"THE OLD YANKEE STADIUM

VS.

THE NEW YANKEE STADIUM

Which Is Better?"

Part 2

By Steve Ludwig
With Special Guest Blogger,
Joe Potente

When Joe and I talk about the old Yankee Stadium vs. the new, there's a big part of us that is also talking about "Yankee Tradition" within the new Yankee Stadium.

OK, so let's get right to it.

Joe Potente and I, two veteran Yankees fans, say the old Yankee Stadium is better than the new Yankee Stadium. 

They tore down a cathedral and replaced it with a cold, corporate building.

Of course, the Yankees don't have a monopoly on cold, corporate buildings. Pretty much, any professional sports conglomerates that have "upgraded" (notice the quotation marks) their venues are cold and corporate.

But we're not talking about just any professional sports company-- we're talking about  THE NEW YORK YANKEES!! 

Babe Ruth (sorry Red Sox fans), Lou Gehrig, Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, Thurman Munson, Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera...

The new Yankee Stadium is impressive-looking from the outside. And inside, its seats are much more comfortable and it's certainly easier to walk around the Stadium's areas. I especially like the facade encircling the inside:

But for a fan, experiencing a baseball game live is much more than looks and accessibility. And this is where the new Stadium pales in comparison to the old; there is no atmosphere! There's no buzz!! How can this many people not sound loud, even while screaming at the top of their pin-striped lungs?...

I don't know why the acoustics of Yankee Stadium Two stink, but you don't feel the Stadium shake, you don't feel your eardrums ringing after one of those "Yankee moments," like you did in the old Stadium.

The powers-that-be (the Steinbrenner kids) have cow-towed to the bigshots who use a Yankees game to conduct a business meeting, with practically no thought to us true, loyal fans. Hell, they've even created a moated section of seating around the infield, separating the corporate biggies from us other fans-- the soul of the Yankees. And as Joe P. has so clearly pointed out to me, those expensive seats are empty throughout most of the game anyway. Oh sure, they've been paid for; it's just that the butts that are supposed to be sitting in them are usually seated in one of the Stadium restaurants, talking about everything except the Yankee game they're attending. 

I love when I listen to a Yankee game on the radio, and John Sterling or Suzyn Waldman tells me, "Not an empty seat in the Stadium." Except for the 5,000-10,000 that are empty surrounding the infield. (If you've ever wanted to experience two Yankees games at once, watch the same game on TV with the sound down and the radio on. What you're seeing and what you're hearing are often two different things.)

Don't get me wrong, I could sit in those premium seats...for a mere $300 per seat, which is the face-value. And who the heck can get one of those seats at face-value? They've been claimed way in advance. Wanna sit there? Get scalped, my fellow Yankeemaniac! A middle-class family can't afford to sit there! Add to that the $35 to park your car, the Carvel ice cream whose servings are much smaller than in the old Yankee Stadium (and trust me, I know of what I speak when it comes to Carvel ice cream!), the way- overpriced food (although the Lobel steak sandwiches at 15 bucks are delicious...even though the soft rolls they're served on irk Joe Potente), and the souvenirs...

The bleacher seats are certainly affordable; just make sure you don't get stuck with the obstructed-view bleacher seats. Yes, you read right. This new "improved" Yankee Stadium Two has obstructed-view seats! How could they do that? 

I'll tell you how; they don't care about us real fans.
The affordable seats in the upper deck (as well as all the seats in the new Stadium) are so damn far away from the field, unlike the old Stadium. Here's how it looks from the new upper deck:

It's "Yankees tradition" in name only. Tradition Shmadition.

Yankee Stadium Two does, as I mentioned, have some positive points. The bleacher sections do connect to the rest of the Stadium, so you can buy a relatively cheap bleacher seat, and watch the game, standing, in a closer spot in the Stadium.

An important question raised by Joe Potente: Do the rich-seat men's room urinals have modesty panels between them? The upper-deck Yankee Pee Sinks don't! 

Now that pisses us off! But I digress...

Getting in Yankee Stadium Two is oftentimes Gestapo-like. Guys, you'll probably have to raise your shirts before security lets you by them. They want to check out your belly. What happened to equal rights? Let the Yankee lady fans lift their shirts! They can hide Mets water pistols just as easily as we guys can!

