SEATTLE — One of the beauties of this NFC Championship is we already know one of the …
Wait, you can’t hear me? Hang on.
SEATTLE — One of the beauties of this NFC Championship is we …
Really? Still. OK …
SEATTLE — ONE OF THE BEAUTIES OF THIS NFC CHAMPIONSHIP IS WE ALREADY KNOW ONE OF THE MAJOR FACTORS, AND THAT IS THIS:
IT’S GOING TO BE LOUD AT CENTURY LINK FIELD. REALLY LOUD. PAINFULLY LOUD. JET-ENGINE LOUD. THE KIND OF LOUD YOU DON’T HEAR ANYMORE IN MOST MODERN STADIUMS AND ARENAS.
Yes. that kind of loud. Slowly, we’re starting to forget what it’s like to endure noise at sporting events — noise that used to be the best part about going to those sporting events — the bigger the better, the better the louder, the louder the more unforgettable.
Sports isn’t alone, of course. I saw Springsteen at MetLife Stadium, after having seen him plenty at Giants Stadium, and the crowd wasn’t any less enthusiastic, the noise simply wasn’t as noisy. Same thing when I saw Billy Joel at Barclays Center, after a lifetime of watching him at Nassau Coliseum.
The new places have splendid concourses and terrific concessions, and the sight lines are second to none, and all of that is perfectly wonderful. Except you rarely bring it home with you, the way you did when there would be a ringing in your ears for days afterward, a constant reminder of the show. Audiologists no doubt endorse this. But does anyone else?
The ballparks and the arenas are where this really hits home, though, and this certainly isn’t simply a New York problem. Last week, Denver Post columnist Woody Paige challenged Broncos fans to make Sports Authority Field sound the way old Mile High Stadium did. They didn’t, because they couldn’t: At old Mile High they would stomp their feet on old aluminum bleachers and make a ruckus that could be heard halfway across Wyoming.
Any modern stadium architect who typed the words “aluminum bleachers” in their Macintosh would be a starving architect, because he never would get hired.
No, modern means comfortable, and that means for the ears as well as everything else, beginning with George Steinbrenner’s favorite, the “fannies in the seats.” You can say whatever you want about the makeup of Yankees fans who buy tickets now: Even at their loudest, they can’t make the new Yankee Stadium sound like the old one. It’s simply not possible. Same deal with MetLife. It’s just not built to burrow into your eardrums the way Giants Stadium was.
(We’ll reserve judgment on the updated Garden and on Citi Field until the primary tenants actually give their customers reason to get excited, although the early returns aren’t promising — the boos there aren’t nearly as intimidating as they used to be.)
Good for Seattle, and for Seahawks fans. Veterans of the Kingdome (where the 1995 ALDS was the second-loudest I have ever heard sports in person), they remembered how important having a legit home-field advantage really is.
Maybe we’ve beautified the charm right out of the games. The loudest-I-ever-heard game? That was old Barnhill Arena, Fayetteville, Ark., an Arkansas-Kentucky basketball game in 1993. I swear I still hear Hog Calls in my cochleas from that one, all thanks to a dumpy little gym the university couldn’t wait to abandon, that won that game for the Razorbacks because the Wildcats (on their way to the Final Four that year) were scared stiff to do anything.
God, it was glorious.
Those, my friends, were …
Yes! Nice! That’s more like it!
THOSE, MY FRIENDS, WERE THE DAYS!
Whack Back at Vac
Matt Scully: Instant replay is another step in taking the pulse out of the game and people replaced by robots. Reporters already know if they want a robot’s response to a question, they can always go to Derek Jeter’s locker.
Vac: Ah, we kid because we love. Hurry back, Cap’n.
Michael Ostrowski: Couldn’t they have tried out Challenge Ball in the American League for four or five decades before messing with the real thing?
Vac: I’m dying to find out what play becomes the Ron Blomberg of replay, aren’t you?
@R0cker23: Alex Rodriguez’s chain of gyms is called “Energy Plus.” Wonder what the “plus” stands for …
@MikeVacc: I wonder if there are cycles at this gym.
B ob Buscavage: If A-Rod shows up at the Yankees’ spring training complex, he’ll add a whole new meaning to the term “March Madness!”
Vac: There was a great Twitter debate the other day about what his walk-up music should be if he ever returns. Clear winner: Neil Young’s “The Needle and the Damage Done.”
Vac’s Whacks
I’ve been wrong a lot in my day. Maybe never quite as much as overestimating this year’s St. John’s team.
Quintessential A-Rod: The only active player to attend Michael Weiner’s funeral in November (which itself is a disgraceful commentary on active players), then he names Wiener in his complaint Monday.
Rage all you want about Tom Hanks getting snubbed by the Academy, but I can’t believe any actor anywhere in the world did a better job in 2013 than Robert Redford, the one-man cast of “All is Lost.”
If we can’t get a championship basketball team to call New York City home anytime soon, can’t we at least have one as fun to watch as the L.A. Clippers one of these days?