The Facade: Why I Love the New Yankee Stadium

Matthew O’Connor recently wrote an excellent critique of the new Yankee Stadium for the Lohud Blog. Matthew is absolutely correct about its flaws. The worst of these flaws - the much-derided moat and the the empty seats it surrounds -all originate in design decisions slanted in favor of the 1%. These flaws reflect an obnoxious attitude on the part of some of the brass. If you think "obnoxious" is too strong a word, consider Lonn Trost's infamous defense of no longer allowing kids to watch BP at field-level before games:

      "If you purchased a suite, do you want people in your suite? If you purchased a house, do you want people in your house?"

Such comments give new meaning to the phrase "what a douche." Hopefully the Steinbrenners will mature as owners and decide it is a strategic goal for that when people talk about Yankee Stadium, they talk about its classiness, instead of being distracted by follies such as building a moat around empty seats.

But despite its imperfections, I prefer the new Yankee Stadium to the refurbished version of the old Stadium for a few reasons. Some are practical, such as the elevator system that makes it much quicker to exit the Stadium from the upper deck after a game. But if it were just a matter of the conveniences, I would pine for the charm of the old Stadium. What makes me prefer the new Stadium is that it rectifies a disastrous flaw in second version of the Stadium that opened in 1976 - the removal of the classic facade that surrounded the upper deck of the original Yankee Stadium:

Photo: http://www.evesmag.com/farewellstadiums_files/image002.jpg

When I first went to Yankee Stadium back in 1967, it was the facade that captured my vision; it gave the Stadium a classical look and feel, a palatial grace. When the rebuilt version of the Stadium emerged in 1976, the absence of the upper-deck facade left me cold, and the small facade placed behind the bleachers at first struck me as a mere parody:

Photo: http://www.ronsaari.com/stockImages/nyc/yankeeStadiumInterior.jpg

I warmed to that version of the Stadium - compared to other ballparks its charm was still immense. But I often found myself wishing they would redo the Stadium to fix this design disaster. And despite its current flaws, the new Stadium restores a classic element of Yankee Stadium that had been absent for 35 years. This is a beautiful sight:

Photo: http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.429134%21/img/httpImage/image.jpg

So yes, get rid of the moat; let people get near the field before game as is traditional; get rid of the idiotic Mohegan Sports Bar; and most of all, reset ticket prices so that Yankee fans fill up the seats near the field. But let's also relish that we can now see Yankee Stadium look like Yankee Stadium once again.