Truth in Advertising

Well, they lied to us about building a worthy successor to the Home Office for Baseball. They lied to us about opening the old place early on the last day so we could pay our respects. They even lied to us about how tall the right field fence is in the Interactive Yankeetainment Experience.

But for anyone who has wondered whether the confederacy of dunces who run our team would give us some truth, take heart: Our moment has arrived!

And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make ye free (of thy money, which thou shalt give to Steiner and the Yankees).

By the way, this probably explains why my inquiries as to buying the sign "BOX 323 A-F" off the railing in right field went ignored...except that it's not in the auction, either.

Acoustical aberrance or ultimate in fan convenience?

I've noticed something. No joke. I haven't been to the Interactive Yankeetainment Experience yet (and in fact I realized I can't make it to the one game with $5 tickets I was able to nab some seats for before the season started, so I might in fact be going back to my original vow never to set foot inside; $5 being the maximum I will spend to enter this limestone travesty), so maybe this is some sort of oddity of the TV microphones.

But...and really, this is not a joke, not based on the team's piss poor week, or on anything else. Am I the only one who has noticed that the ambient noise in the Interactive Yankeetainment experience is a medium-pitched whine akin to endless boos? Seriously, no matter what the crowd's actual reaction is, everything sounds like boos. Could it be the slats along the back of the upper deck causing the wind to whistle? I honestly have no idea, but the sound annoys the hell out of me, to the point where I can't watch a whole home game on TV.

Then again, given recent events, maybe it's just as well that the Interactive Yankeetainment Experience itself is doing the booing. After all, it saves us (well, those of us who feel like blowing a few days' pay on watching the fifth coming of the 2005 Yankees, which doesn't necessarily include me)  the trouble. Finally, a useful feature in this mafioso-wedding-factory of a ballpark.

As for tonight's game, as Tex would say, "We play today, we lose today. Dassit."

P.S.: Or is the Interactive Yankeetainment Experience telling us to hire Lou Piniella once we're done with this experiment of having a surly wax figure with a bad haircut as our manager?

Yankees Speak Out on Alleged "Empty Seats"

NEW YORK -- Responding to criticism that the Yankees have priced out many of their fans, leaving the team to play in front of thousands of empty blue seats, club president Randy Levine issued a statement claiming the empty seats are an illusion.

"It has come to my attention that some of our seats might possibly be just a little bit more expensive than people are comfortable with," Levine told reporters as he stood amongst the apparently deserted Legends seats. That's why we've been striving to provide added value for our most valued guests. All seats in the Legends Suite sections, and selected seats throughout Yankee Stadium come with a complimentary, officially licensed Yankee cloak of invisibility, and apparently some fans are so excited by this unique piece of Yankee memorabilia that they can't wait to try it on.

"It's an unfortunate misunderstanding if people think they're looking at vast swaths of empty seats, the sort of thing that might indicate a grievous overestimation on our part of how much people would be willing to spend to watch a middling baseball team. Obviously, that's not possible. We've liberated the people of the Yankee universe from the oppressive rule of old Yankee Stadium, and as such we are being treated as heroes, just as you'd expect."

Levine paused as a tumbleweed drifted by, then brought the press conference to an abrupt end. "You know something? I don't need any of you!" the former deputy mayor barked, before bursting into tears and running out of sight.

When will the lies stop?

Sometimes it's hard to tell who's telling the truth. Other times, all you need is a tape measure. This is one of those times.

Tyler Kepner reported in yesterday's Times on the right-field power surge at the Interactive Yankeetainment Experience. There are a few theories here: no more swirling winds beacuse of the un-Stadium like profile of the upper deck; a shallower fence in right-center because the fence follows a different path from the 314 sign to the 385 sign; the ghost of Babe Ruth picking up baseballs and placing them in the short porch for spite; etc.

But one thing is obvious: the fence is two feet lower. Which is funny, because as Kepner reports:

The Yankees’ president, Randy Levine, declined to be interviewed about the ballpark’s design. But the club has maintained that the field is oriented in the same direction, and that the dimensions and height of the fence are exactly the same.

That's funny...let's compare two pictures. Here is Paul O'Neill making a leap at the Stadium in the late 90s:

And here is Nick Swisher lithely hanging on the fence of the Interactive Yankeetainment Experience earlier this week:

So either (a) Nick Swisher is two feet taller than Paul O'Neill, (b) Swisher has a freakish vertical leap, or, (c) the facts prevail: The fence in the Stadium might have looked at a glance like it was the same height all the way around, but closer examination would reveal that it was in fact 10' in the right field corner, sloping down gently to 8' in center, then it was 8' the rest of the way to the left field corner. Anyone who ever went on a tour and walked the warning track could attest to that, as could anyone who ever noticed how outfielders could climb the center- and left field fences like Swisher in the picture above, but never got more elevation than O'Neill in right.

