Repent Now Yankees, the End Is Near

As we searched for the Gate 2 entrance to queue up for the monument tour, a lonely crackpot stood with a sign, “Repent Now, There Is Only One Way.” As we walked past he yelled at any and all, “Only God can save you.” One of the three young Yankee fans in front of us asked his mates, “Yeah, but can God get the Yankees in the playoffs.”

I celebrated this Labor Day Weekend not with a trip to the union hall, but with one to old Yankee Stadium in New York City. This is the third time I have climbed aboard the train at New Carrollton station and then taken Duke Ellington’s “A” train out of Penn Station before transferring and taking the “D” up through Harlem and over to the Bronx on a reverential trip to the heart of baseball’s history.

The huge crowds and the line of a thousand fans to go through Monument Park is the particular genius of Yankee owner George Steinbrenner and now his equally wise and well-loved sons. In less than a month the demolition teams will begin to survey Yankee Stadium for their work as the grandest of old stadiums comes down and all of that history returns to dust. Fans like myself are making the pilgrimage for one last look at all that we have loved—or hated—for so long.

I grew up rooting against Whitey Ford, Mickey Mantle and the rest of them because they were my brother’s team. But I did not learn to hate the Yankees until George Steinbrenner. Still, when I was in Tampa in the 1990’s to see the Derek Jeter Yankees play a spring training game, there was no denying just how good he was and the team behind him as well. I had a grudging admiration for Steinbrenner’s team and certainly a huge respect for the tradition of Yankee Stadium. So it was with more than just a tip of the hat to all of that history that I made my first trip there in the early 1990s and even greater joy when I saw an old timer’s game a year or so later. Whitey Ford, Mickey, Mantle and DiMaggio too—as the old Tom Waits song goes. They were all there except of course Yogi.

It is all of those wonderful memories of childhood that we celebrated on this last trip to Yankee Stadium. For me it is the games of the fifties when our teacher brought a TV set to school so we could all watch the seventh game of the World Series between the Dodgers and Yankees. It is all of those great World Series from that era. You do not have to take the tour of the monuments to feel the ghosts of baseball’s legends walking beside you in Yankee Stadium.

The ghosts are there to remind you that once upon a time baseball was THE game in America. The golden age of baseball lasted from the founding of the American League in 1901 until Joe Namath and the New York Jets took football over the top and made it the pre-eminent sport in the country. But there was a time when most young boys knew where there was an empty lot of some kind in which to play ball and spent their summers trying to pick up a game. It is a time that has faded and perhaps it is fair that they tear down Yankee Stadium, because the era over which it reigned has come and gone.

Still it is difficult as someone who came of age during that period to fathom how New Yorkers have allowed the demise of this unique monument to that grand tradition. Yet New York City is not one that respects the old. When the Twin Towers were still standing, the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building looked a trifle seedy in comparison and one wondered how long they would stand before some new architectural wonder arose in their stead. Now those shapes give a sense of comfort as you come up from New Jersey, and there they still are, all alone and un-rivaled. Yankee Stadium should stand like them, alongside Fenway Park and Wrigley Field. But no, New York is different.

Waiting at Gate 2 we got a full frontal view of the new Yankee Stadium nearing completion adjacent to the old. It is more like Cesear’s Palace in Las Vegas than Camden Yards in Baltimore. It has the fake gilding that would appeal only to a Steinbrenner. But lavish excess has come to be synonymous with the new Yankees. I suppose the old Yankees weren’t much different. If they needed a missing part for the pennant race, they went to Kansas City and bought one. Now they are just cheaper by the dozen.

The game against the Blue Jays was a ho-hum affair. The Blue Jays came back against the Yankees bullpen to take the game 7-6. But the fans around us were not dismayed. Robinson Cano and Pudge Rodriguez—the latest import—hit back-to-back homers, but the all-star caliber lineup is not enough for New Yorkers. They want Teixiera, if only to keep him from the Red Sox, whose fans were there in the stadium in stealth fashion, wearing Blue Jays’ jerseys so as not to incite a riot. But for all the vast wealth of the Yankees, for all the talent their money can buy, for all the gilded edifices it can raise, there is something so American about hating the Yankees.

As a Washington Nationals fan I was glad to get back home last night, glad to take a shower and feel clean again. And I know that when I go to the game at Nationals Stadium tomorrow, there will be only the paltry tradition of 1924 when we beat the New York Giants in the World Series. But for some reason I do not envy the Yankees their long and glorious tradition. They have lost Joe Torre and Don Mattingly to the Dodgers now. The only player of permanence for New York is Derek Jeter. I wonder if he would ever wear another uniform.

I am going to bet against it. For me as a fan, one of the greatest memories will be Cal Ripken breaking Gehrig’s record there more than a decade ago. I am betting that Derek Jeter has more in common with that moment and will prove out that there are still great players and great traditions alive in baseball. They cannot all be bought and sold. They cannot all be torn down like Yankee Stadium or Barry Bonds.

I am hoping that Derek Jeter will opt for that old Yankee tradition—the one that made me take that last trip to the Big Apple yesterday. So turn back Derek, repent!! The sinners of New York need you as do we all. We need to believe in that old Yankee’s magic, that old time baseball religion we knew and loved so long ago.