ASG Lasting Impressions: Good Riddance, Yankee Stadium

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The first game I ever attended in Yankee Stadium was a Yanks-Blue Jays contest back in 2000. Including this week, I’ve been back about eight times, and every visit between that first one and now I’ve thought the same thing: This place is a dump. ↵↵Sure, there is something to be said for the history of the place and the legends who played there, but none of that goes away by bulldozing the stadium. It all still happened and it all still exists. Visitors to the stadium shouldn’t have to pay top dollar for a bottom of the barrel facility because Babe Ruth once hit homeruns there. The concourses are filthy, narrow, white-walled tunnels that make you feel like you’re trapping in a mental health facility and about two steps from a full-fledged panic attack. There are no sightlines whatsoever to the field from anywhere, except of course, your seats. The ramps are prehistoric and have no windows or openings to the outside world, forcing fans to hike up the stadium through stagnant summer air. Naturally, this causes us fat Americans to sweat, adding to the lovely smell of the place. ’Duk from Big League Stew can attest to this claim: The bathrooms in the stadium are the foulest smelling places on earth. I’d rather someone knock over a port-a-john with me in it than ever go back into one of those.↵

↵↵Obviously, this is all coming from a non-Yankee fan -- and from someone who liked RFK enough to be upset when the Nats moved to their new stadium -- but it’s time to move on. Yankee Stadium doesn’t have the charm of Fenway (and, I’d imagine Wrigley, although I’ve never been). It’s just an out-dated cement block whose only redeeming quality is what once happened on the field carved into the middle of it. ↵

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