Volume 56, Number 18 · November 19, 2009
At the Bad New Ballparks
By Michael Kimmelman
The Last Days of Shea: Delight and Despair in the Life of a Mets Fan
by Dana Brand
Taylor Trade, 247 pp., $16.95 (paper)
Having won 103 games in the regular season, more than any other major league team, the Yankees returned to the postseason after a year in purgatory. The new stadium into which the team moved in April had, like the team, with its $208 million payroll, done its job, and Yankees fans, who had earlier fretted about too many home runs rocketing over a short right-field fence and badly devised seats with partial views, focused instead on the playoffs and World Series, which is what Yankees fans really care about. The stadium's flaws receded and the building, with its comic-book resemblance to a giant bank—the immense limestone, granite, and cast stone façade, the scalloped frieze along the upper deck, the immense portals and gilded lettering, harking self-consciously back to the original Yankee Stadium that opened in the Bronx in 1923, the 'House That Ruth Built'—provided the imperial franchise in its autumnal glory with a big, pompous stage.
Review, 3463 words
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