Hey, Daily News

[Guest AG/DC]

Yankee Stadium is 32 years old. Shea is 44. Deal with it.

[Benjamin Grimm]

Nobody seems to understand that simple fact! It's become more and more frustrating as the years have gone by.

What really kills me is that the Yankees have 15 years to work on the next falsehood so that they can celebrate the Stadium's 100th Anniversary in 2023.

And THEN, twenty years after that, they'll complain that they're playing in a 120-year-old ballpark and need something new.

[Guest AG/DC]

It took about three years to make it clear to my brother. He came around in his own time.

But he isn't in the fact business.

[seawolf17]

ESPN had one of those fucking pop-up timeline "HISTORY OF THE HOUSE THAT RUTH BUILT" pieces of crap the other day, and if you look in the mid-70s, there's a two-year period where it says that they demolished most of the old stadium.

Fucking hell, man! If you're going to acknowledge that the reconstruction happened, then that's a new stadium! Sickening.

[metirish]

Yeah it's all pure bollox. Lupica yesterday and today with sill articles on the place , I'll sound very petty here but I am happy that they didn't get to have opening day yesterday, yeah they'll have it tonight but it's not the same, Steinbrenner had a bunch of hotshot friends over and even had silly commemorative baseball caps made up for it.

[Benjamin Grimm]

seawolf17 wrote: Fucking hell, man! If you're going to acknowledge that the reconstruction happened, then that's a new stadium! Sickening.

Usually the word I hear is "refurbished."

Which, I assume, means knocked down and rebuilt.

I mean, just look at photos of the original stadium and the current one. It's clearly a different building.

On the UMDB, when the time comes, I'll be referring to the current stadium as "Yankee Stadium II" and the new one as "Yankee Stadium III." It will be a small voice of sanity amid all the misrepresentation.

I wonder if I'll get any (or many) complaints about it?

[Guest attgig]

who cares? it's going to get demolished soon all the same...

[Guest AG/DC]

From the tone of the posts, I'm pretty sure I care.

seawolf, irish, Grimmy, they seem to care also.

[soupcan]

It has always been the same playing field in the Bronx though hasn't it?

Or at least on the exact same spot.

[stevejrogers]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: On the UMDB, when the time comes, I'll be referring to the current stadium as "Yankee Stadium II" and the new one as "Yankee Stadium III." It will be a small voice of sanity amid all the misrepresentation. I wonder if I'll get any (or many) complaints about it?

Interestingly the Yankees Media Guide do make a distinction between Yankee Stadium I (1923-1973) and Yankee Stadium II (1976-2008) in terms of records, accomplishments, etc. So this is probably more of a media issue than the Yankees PR department.

Yes I know the Yankees did have the 75th Anniversary thing and all, but for the most part the Yankees do officially acknowledge that Yankee Stadium is two seperate buildings.

[Fman99]

Seriously, I almost never read any commentary from the NY Papers anymore. The pro-MFY bias is too palpable.

I'll take my commentary from national outlets and bloggers, thanks.

[Frayed Knot]

I'm usually the first to caution fans against citing mainstream press outlets as being anti-[their team] and pro-[the other guys] as it always sounds just so childish.

But the Daily News and the Yanx have become so inter-twined with cross-promotions in recent years; between the in-booth radio presence at each game; the in-paper contests and give-aways; to Torre and all his commercials for the NYDN; or columnists like Bondy openly wearing his bleacher bum status on his sleeve, and it all becomes too much to ignore.
Simply from a journalistic/conflict of interest standpoint there's no way a paper should agree to that sort of stuff but, considering the state of newspapers these days, they probably just justify it as a survival tactic at this point.

[Benjamin Grimm]

It has been over the top with the Daily News and the Yankees. (Those "our greatest Yankees" photo inserts go directly into my recycling bin.) But recently there's been a "Take Your Kids to Shea For Free" promotion on the front page of the News. I thought I had picked up a copy of the wrong newspaper.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

The News today devoted nearly all of Page 3 -- that's like the best real estate in the whole paper -- to a story about a wine expert comparing the Yankee wines to the Red Sox wines (you know the ones with Posada & Abreu on the label) without even mentioning the company also has Met ones available.

