A Fan

I'm not sure how widely know this is but the term fan actually started out as short for fanatic, and when it comes to the Yankees I'm certainly that. Last year was the final year for the storied Yankee Stadium. It was only one of the three remaining pre World War II ballparks in America, the other two being in Boston and Chicago. But Yankee Stadium wasn't what it once was. A renovation in the 70's stripped out a lot of life and left much of the stadium looking bland and generic. But it was never the architecture that made me love Yankee Stadium it was the history. Seeing the ballplayers of today stand were Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, and Mantel stood was always what made it special. When I got back to the US me and my dad drove up to New York to see a game at the new stadium. Built right across the street from the old one. While the old one is scheduled for demolition, it will become a park, right now both stadiums are right next to each other. The new stadium may lack the history, former Yankee coach Joe Torrie had the great line that he wasn't worried about the spirits of Yankee Stadium the team had enough money to bus them over, the new stadium is beautiful. It looks sort of like a monument like one of the buildings along Constitution.

Inside it's just as nice with light colored stone replacing a lot of the ominous concrete of the last stadium. It's also much wider inside and the whole thing seems better designed to deal with the crowds. There are even funnily enough a group of workers there who stand around with signs asking if they can help you, certainly not what you expect to see in New York. The food is also much improved. It's still the amazing outrageous baseball prices, but to be far even the awful Nationals are charging near nine dollars a beer these days. New York law requires the calories be posted for all fast food and knowing that the nachos have 1500 calories doesn't exactly wet your appetite. The best food we found was actually sushi, and while sushi from a baseball park doesn't necessarily sound like a good idea it was made right in front of us and actually pretty good. The game was a lot of fun too as the Yankees have been playing really well all season. Back in China now that the playoffs are going on I've been getting up really early to listen to all the games online. The wired sleep schedule this has put me on is playing a little havoc with my mood but at least so far they've been winning. The games have been really great also with the last one lasting 5 hours and 13 innings. Unfortunately the next game starts at 4:15am my time, well at least the playoffs won't last forever.