NED MASSEY'S

"FOUR MESSAGES"

An Appreciation

By Steve Ludwig

There's a big locked door

But you have the key

       

                                                                         -"Visitation Day," Ned Massey

Does God exist? If so, what kinds of signs does He send us to let us know of His existence? Is an insect landing on a windowsill a sign, or is it, simply, an insect landing on a windowsill and nothing more?

Ned Massey, singer/ songwriter/ actor, asks and answers these (and other) questions in his incredible play, FOUR MESSAGES.

Last night, along with my friend Evan Ginzburg, I had the privilege of attending Ned's play at Studio Theater on Theater Row, 410 42nd St., NYC.

I first learned of Ned Massey through Evan. I saw a post by Evan on Facebook about one of Ned's CD's, Bloodties.

I downloaded the album and was immediately hooked. There wasn't a clunker in the bunch. I'm a music lover, and was ashamed of myself; how come I hadn't heard of Ned Massey until only a few months ago? He's been recording for the past thirty years. The late John Hammond, the legendary producer who discovered Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen (among others) put Ned on a songwriting par with both Dylan and Bruce. 

Why hadn't I learned of Ned until only recently?

My question was answered by Ned in Four Messages.

An intimate, sixty-seat theater houses the play. We sat in the second row; Ned and his fellow actors and musicians, Sarah Hund and Christopher Sutton, were practically within arm's length while on the stage. What a way to experience a play!

Four Messages is the true story of Ned's life's experiences, thus far. His story is certainly bittersweet (to say the least).

He grew up in a Catholic household, and, although I promise not to give up any spoilers, suffice to say, Ned has questioned & embraced, embraced & questioned God's existence more than a few times throughout his life in music.

He cites four specific moments in his amazing true story in which he received "messages" from God.

Ned sings songs from his music catalog, with an emphasis on songs from Bloodties and A Brief Appearance (which I've listened to twice already today). Both of these CD's were available at the performance. (Before the show began, Ned let all of us in the audience know that the CD's are there, take them if you want, at no cost [wow!!], or you can leave any donation you'd like. Well, I had already downloaded Bloodties, so I anxiously took A Brief Appearance. I figured out what it would have cost me to buy the CD online, added on the shipping, then tacked on an additional five bucks and gladly put my money in the donations bucket. I urge all of you to do the same; please support the independent arts.)

The very cool, albeit spare, scenery is very creative. Clever use of guitars and Polaroid snapshots, a few chairs and a table are it; but that's all that's needed.Ned, Sarah, and Christopher create the rest of the images through Ned's words.

I was really happy to hear that my two favorite songs from Bloodties, "The Car Swerved"  and "In the Park" were included among the play's songs.

The first half of the play featured Ned playing guitar, singing (a breathtaking voice), as well as narrating between songs; Sarah accompanied superbly on violin, and Christopher, equally superb, played the second acoustic guitar. They also sang backup to Ned's lead vocals.

At strategic points in the play (and in his life), Ned speaks directly to God; and yes, he receives His answer.

The second half features Christopher and Sarah, playing the parts of Ned and his wife Kate, while Massey sits effectively and silently, on stage in full view of us. As the characters of Ned and Kate sing and act out Ned's life in heart-wrenching fashion, Massey interjects at key moments. His sad, almost dejected, countenance communicates his life's worth of angst to the point where I could hear audience members sniffling away the tears.

As promised, I won't offer any spoilers here. I hope you'll be able to experience Ned's brilliance just as all of us in last night's audience did. 

If not, treat yourself; purchase Ned's music. Each song offers a personal glimpse into this, at times, tortured, artist's psyche.

I can't wait to see Ned (as well as other artists) in producer Evan Ginzburg's upcoming film, THE STAGE IS MY ALTAR.

In the meantime, listen to Ned Massey's recent interviews on Evan Ginzburg's Legends Radio.net as well as The Rendezvous Radio Show with Cris and Alysia. Search the shows' recent archives to find the interviews.

