There's No Place Like Home

There are times when it’s a good idea to move, and then there are times when the idea of moving is more impressive than the actual move itself – times when we find ourselves sitting among the boxes in our brand-new home and realize we’re already missing things about the old place. The feel of a wooden banister. The angle of the morning sunlight in your bedroom window. The route you took in walking to the park.

Two cases in point: the New York Mets and New York Yankees.

The Mets, a middle-aged baseball team from Flushing, played for 47 years in a stadium commonly referred to as a “dump” by many of the individuals who played in it and visited it. Shea Stadium was not a fabulous place for watching or participating in a game, so many Mets fans – and players – were thrilled to see the team invest time and resources into the new park now known as Citi Field (until a bank merger changes that name, of course). When you take your first step into Citi Field, and find yourself marveling at the Jackie Robinson Rotunda, you know that the Mets have chosen a better home. When you enter the stadium itself and look at the kinky angles of the field itself, you are certain this is a much better ballpark. It’s got charm even with the airplanes still roaring overhead.

The Yankees, a century-old team from the Bronx, played nearly 90 years in a stadium commonly referred to as a “cathedral” by many of the people who played in it, visited it, and wrote about it. Even with its somewhat gaudy refurbishing in the mid-1970s, Yankee Stadium remained one of the most charismatic and breathtaking locations in the history of sport. Walk onto the upper deck from the dark tunnels inside the stadium, look out onto that field, and immediately you’d lose your breath at the vast sea of green, the glimmering monuments beyond them, and the brilliant blue of the padded outfield walls.

The hallways inside the stadium provided no view of the field. There was not enough room to build dozens of luxury boxes, and very little room to add restaurants. Apparently, these were problems. So the Yankees, in the midst of a long stretch of success, found most fans receptive to the idea of a new home. And now they have one. It is a most impressive structure – with a giant “Great Hall” in the entranceway, and a promenade extending around the entire park so that fans can eat their hot dogs, walk around the park, and still see the game. There is a museum, with its one-hour wait during the game, and all kinds of places to eat and drink, from the Hard Rock Café inside the park to Tommy Bahama’s Bar overlooking 161st Street.

It has everything you’d ever want in a ballpark. It’s like the six-bedroom house you never thought you’d be able to afford, and now you can. So why not go for it? The only problem is, once you’re there, that charm you remember from your older place is gone.

Monument Park? Sure, that’s still there – tucked beneath the bulging, black-tinted windows of the Mohegan Sun Sports Bar. The imposing upper deck? It’s there, too, just not as big, since they needed more room for pricey luxury suites and lower-level seating. The field? It’s there, of course –just no longer the centerpiece of the place, as there are so many other distractions to grab your eye. It’s hard to pull your eye away from a baseball field, but damned if the Yankees don’t pull it off, from the 59-by-101-foot video board in center field, to the blinding white cement of the promenade, to the multiple levels of seating, to the additional signage on the outfield walls, to the Mohegan Sun Sports Bar, you get the point. Great things still happen on that field, but it doesn’t feel like a place where mystique and aura live anymore. This new ballpark has a museum you can visit; the old place was a museum.

So now they’ve got fences, black netting and scaffolding around the old Yankee Stadium, and we’re left with a new park that costs a lot to enter, but doesn’t carry the memories and the comfort with it. We’re going to have to make the best of it, somehow.

Home. My wife says it’s time we take a look at the houses now on the market. Might be a good time for a change, she says. Let’s give it a try.

I trust her, and will look with her. But I know that new homes are not always an automatic upgrade, even if they come with big-screen video boards. Sometimes, you walk in and can’t find yourself anymore. You’re disoriented. And regretful.

Throughout the new Yankee Stadium, there are dozens of employees dressed in navy-blue shirts and khaki pants, holding up small signs that read “How May I Help You?” At first, I saw this as a wonderful gesture on the part of the team to help fans navigate the new place. But now, after three visits, I think it’s something more. These people are there because so many of us have lost our way when we walk into that “Great Hall.” The employees may help me find the bathroom, but they can’t direct me toward the mystique.

Unless, of course, they’re willing to walk across the street with me, and tear through the black netting.