By Soup
The baseball world is dull. Let's ridicule something. How about the national baseball press and their love for the Yankees? It's a bit unoriginal, but it will do. Oh good, the AP wrote just the story for it.
Yanks move plate, pitching rubber to new stadium
By Verena Dobnik, Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK -- During the Yankees' last game at their old stadium in September, players dug their hands into the ballpark dirt to take some home along with the memories.
Wait. Old stadium? The Yankees are taking down Yankee Stadium? Why is this the first I'm hearing about this?
"On a hushed, rainy field Saturday..."
Oh, God.
"...a group of Bronx youths and a few former stars used shovels to dig into the soil around home plate and the pitcher's mound, filling dozens of blue and white buckets."
This is news.
"Workers then removed the plate and pitcher's rubber, and the group walked across the street to the Yankees' shining new stadium to mix the old dirt with the new."
No, this is news. No it is. Despite constant grounds crew work and the 1970s remodeling that lowered the playing field about seven feet and moved the entire field forward...the home plate, pitching mound, and dirt are the exact same. The exact same. Nothing has ever changed since Yankee Stadium invented dirt. Every fiber of this dirt has been enriched with the blood, sweat, tears, and spilled beers of so many Yankee greats. History. Tradition. Coliseum. Black and white pictures. Americana.
"Gabriel Nieves shoveled about 5 pounds of dirt from the home plate into his pail."
That's it? Just the five pounds, Gabriel? I thought you were a fan.
"This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It’s something you remember forever,” the 15-year-old said as he moved dirt with about 60 other youths, joining former Yankees David Cone, Paul O’Neill, Scott Brosius and Jeff Nelson.
Oh, these were the few former "stars" mentioned early. I'm glad that the Yankees rolled out their pinstripe royalty for such an historic dirt moving occasion.
"Nieves’ mother, Audrey, watched the ceremony with tears streaming down her face."
Tears, rain, same thing.
"Cone, a member of the Yankees’ 1998 World Series championship team who pitched a perfect game at the Stadium a year later, stared Saturday at the hole in the ground after a worker pulled up the rubber."
He just stared at a hole in the ground. A hole, people. And staring at it...the hole. That's emotion. If the "stared at a hole" doesn't pull on your heart strings...well you're probably that jackass in the theater that didn't cry with the rest of us at Mr Holland's Opus. For this twas not just a hole. It was a black hole. A void. A place where the heroes of our youth, our parents youth, and our grandparents youth came to pitch. Now gone. History. Important dirt.
"Glancing up at the bleachers, the 45-year-old added with a smile, “That’s where the ‘Bleacher Creatures’ would yell our names, and the bleachers shook during games.”
Wait, the "Bleacher Creatures" were up there...in the...bleachers? Quite appropriately named they were...and sarcastically ironic.
"Take the memories from this stadium, add it to the new memories that come with the new Yankee Stadium and continue to pass them on from generation to generation,” team captain Derek Jeter said at the time.
I was worried there for a second. I was almost to the end of the article and I didn't have one Derek Jeter quote. What? It was a quote he said from a while ago? No matter, I'm sure he had a legitimate excuse for why he couldn't attend the dirt moving ceremony and given a live quote. A busy man, that Jeter.
"In the new field, part of a $1.3 billion stadium set to open in April, Nieves helped set down the home plate, dreaming about his future as an engineer: “Maybe I’ll help build the next Yankee Stadium."
What? You said earlier that moving this dirt was a once in a lifetime experience, but now you're hoping to build the new stadium? I thought new stadiums only happen once a lifetime? Liar.
"Later on Saturday, 17-year-old Omar Liriano stood proudly in the subway with his shovel and bucket. Inside, wrapped in plastic, was something special he was taking home—a mound of dirt from the old Yankee Stadium.
“I’m, like—wow,” he said with a grin. “I’ll keep it at home in a jar.”
Yes you'll naively keep it in a jar until you have to move out of your room in your parents house and realize that it's worth nothing.
We should be the better people, but come on. It's the Yankees and we're bored
3 comments:
Old yankee stadium was a complete dump, collapsing in on itself. The fans are the worst kind of reub and Scott Brosius was a completely inadequate player on a bad A's team but had a few nice games in the world series and is now a "former yankee's star." C'mon, that is like saying Jay Canazaro is an all time Twins great.
Gardenhire got 1 first place vote for manager of the year for the AL.
Pat -
soup wrote this, but yes I'll take credit for it. I've started to sour on my 'cynical voice'
but the fact is I can't write much of anything that's not cynical, especially in fucking November. Worst month ever.
Maybe next year, we can be the ones who cry at the dome as we dig up home plate and then put it into the new stadium. The media would love it.
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