I'm hoping after FOUR MESSAGES' current run, Ned will continue to present his incredible story at other venues.

You still have time to catch it. It runs through May 4 at its present location: 410 42nd. St., NYC.

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So, hey, why not check out my radio show? You'll have fun...I promise!! www.PlanetLudwig.com

THANKS TO ALL OF YOU FOR THE OVER-17,000 PAGE VIEWS.

FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER: www.Twitter.com/LudGuy

Hey, did you know I survived quintuple open-heart bypass surgery, and I had the nerve to think it was funny?

  Well, it's all in my first book, SEE YOU IN CCU: A LIGHTHEARTED TALE OF MY OPEN-HEART SURGERY.

It's available at www.PlanetLudwig.com

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My brother Tom, aside from being a wiseguy, has a blog also! Together with his buddy since second grade, they debate all things political, sports, and pop culture. It's called Second Grade Minds:

www.secondgrademinds.wordpress.com

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As always, thanks for reading and good health to you all!

   -Steve Ludwig

"LET'S SHUFFLE WIMPY TO THE CHAIR"

From my book,  SEE YOU IN CCU

 A LIGHTHEARTED TALE OF MY OPEN-HEART SURGERY

By Steve Ludwig

The following is from Chapter Nine:

That first night after the procedure was, by far, the haziest, most surreal time of my entire hospital stay.

It was 2:15 early Saturday morning, almost a full day since my operation. It was at that time when two of my nurses lost their minds.

They came to my bed and told me it was time for me to walk from my bed to the recliner chair. Huh? I thought I had a few more months before considering actually moving. And how they were going to accomplish this impossible feat was completely lost on me. I couldn't even blink my eyes without fear of my chest staples popping open, and they want to MOVE MY BODY?

I was sure they had the wrong patient.

Does the doctor know they're going to do this? Who gave the OK? I want to talk to my congressman! Who is my congressman, anyway?

Are these two even real nurses? Maybe they're a couple of those cheese-eating candy stripers they allow to walk around this joint.

When the nurses positioned themselves on each side of my bed, I knew I was doomed. So this is how I'm going to die: trying to move.

That chair had to be two whole feet away! But there was no fighting it now. I didn't have the power to resist.

"OK, sweetie, slide over little by little." They were talking nicely because they knew I was going to die; I was on to their little game.

Me? Slide over? I was scared to breathe too hard, and they wanted me to slide over.

Somehow I did it.

The nurse on my right side gently slid her arm behind my head. Oh, no, what good can possibly come out of this?

"We're going to sit up on three." WE are going to sit up on three?

"One, two, three."

I gave my obligatory "uggghhh" moan. The other nurse swung my legs slowly over the side of the bed.

It suddenly occurred to me that they knew exactly what they were doing. They hadn't lost their minds; I had lost mine.

I relaxed a bit, yet I was pretty sure the step down from the bed to the floor would end my life.

It didn't.

Instead, I was miraculously standing straight up, with each one of these marvelous nurses holding an arm, tenderly yet securely.

"OK, little steps now."

I kind of shuffled two steps, my tubes and intravenous bag following alongside. I sat down in the chair, tentative as ever, positive that everything would splat apart. My nurses placed a blanket over my lap, reclined my chair back a bit, soothing me in the process.

"We'll be right outside." They left, closing the curtain behind them; and there I sat, completely still. Without moving my head, I darted my eyes back up to the clock: 2:25. What a traumatic ten minutes!

Sitting in the chair, I was so afraid I'd hurt myself by moving the wrong way. I was convinced that if I twisted the least bit, my staples would come out, the wires that held my ribcage together would shift apart and become misaligned and heal wrong, my stomach and intestines would spill out and drip into my urine bag. While I was at it, I wondered if my visitors would be able to see that bag of pee. Was it hidden? Who cares? I just had heart surgery!

By the way, some friendly advice if you ever have a hospital stay: Leave your pride in the lobby when you first get there. The quicker you learn not to care what part of your body the nurses see, the more enjoyable the overall experience will be.

