Tradition is in transition, and maybe it’s maudlin to suggest tears. From Babe Ruth, thick and salty. From Joe DiMaggio, discreet and pure. From Mickey Mantle, carrying the heady stench of the night before.Rain splattered onto Yankee Stadium for a second day, and again the 39th and last season opener here since 1923 was in jeopardy. OK, it’s sappy to suggest the guys in pinstriped paradise might have been responsible.
Yet even as the sellout crowd of 55,112 cheered the clouds away and the Yankees defeated the Toronto Blue Jays 3-2 Tuesday night, memories were inescapable. Even as construction crews finished up a day’s work next door on the nearly completed $1.3 billion new Yankee Stadium, melancholy was the pervasive theme.
“It’s what, 100 yards away? It’s not too far for the ghosts to go,” shortstop Derek Jeter said. “It will be up to us as players to start a new tradition at the next place.”
My wife wants to get me up there for a game this season for my 5oth birthday, but I made sure to emphasize that I would be fine just taking a tour of the old ballpark. I'm not as big a fan of the Bombers as Kuffner, but I've been to their spring training home in Tampa, which is a carbon copy of Yankee Stadium field-wise (right down to the sprinkler heads in the outfield). Billy Crystal's "61*" gave me a real sense of that '60's-era team, and when the comedian got an at-bat this spring I'm sure it completed the circle for him.
The Mets are getting a new playpen next season also, leaving Shea behind. Haven't heard if my fried Lyn, a fanatic of the Metropolitans, is going to go once more or not.