It's not a big deal, I suppose, but it would be nice if the Yankees wouldn't try to dispute an obvious fact, particularly when acknowledging it wouldn't really hurt anyone.

When Billy Crystal captures the moment...

When Billy Crystal gets it, it must be pretty obvious. It's just as well. "This Imposing Edifice" was "Destined to become the home of champions," not the home of a team capable of losing 22-4 on Saturday.

Speaking of, does anyone know if the Jacob Ruppert plaque that would be hopelessly inappropriate in the Interactive Yankeetainment Experience made it across the street? Quite frankly, I hope it didn't. The whole migration experience continues to be completely bizarre. I can't get over the way it smacks of some sort of Victorian novel, where the wealthy recluse murders his wife, marries someone else, then calls her by the dead first wife's name for the duration. If you're wondering why I continue to stick with "Interactive Yankeetainment Experience," there's your answer.

How tired am I?

I was offered a Legends seat for tomorrow's game at the Interactive Yankeetainment Experienece, and I wasn't even going to have to pony up a month's salary to pay for it, because it would have been free. I said no. I've been running at 200% of capacity for two weeks and tomorrow was (and is still) to be the day when I slept it off. I have no regrets, unless tomorrow ends up being the day Burnett makes good on the no-no promise he showed last time around. It's a long season. Maybe a further offer will be extended from the same source.

Anyway, time to get back to work, basically. Zero hour approaches.

This? THIS is the tradition you bothered to carry over?

So while the Yankees see no problem pissing all over their fans, pissing all over their history, and pissing all over the greatest cathedral the sporting world ever knew, they apparently have a problem with their fans pissing all over their shiny new urinals, at least while one of the worst renditions of any song ever recorded is being blasted over the Fan Re-Education System.

I refer, of course, to the playing of "God Bless America," as recored by Kate Smith, during the 7th inning stretch, which is easily the one tradition from the Stadium I would not have missed if they hadn't brought it over to the Interactive Yankeetainment Experience.

And yet, in an impressive display of failing to appreciate the irony of the situation, some geniuses with badges decided to teach one fan the value of the freedom he was supposed to be singing about by proving that he wasn't even free to not sing about it if he didn't feel like it. Let's say that again, slowly, for those of you who think it makes sense:

(a) It's a free country

(b) The Yankees want us to show our appreciation of (a) by blindly singing along with a 400 pound dead woman while she asks God to bless our secular undertakings, thus devaluing both God and America.

(c) In a free country, one would theoretically be allowed to go to the bathroom during such a display as (b) if so inclined.

(d) If (c) is false, then (a) is false and (b) is all the more ridiculous.

(e) The "experts" who provide "security" at "Yankee Stadium"  believe (c) is false.

(f) Does anybody else see the irony here?

Look, I love my country as much as the next guy, provided that guy doesn't drive a pickup truck and insist on pronouncing it "Amurrica," in which case, he probably loves his country more than he loves anything besides Busch Light, and that's really none of my concern. But why should I have to engage in some hollow gesture to prove it? Why should anyone have to prove it at all? Does life here on planet Earth get one iota better or worse if I'm in the john while the Yankees continue to pretend to be the Philadelphia Flyers? I sincerely doubt it. If God is that petty, why are we asking for his blessing? If the notion of "freedom" is so flimsy that I'm not even allowed to make my own decision as to whether I feel like singing a song or hitting the head, then what good is a "free" country and why should anyone bother singing about it?

Oh, and to top it all off, they couldn't even be bothered to win the ball game. Thanks, Yanks.

So much for the Designated Swisher Rule. Home, now, to the Interactive Yankeetainment Experience.

I guess I asked for it when I asked for the Designated Swisher Rule, but it looks like Nick Swisher is about to become the Yankees' everyday right fielder while Xavier Nady gets his elbow fixed. This could prove problematic if Teixiera's wrist keeps bothering him...everybody get your Stephen Colbert "WristStrong" bracelets on and try to keep Tex's wrist, well, strong.

Meanwhile, the Yankees ride a winning record into the Interactive Yankeetainment Experience, thanks to the combined efforts of the left side of their infield, Jeter driving in Ransom. Hopefully the ghosts choose to look the other way on the whole "crime against baseball and humanity" thing, and the whole so the team can continue to build on its reasonably strong start. The Curse of Clay Bellinger is enough to cope with...the last thing we need is an additional curse, no matter how understandable this one might be.