Scared to move because of the whole stomach-and-intestines thing, I sat virtually motionless in my recliner for at least an hour. I was perched on a bothersome, wrinkled overturned part of my hospital gown. But I was convinced that this fold on my butt wasn't anywhere as uncomfortable as it would have been if I had moved to fix the wrinkle. That's the type of logic I dealt with in those first few days after my procedure.

I eventually was helped out of the recliner with each nurse again grasping an arm.

"Wait, hold it, OK, hold it, wait, it hurts, wait." I moaned and groaned my way throughout the entire twenty-four-inch journey back to bed.

I had hoped to make my nurses' jobs as easy as possible. Sue, my wife, would come home from her hospital with tales of difficult, uncaring patients; so out of respect for  Sue and all the nurses with whom she shares her profession, I didn't want to be one of those difficult patients. I needed to be a good one.

But I knew it wasn't working. I was doing the best I could, but I felt like such a failure. I was so weak, so dependent on my nurses. Without question, now I was most doubtful of my survival than at any other point leading up to this moment.

When my nurses finally put my dopey butt back into the bed, I lay there and looked at the ceiling.

How was I going to be able to do things on my own, ever, in my life? I'd never get better. 

I couldn't wait to get into a traditional room on the regular cardiac floor where I could have a phone. I missed talking to my dad. Of course, Sue had been updating him all day with calls to his home down the Jersey shore, but I wanted to hear his voice with my own ears. Mom had passed away two years before, but we still had Dad, and I longed to speak with him.

But I couldn't even speak with my own father because of the shape I was in. I didn't want to be here.

Soon enough, I felt that syringe empty its magical liquid into my shoulder; I knew I'd be floating within minutes. The minutes became seconds.

There I found myself again, across the universe, without a care...

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And hey! I have a pop culture radio show called STEVE LUDWIG'S CLASSIC POP CULTURE. All the shows are archived, so if you'd like to check it out, here's the site:

                              www.PlanetLudwig.com 

I can't forget my little brother's blog~ He and his buddy since the second grade go back and forth in cyberspace about tons of pop culture topics. 

Check it out at: www.secondgrademinds.wordpress.com.

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As always, thanks to all of you who read my blogs...And thanks for the 17,000-plus page views...Good health to all of you!

Steve Ludwig  

"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!!!

Follow me on Twitter: www.Twitter.com/LudGuy

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IF YOU ENJOYED READING THIS BLOG, WOULD YOU BE SO KIND AS TO CONSIDER BUYING MY FIRST BOOK? IT'S CALLED SEE YOU IN CCU - A LIGHTHEARTED TALE OF MY OPEN-HEART SURGERY. WHY, IT'S FUNNY (SO I'M TOLD).  BUY IT DIRECTLY FROM MY WEBSITE: www.PlanetLudwig.com

 PLEASE LOOK FOR MY SECOND BOOK, FEELING WELL: SURVIVING LIFE AND STUPID PUNS, coming sometime!!!!!!!!!!!

IN MY NEW BOOK, I'LL TALK MORE ABOUT THE YANKEES, THE BEATLES, MY LOVE OF HORROR MOVIES, BEING IMPALED BY MY YOU-KNOW-WHERE ON A TELEPHONE POLE AT FOUR YEARS OLD...YOU GET THE IDEA.

And, oh yeah~ I have a radio show! It's called STEVE LUDWIG'S CLASSIC POP CULTURE. It's fun and groovy! Check it out at www.PlanetLudwig.com.

MY BROTHER TOM ALSO HAVE A BLOG. WON'T YOU CHECK IT OUT? HE AND HIS BUDDY SINCE SECOND GRADE WRITE ABOUT POLITICS, SPORTS, AND ALL THINGS POP CULTURE. IT'S CALLED "SECOND GRADE MINDS," AND IT'S AT www.secondgrademinds.wordpress.com.

As always, thank you so much for reading my blogs We're up to over 17,000 page views from over 18 countries.