There is more of a food selection (Lobel's steak!!) in the new Stadium. However, it took Joe and me more than a few games to get used to the fact that a fan can buy sushi at a Yankees game. Sushi!! At a Yankee game!!...Oh, wait, that's right. The structure of Yankee Tradition came crumbling down along with the destruction of the old Stadium's physical structure.

I like the Yankee Museum in YS2. The autographed baseballs are cool...

 Thurman Munson's locker is on display...

...although if they really cared about carrying the tradition across the street from the old Stadium to the new (as Derek told us they would do after that final game at the old Stadium), they would've have put Captain Thurman's locker, untouched, in the new Yankees locker room as they did in the old locker room.

Here are Derek and the other Yankees, as seen from Joe's and my seats, waving goodbye to us after the last game at the old Stadium....The last night of that TRUE Yankee experience...

Time marches on, I understand, I get it...But let it march on in a "warmer" way, in a more "genuine fan" way...

Last year, I thought I may want to go the Morgan State - Hampton New York Urban League Football Game at Yankee Stadium. I was psyched! Tradition returns, this time to Yankee Stadium Two! So I went online to Yankees.com, ready to order tickets.

Well it turns out that bringing the tradition across the street to the new Stadium was so sincere, that I could only attend the Morgan State game if I bought a ticket to another football game at the Stadium...A game I wasn't interested in! I sent an email to the highers-up of the House That Juice Built, and explained I only wanted to buy  tickets to the Morgan State game. I wrote that I felt it was unfair to be forced to buy a ticket to the other game, that I feel I was being squeezed.

I never got a reply.

It reminds me of what the Giants and Jets fans are forced to do at PSL Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ.

When Joe and I were preparing to get together to discuss what we'd include in this blog (and in Part 1), we thought we'd make a day of it and take a tour of the new Yankee Stadium and then eat at the New York Yankee Steak Restaurant. One look online at what the tour consisted of was enough for Joe to decide NOPE! It's nothing like the tour offered in the old Yankee Stadium. Why, I remember the thrill of sitting in the very spot in the Yankee dugout where Mr. Joe Torre sat during the glory years of his tenure:

All of us Yankee fans LOVE the Yankees with an unmatched passion for other sports teams!!

In Yankee Stadium Two, we almost feel like intruders, that the "Yankee Thing" is now bigger than us, and we're not welcome.

As I stated earlier, for Joe and me (and I'll bet a good many of you Yankee fans reading this), this is not about the players and the on-field activity; it's the guise of what once was a sport which has now become almost exclusively big business.

If all of us didn't bleed pinstripes, would we make seats from the old Yankee Stadium refurbishment of 1973 a part of our home's decor, like the Potentes have?...

My family also owned a pair of these historic seats. When the original Yankee Stadium was being reconstructed after the 1973 season (the Yanks would play the '74 and '75 seasons at Shea Stadium--a sacrilege in itself), the Stadium seats went on sale for TEN DOLLARS APIECE. Fans could actually buy them for $7.50 apiece from Korvette's, if you brought 5 empty Winston cigarette crush-proof boxes with you to the store. My dear mom even switched from Marlboro to Winston for a couple weeks so we could save a few bucks!

Um, my mom switched cigarettes for us. My dad, in his work area in the basement, leaned on one of our historic Yankee seats to saw a piece of wood, and with it, the Yankee seat was partly sawed. An historic event in the Ludwig basement...

If Joe Potente (and yours truly) didn't love the Yankees, would he have this bench from the orignal first set of Yankee Stadium seats as part of his backyard?

With Joe's permission (although Joe assured me I didn't have to ask), I gingerly sat on the bench. I was sitting on a piece of history as important as any you'd find in a museum.

We fans lovingly make the Yankees a part of our homes; they're part of our families; with families come tradition.

Yankee Stadium Two and all it stands for is a cardboard reproduction of what Yankee Tradition used to be.

We love the Yankees...We love the tradition...We want it back in the new Stadium...

Thanks to Joe for his help in writing this and my previous blog. Thanks also to Joe for sharing some of his pictures with me.

And I'll say it again... JOE, IT'S TIME FOR YOU TO START A BLOG!!!

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Good health to you all! Steve Ludwig