That the wine expert preferred 2 MFY wines was the hook of course; a call of even-steven would not have been a story at all.

[Guest AG/DC]

Talk about advertorial. My God, Magnum.

[Benjamin Grimm]

We need a few years of the Mets winning pennants and the Yankees in third or fourth place.

I don't really care much about tabloid attention anymore, but it would still be nice to see the Yankees relegated to being the second team in town. They were solidly in that spot when I started rooting for the Mets in 1971. It seemed to me to be the natural order, which was then restored in the mid-80's.

I wish those last four championships hadn't happened. (Especially the fourth one!) The Mets lost this town by sucking so badly in the early 90's. Even though they were starting to emerge from it by 1996, it was too little too late to avoid getting rolled over by the Jeter Renaissance.

[nymr83]

Just pick up The Post instead, Johan Santana Front AND Back pages. When were the Mets last on the FRONT page?

[Benjamin Grimm]

Santana's on the front page of today's Daily News.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

I much prefer the Snooze to the Post, and pay an xtra 25 cents daily to get one, tho the post did include MBTN along with a Pulitzer winner in their Required Reading column this weekend. And as far as I know, no money changed hands to make that happen.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/03302008/postopinion/postopbooks/required_reading_104119.htm

[nymr83]

it was upside down at my newsstand this morning so i didnt notice, needless to say i dont buy it.

as for yankee stadium anyone with a brain knows this building is only ~30 years old.

But the Mets are 1-0!! who cares about the fantasies of yankee fans

[Guest AG/DC]

John Cougar Lunchbucket wrote: I much prefer the Snooze to the Post, and pay an xtra 25 cents daily to get one, tho the post did include MBTN along with a Pulitzer winner in their Required Reading column this weekend. And as far as I know, no money changed hands to make that happen. http://www.nypost.com/seven/03302008/postopinion/postopbooks/required_reading_104119.htm

Great Scot!

[Frayed Knot]

It's not the attention or amount of ink that bothers me. The Yanx earned the attention by winning four times in five years and consistently being on top for over a decade.

The problem is one where a media outlet has allowed themselves to enter into such a near total symbiotic relationship with a team that it purports to cover that all claims of credibility are - at best - called into question and at worst totally out the window.
That the current stadium is barely 3 decads years old and not the 80+ y/o 'shrine' they're selling as is being ignored because it doesn't satisfy the mutual back-scratching relationship that both halves hope will bring up lots of profit this year.

[Benjamin Grimm]

The Daily News isn't the only entity pushing the 85-year thing though, are they?

[nymr83]

NY Post wrote: Mets by the Numbers by Jon Springer and Matthew Silverman (Skyhorse) Baseball is a game of numbers and as the Mets open their 46th season (tomorrow in Florida), devoted fans can spend the team's off days soaking up the heaps (Danny Heep's number was 25) of information in this happily obsessive, 303-page book subtitled "A Complete Team History of the Amazin' Mets by Uniform Number." One example of trivia Required Reading didn't know: Two players with the same first name wore No. 18 - Darryl Strawberry and Darryl Hamilton

[Benjamin Grimm]

George Vecsey in the New York Times gets it right:

]Monday�s rainout at Yankee Stadium, for example, figures to be the last rainout of the actual opening day at the intermediate Yankee Stadium (1976-2008), not to be confused with the original Yankee Stadium (1923-1973).

Maybe they should have had Vecsey vet that John McCain expose a few weeks ago.

[Benjamin Grimm]

The Associated Press gets it wrong:

]Christened by Babe Ruth with a home run on opening day in 1923, the big house in the Bronx is set for its final season.

[Benjamin Grimm]

And this article on MLB.com is full of gag-worthy material:

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article_perspectives.jsp?ymd=20080311&content_id=2418522&vkey=perspectives&fext=.jsp

[nymr83]

Its hard to blame MLB.com though, I'm sure they are simply parroting each club's PR department.

The AP should really be above that.

[metirish]

Ian O'Connor gets all mushy , does mention the massive renovation so points for that.

I'll Miss You

[Guest AG/DC]

It wasn't a renovation.