The Gap Between Yankee Stadium
They call it the “bleachers” because the fans are bleached.
I’m a Yankee fan, but I’ve only been to one Yankee game. It was in 1998 when I went with my 6th grade class—the Yankees played the Red Sox and won. I’ve wanted to go to another game for years now but I never got around to it. With the season over and the destruction of Yankee Stadium eminent it seems I’ll never get another chance to visit the “House That Ruth Built.” As much as I love the Yankees as a team, I hate them as a corporation and the building of their new stadium brought up all the reasons why.
The building of the new Yankee Stadium was filled with controversy and became another example of corporate welfare; a billionaire like George Steinbrenner convinced public officials that the people of the city of New York should pay for his stadium.
Government subsidies are nothing new to the Yankees. The Yankees “first-fan” ex-Mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani was one public official who helped the Yankees tremendously; an article in the New York Times (“The Rings of Giuliani” 5/12/07) exposed how the Yankees paid less in rent in a year than the residents of a nearby housing project paid in a month.
That wasn’t the only time nearby residents—who make up one of the poorest congressional districts in the United States—were cheated. The stadium discussions occurred without the communities input, something that never happened before. Ultimately the new stadium will destroy arches of nearby Macombs Dam and John Mullaly Parks.
The corporate side isn’t the only frustrating thing about the Yankees, so is the social aspects of attendance.
If you ever find yourself leaving Hunter and taking the 4 train into the Bronx and see that the train is past 125th street but still ridiculously overcrowded, full of constant chatter, and filled with white people who certainly don’t look like they live in the Bronx just remember; it’s probably because the Yankees are playing.
And despite watching games on television more often than actually attending them, I pass by Yankee Stadium all the time. And every time the 4 train departs or enters the 161st Street Yankee Stadium Station I’m sure to look out for the window for the gap between Yankee Stadium. The gap, which can’t be more than five or six feet in width, is large enough to catch a quick glimpse of the action inside.
But a glimpse is all I get. The fans who attend the games hardly ever live in the Bronx, they mostly come from the Manhattan. Once the game ends they go back to Manhattan not wanting anything else to do with the Bronx, like the government officials who’d rather help the Yankees than help the poor community surrounding it.
