While the Orioles limped through the motions en route to getting swept in the final series at Yankee Stadium, I had mixed feelings. On the one hand I felt what I was supposed to feel -- that we were witnessing a historic moment, the end of an era. To a point, I "got it."
But I also felt (and remarked so on my site) that the whole thing was kind of a joke. The Yankees as we have come to know them -- under the stewardship of George Steinbrenner -- are hardly worth celebrating, let alone gushing over. They are, in many ways, emblematic of exactly what is wrong with sports these days, and particularly baseball.
It surprised me, then, to see that the whole affair got considerably less coverage (good or bad) than I thought it might. That probably has something to do with the Yankees being relatively bad this year, and it probably has a lot to do with football season. Even so, the end of Yankee Stadium was less of a "media event" than I thought it would be.
But that doesn't mean it didn't generate a little heat.
Paul Lukas -- the creator and writer of one of my favorite websites, Uni Watch -- took the occasion of his Monday entry to veer slightly off the path of athletics aesthetics and make a few observations of his own about the Stadium. Here's a sample:
The truth: Yankee Stadium has never meant that much to me. Part of it is that I’m a Mets fan, and part of it is that the renovated stadium bears little resemblance to the original structure (which I’m old enough to have seen plenty of times on TV, although, unfortunately, I never attended a game there). But the biggest part of it is that the Yankees — and, by extension, the stadium — have become such a loathsome symbol of American corporate excess and jingoism. Even the admirable things about the organization, like the uniforms, have been waved like some idiotic flag of superiority for so long that the underlying tone is bluster, not class.
If you're not offended by some occasionally strong language, click here to read the whole post.
As important than reading the post is reading the comments below it. Paul's thoughts inspired hundreds of responses, many of which were both thoughtful and passionate. It's a great example of how sports can serve to generate discussion about something larger than just the games, the players, the numbers.
Agree with Paul or not, that's a nice thing to see.
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