Hitting Them Out of the Park
This past Sunday the venerable Yankee Stadium closed its doors to the public, pulled up
home plate, and said farewell to New York. After 85 years, the home of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig will soon
be a pile of rubble and eventually the site of a city park.
The baseball stadium has been an integral part of the urban fabric of some of America's
cities for generations. The oldest, Fenway Park, has been standing smack in the heart of a Boston commercial district since 1912. Its height and brick facade fit comfortably within the context of the surrounding community. Legions of fans have traipsed through the neighborhood, bringing vitality and economic stability to the area. Boston's subway system (the oldest in the nation by the by) conveniently takes you to the Red Sox stadium, as does the commuter rail line.
The second oldest ballpark in the country, Wrigley Field, is another survivor in the ever
changing city landscape of the urban core. Built in 1914, the home of the Chicago Cubs is as firmly planted in the "Wrigleyville" community, as the steel framework of the city's "El" (the "el"evated portion of the subway). One of the smaller parks in baseball, Wrigley has become such an institution that it regularly sells out, even though it's team hasn't won a World Series since 1908 and is as much a tourist attraction as the Sears Tower observation deck. Every summer thousands of visitors take the El to the Addison subway stop, disembark, and wander through the tree-lined residential streets. Surrounded by late 19th and early 20th century brick and greystone apartment blocks, the stadium fits pleasantly in to the neighborhood.
As America's population fled the inner city for the bucolic living of suburbia, sports venues
followed the exodus. But some ball clubs were stalwarts, weathering the downturn of their city's misfortunes and then joining in on the revival of many an urban center. When the Chicago White Sox were looking for a new home in the late 1980s, a number of communities surrounding the city made very lucrative pitches to lure the team away from their gritty neighborhood, to the wide, clean expanses of the burbs. The Sox, however, decided to stay and constructed their new stadium across the street. The owners of the Yankees have done the same thing and instead of abandoning the Bronx for greener pastures, they've opted to build a state of the art facility adjacent to the old location.
On opening day, April 16, 2009, you will still take the #4 or D train to the 161st Street stop,
walk over the same sidewalks, and enter a new Yankee stadium at home in the old neighborhood.
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