybody with half a brain knows it was all done in fun,” he said.
“I didn’t hurt nobody.”
Additional reporting
by Denise Buffa