Well, remember, on April 18, 1923, the Yankees beat the Red Sox to christen Yankee Stadium, with Babe Ruth hitting the first home run. That's right, Babe Ruth hit the first, Melky Cabrera hit the last...as Hamlet would say, what a falling off was there. At any rate, 85 years from now, when they're tearing down the Interactive Yankeetainment Experience because it only has one Hard Rock Cafe and one high-priced steakhouse, whose name will be tossed about as the guy who hit the first home run, who notched that first strikeout, who killed the first rally by hitting into a DP (oh, A-Rod's not back yet, forget that one)?

Who will wax nostalgic about the good old days, when we had only one Great Hall to honor the same tradition we were simultaneously pissing all over, and we liked it? Who will tell the youngsters of 2094 what life was like when all it took to get a seat behind home plate was $2650 and a dream (i.e. between 100 and 200 times what it cost 15 years ago, mind you...is he team 200 times better?), plus the desire to watch the game through the screen, if you watched at all. 

True grandeur is understated. It cannot be ignored, but it cannot be ignored because of its imposing presence, not because of its bombastic pretentiousness. Can the Interactive Yankeetainment Experience do quiet dignity? Or any kind of dignity? I guess we'll see. Yankee Stadium was, as the Jacob Ruppert plaque said, an "imposing edifice," even as remodeled, its stony portals, muted but monumental, standing watch over all who dared enter. The tall upper deck that must have felt, to an outfielder, like it had placed its many thousands of screaming occupants directly over your head, cast long, forbidding shadows and lent a sense of drama and urgency to all that transpired below. The minuscule foul territory down the lines made the Big Ballpark in the Bronx feel like an alleyway, no escape for those mere mortals who dared ply the corners of both infield and outfield. There was no need to bash fans and players over the head with the Yankee tradition. You simply breathed it, smelled it, sensed it. You were in the presence of greatness, whether this year's team was providing it or not. No goofy oversized letters were needed inside to tell you this was Yankee Stadium. The goofy oversized letters outside were the most flamboyant the old Stadium knew how to be, which by today's standards looked like a gray flannel suit, white shirt, skinny black tie.

And speaking of that, I need to go to work. Like, now.

Oh, there's a ball game going on? Meh. Another "martini" that's not actually a martini, barkeep!

In his blog on the newly launched ESPN Chicago site, Nick Friedell extols the virtues of Wrigley Field's no-frills-itude and begs the Cubs to stick with it (I wasn't aware of any machinations by the Cubs to move out of Wrigley, so I'm guessing this is specifically in response to the Interactive Yankeetainment Experience).

I haven't made much of an effort over the years to hide my disdain for the newfangled oldfangled ballparks that hamfistedly blend syrupy nostalgia for a time that never existed with a host of unnecessary amenities designed to squeeze the most money possible out of "fans" who wouldn't know baseball if it jumped up and bit them in the personal-trained ass. So it should come as no surprise to anyone that I couldn't agree more. Following is a typical schedule for one of my visits to a night game at Yankee Stadium (the real one):

6:15: Emerge from 161 Street subway station...not the el, but the subway, because I'm not a sardine.

6:20: prove to surly usher that neither my cell phone nor my hat is a bomb; be allowed grudgingly into Stadium via Gate 6

6:21: Good-luck pilgrimage to Section 31, Box 323A, Seats 1 and 2 in honor of my late father.

6:25: Escalator to Tier level. Visit men's room.

6:30: Pick up hot dogs and drinks from concession stand in Section 25.

6:35ish: Arrive at seats, sooner if I'm on preferred right-field side; later if I'm on stupid left-field side with the losers.

6:40: Get tired of watching Yankeeography: Melido Perez on scoreboard. Eat aforementioned hot dog.

6:45: Lineups announced. Sit on hands for Alex Rodriguez, but refrain from booing him until he actually does something stupid (all in due time).

6:50: Stand up and take hat off for national anthem. Get in the middle of disputes between jingo idiots and people who forgot to take hats off with simple line, "What kind of free country is it if you're not free to leave your hat on?"

7:05: Baseball! Finally!

8:00: Root for D train in scoreboard train race, get really pissed if the 4 train wins.

9:05: In anticipation of another nauseating rendition (no pun intended) of God Bless America, head for the bathroom.

9:25: Cotton Eye Joe.

10:15: Yankees most likely lose because I'm in attendance. Still, a bad day at the ballpark beats a good day at the office. And I'm gone.

Notice all the amenities I made use of...let's see...a concession stand, a seat, and a urinal. That's all I ask. I know, I know. Give the Interactive Yankeetainment Experience a shot. I will. But with a heavy heart for memories paved over. And even if I grow to like the place, the fact remains: it will never be the same.