Good health to you all! Steve Ludwig

"THE OLD YANKEE STADIUM

VS.

THE NEW YANKEE STADIUM"
Part One

By Steve Ludwig

With Special Guest Co-Blogger,

Joe Potente

I can feel life starting to make sense again; spring training has begun!

So I felt it was time to team up with my buddy and fellow die-hard Yankee fan, Joe Potente, and decide which is better: the old Yankee Stadium or the new Yankee Stadium. 

Now just to be clear, this isn't about old Yankees teams or players vs. present-day players; it's about the two buildings.

Here we are at that last, bittersweet game at the old Yankee Stadium, September 21, 2008:

To get to the bottom of this burning question, we did what any decent Yankee fans would do: we went to a bar to discuss it.

So the other day, after spending an hour or so at J & R Music World in NYC (buying things that we may actually get around to listening to before we're both dead), we found ourselves at the great Connolly's Pub and Restaurant, on 46th St.

Over chicken wings, burgers, sweet potato fries, beer and ginger ale, we started.

Joe's history of attending Yankee games goes a little deeper than mine does. He estimates he's been to somewhere between 350 to 400 games; of those, we've been to about 250-300 together.

I needed to know something from Joe before we got to the Stadium talk; I asked him for the Top Five Yankee games that's he's attended. 

He told me it was impossible to pick the top five, but he did give me five memorable games, just not necessarily his top five attended games of all time.

In no particular order, he's what he told me...

Joe remembered his first-ever visit to Yankee Stadium, on June 9, 1956, when he was 8-year-old Joey Potente. Don Larsen pitched that game, and the great Number 7, Mickey Mantle, was in the lineup. The Yankees blew an early lead and lost 15-8. But what Joe remembers most is how huge and stark the Stadium appeared to an 8-year-old. Also, there were so many support poles throughout the Stadium.

Here's a picture from 1957. It'll give you a good idea what Joe was talking about:

Joe noticed something that was missing on his first visit to Yankee Stadium: the TV and radio announcers' voices. Aside from Bob Shepard announcing each player's name as he strode to the plate, Joey P had to follow the action of the game without the play-by-play.

As I mentioned, Joe saw Mickey Mantle play at his first-ever in-person game. I couldn't forgive myself if I didn't share this picture with you of the Mick and me in 1989 (I think I'm still shaking from my nervousness of being so close to the Mick...):

Joe was also at the Chris Chambliss home run game in 1976. The Yankees vs. the Royals, American League Championship. Bottom of the ninth. Game Five. Tie game. The winner goes to the World Series against the Dodgers. Chambliss sent Mark Littell's first pitch over the right center field wall to win the game.

Joe sat with fellow Yankee maniac, Professor Al Bayley, in the first row, field level, right field foul pole!

You can imagine the hysteria that ensued. I asked Joe if he or Al were among the delirious fans who stormed the field as Chambliss struggled to circle the bases. He said they took one look at the way fans were being knocked over and slugged by fellow fans, and decided they'd stay right where they were to take it all in.

There are Joe and Al...See 'em? See 'em?

A cool sidelight to the story is how Joe got the tickets to the game. In those days, fans had to mail in their playoff ticket requests via traditional mail. Payment in an envelope had to be postmarked before 12 noon on a specified date. So Joe did just what a Yankee fan had to do: he took a personal day from work, and posted his envelope at the Grand Concourse office, the post office closest to Yankee Stadium. It worked...

July 1, 2004. Yankees - Red Sox... Derek Jeter's catch of Trot Nixon's pop up in fair territory. Jeter's momentum carried him into the third-base seats.

Sitting one level above on the third base side, almost directly even with Jeter's dive was...you guessed it, our favorite Yankee fan, Joe Potente. Not only was the play a memorable one for Joe, but the game itself stands among Joe's favorites that he attended. The Yankees went on to win the game in 13 innings on John Flaherty's game-winning hit.

