TheSammamishWerners: Old vs New

Just a quick pictorial of my visits to the new Yankees Stadium and old Fenway Park in Boston.

Whenever I travel, I try like heck to make it out to the ballpark in whatever city I happen to be in for the following reasons: 1) I am a baseball junkie and can't get enough of it, 2) I like the history of baseball and it's many famous edifices, 3) I like to get a sense of the local culture and local urban wildlife and can think of no more appropriate venue than a baseball stadium.

All that said, I found the new Yankee Stadium and Fenway Park to be a story of complete contrasts, not unexpectedly.

Yankee stadium is magnificent, marvelous, shiny, enormous, and generally very polished. Everything about the stadium attests to the success of baseball's most dominant franchise, and everywhere you turn, there is a reminder of some moment of triumph. Highlights for me were monument park, the excellent sight lines throughout the park, and the knowledgable, enthusiastic, well mannered, and supremely confident fans. The latter came as a bit of a surprise to me given the fans' reputation, but I guess it's easy to be confident yet polite when your team just completed a 4 game sweep of the hated Red Sox and are in the process of running away with the division.

The only thing I was disappointed by is that, aside from Monument Park, which is a holdover from the old stadium, the new stadium lacked any of the usual quirky charms or interesting features that give ballparks their character, such as the coke bottle slide and McCovey Cove at the San Francisco Giants' ballpark, the Green Monster at Fenway, Lookout Landing and the children's fountain at Safeco Field, etc. All in all, I say Safeco has Yankee Stadium beat, but of course I am a homer.

Approaching Yankee Stadium from the subway

Monument Park (behind the centerfield wall)

plaques of retired Yankees legends (Reggie Jackson to the right)

former single season Home Run king Roger Maris

me and Babe Ruth

me and Joe Dimaggio

9/11 tribute

Cy Young winner Roy Halladay doing his off-day long toss exercises

the time honored tradition of pleading for and not getting autographs

very cool display of former Yankees Greats near the stadium entrance. In order: Yogi Berra, Roger Maris, Joe Dimaggio, Mickey Mantle

I went with sepia here for that nostalgic vibe

view from my seat

I always do a walk around to experience the ball park from different perspectives...

Borat says "great success"

view from the cheap seats... not bad!

Old timer trying to will a 9th inning rally. He walked around handing that tin spoon to kids and let them hit the skillet with the spoon. A nice old time tradition in this brand new stadium. Sadly for him, it didn't work, Yankees lost by 1.

Fenway park was exactly what I was hoping it to be. It was tiny, crowded, worn out, lacked most of the modern features such as a booming sound system. Perfect. The fans all seemed very tight knit and in this thing together. They have clearly given up on hopes to win the division and have shifted focus to the wild card race. Again, they were suprisingly well mannered, and very jovial. In this case, the fact that they killed the Tigers and had their ace, Josh Beckett, pitching a perfect game into the 5th probably helped matters. I don't have all that many pictures, because, frankly there isn't that much to photograph. You can pretty much capture all of the character from your seat. That said, I prefer Fenway to Yankee Stadium. There is just something so authentic feeling to Fenway Park... it is favorite place to watch a game outside of Safeco Field. Favorite moment was easily the 8th inning when the entire fan base sang along to Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline".

The seedy underbelly of Fenway Park. uh, not so good sight lines. That's ok though!