Yankee fans of a certain age will remember the 1978 World Series vs. the Dodgers as the series in which Graig Nettles made some of the most spectacular, acrobatic plays ever made by a major league third baseman. Not one, not two, but play after play after play, Nettles would kill Dodger rallies with his glove.

Joe was at two of those games, so he wanted to count the overall play of Nettles as a fourth choice of his. 

Game 4 (one of the two Joe attended) also featured the play in which Reggie Jackson stuck out his hip to prevent the Dodgers from turning a double play. But according to eyewitness Potente, Jackson's hip paled in comparison to Nettles's hands.

Up until now, these memorable games all took place at the old Yankee Stadium. Well, that stands to reason. Joe's old Yankee Stadium career began in 1956 and ended on September 21, 2008.

For his fifth memorable game (and, again, Joe made it clear to me that there's no way) he can limit the memories he's accumulated in the nearly 400 Yankee games he's attended can be encapsulated in a mere five), Joe takes us to the new Yankee Stadium (with yours truly in tow).

June 12, 2009...The first Subway Series in the new Stadium. Joe and I sat in our excellent seats: center field in the Batter's Eye seat (right above the Mohegan Sun sports bar, for those of you who know the new Stadium's setup).

Sorry Met fans, but here goes...

Bottom of the 9th, 2 outs, Yanks down 8-7 to the hated Mets. Jeter on second, Teixera on first (representing the winning run). A-Rod at the plate; K-Rod on the mound. Francisco Rodriguez pitches and gets Alex Rodriguez to lift a lazy pop to second baseman Luis Castillo. A collective moan from the Yankee fans, followed by some expletives hurled A-Rod's way. Joe's and my shoulders slumped as A-Rod blows it. Met fans are already cheering their certain victory...Castillo circles under the ball, Joe and I shake our heads disgustedly, and...

He drops the ball!! Jeter scores! Teixera scores from first! The Yankees win!

Joe and I COULD...NOT...BELIEVE...WHAT...WE...SAW... 

The range of emotions in those few seconds when the ball left A-Rod's bat to when it left Castillo's glove is what going to Yankee games is all about. 

With the combination of Yankee fans' groans to unadulterated delirium and Met fans' unadulterated delirium to groans, Joe and I both feel it could be the loudest we've ever heard the crowd in the new Yankee Stadium.

If you get a minute (1:23, to be exact) do a YouTube search for "Mets fan celebrates too early in Yankee Stadium EPIC FAIL "put it in the books".

It's a fan-made video from the stands at the moment Castillo drops the ball. It'll give you an excellent feel for what it was like.

(Or copy and paste below:)

http://youtu.be/Jy0tBBVhBAw

So there you have five memorable games attended by Yankee Fan Supreme, 

Dr. / Professor Joseph Potente. After talking about these five games, our attention returned to the task at hand...

OK,  what was the result of our discussion of which is better, the old Stadium or the new Stadium?

I guess you noticed at the top of the blog it reads "Part One."

Joe and I will offer our answers to which is better in Part Two, coming very soon.

Until then, we'd love to hear your comments on memorable games that you've laid witness to, in either the old or the new.

(And oh, yeah, join me in my movement to convince Joe Potente to start his own blog!)

[Follow me on Twitter:  www.Twitter.com/LudGuy]

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I'D LIKE TO THANK THOSE OF YOU WHO ARE PART OF THE 17,000 PAGE VIEWS IN OVER 20 COUNTRIES THAT MY BLOGS HAVE RECEIVED.

Listen to my cool and groovy radio show, STEVE LUDWIG'S CLASSIC POP CULTURE, at www.PlanetLudwig.com. Thanks!!

If you enjoyed reading this blog, would you kindly consider buying my first book? You can read about it (along with reviews) at www.PlanetLudwig.com.

And, hey, don't forget my brother Tom! He and his buddy since second grade have their own blog called "Second Grade Minds." Check ot out at www.secondgrademinds.wordpress.com.

And as always, thanks all of you so much for reading my blogs! Good health! -Steve Ludwig