Talk Bronx New York

Miriam Chan once lived in a house a few blocks from the one that Ruth built.

“Oh, what a player that Ruth was,” Chan said recently as she pulled a Yankee cap over her head. “What a beautiful swing.”

Chan, who was 6 when her family moved to Manhattan from the Bronx, has been around to celebrate all of the Yankees’ 26 World Series championships, including the first in 1923, which came at the expense of the New York Giants.

“I’ve been a Yankee fan my whole life,” she said, “and that’s a pretty long time.”

When asked how long, she balked.

“Let’s just say I’m in my 80s and I’m lying about it,” she said.

Chan, a widow and mother of two who lives on the Upper East Side, still takes the train to her old neighborhood to watch the Yankees play, and she plans to visit their new house next season.

“It’s kind of sad that my guys are moving to a new stadium, but time changes everything,” she said. “I guess I’ll just take my memories across the street.”

Those memories stretch from Babe Ruth to Lou Gehrig — “Oh, that poor man, that’s all we could talk about when he got sick,” she said — to Joe DiMaggio to Mickey Mantle to Bobby Murcer to Don Mattingly to Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez.

Chan has been a regular at Yankee Stadium since the mid-1930s, when she was an art student at Hunter College. She later became a sketch artist in the fashion industry.

“One year, there was a fire at Hunter, so the students were moved to an unoccupied building in the Bronx,” she said. “On the train ride home from school, my girlfriends and I would pass Yankee Stadium. We started getting off the train and going to the games, and I’ve been a die-hard ever since.”

Chan spends a good part of her year at her home in Palm Beach, Fla., but is back in New York before the start of each baseball season.

“A good dose of the Yankees and a little of that New York pollution keeps my system going,” she said.

Through the years, Chan has seen a number of great Yankees come and go, but her favorite is Bernie Williams.

“He carried himself with so much class and dignity,” she said, “and he was such a graceful player, kind of like DiMaggio in that way.”

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Yanks Score 11th Straight Home Opener With WIN! 

Chien-Ming Wang hurled seven solid innings, and Melky Cabrera homered as New York edged Toronto, 3-2, in the 84th and final home opener at the current Yankee Stadium.

“The House That Ruth Built,” which opened in 1923 and was renovated from 1974-75, will be replaced by a $1.3 billion state-of-the-art ballpark, which will also be called Yankee Stadium, in 2009.

The game also featured the debut of new Yankees manager Joe Girardi, marking the first time that the Bronx Bombers took the field without Joe Torre at the helm since 1995.

After four World Series titles and 12 straight years of reaching the playoffs, the Yankees decided to offer Torre an incentive-laden contract, which he quickly turned down. So, the Yankees handed the managerial reins over to one of Torre’s former bench coaches, Girardi, who earned Manager of the Year honors in his one year as skipper of the Florida Marlins in 2006.

Wang (1-0) allowed just six hits and two runs for the Yankees, who have won 11 straight home-openers, a big league record. Alex Rodriguez finished 2-for-3 with an RBI and scored the game-winning run, while Bobby Abreu was 2-for-4 with a run scored.

Star closer Mariano Rivera capped Girardi’s first win in the Bronx with a perfect ninth to earn the save. Rivera then gave his new manager the ball after recording the third out.

“It was an outstanding game,” Girardi said. “Melky played great and so did Jason (Giambi). This means a lot.”

Shannon Stewart and Marco Scutaro drove in a run apiece for the Blue Jays, who are coming off an 83-79 season. Toronto ace Roy Halladay (0-1) pitched well, surrendering three runs on seven hits in seven innings en route to the hard- luck loss.

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Yankees Home Opener Washed Out

Rain washed out history at Yankee Stadium Monday as the final Opening Day at the storied park was postponed until Tuesday evening.

Soggy fans groaned when officials announced the game was scrapped at 2:30 p.m., some 90 minutes after the first pitch was supposed to be tossed out.

“I’m a little bit frustrated,” said Harry Heramis, 46, of Roseland, N.J. “I thought they could at least introduce the players and maybe play five innings.”

Even after waiting for hours in a steady rain, most fans said they didn’t regret coming out to see the last home opener before the Bombers move to their new stadium.

“The most important thing is yout get to come and be part of history,” said Luis Pereira, 40, of Springfield, N.J.

All tickets from today’s game will be honored at tomorrow’s contest, which will start at 7:05 p.m.

Still, some fans complained that the Yankees should have decided to call off the game in the morning, before the sellout crowd of 55,000 journeyed to the stadium.

Others said they could have squeezed in the contest, especially since no rain had fallen for nearly an hour when the postponement was announced.

Joe Chase said he and a buddy spent $100 on parking, food and beer.

“It’s frustrating, but you pay it anyway,” said Chase, 34, of Huntington, L.I. “We’ll pay it again tomorrow.”

Still, most fans seemed resigned to Mother Nature’s fickle ways - and insisted they would be back to experience history.

“It’s extra special because it’s the last game,” said Heramis, who came with his 14-year-old son Paul. “We’d hate to miss it.”

Not everybody took the decision in stride.

“It stinks. It’s the last opening day at Yankee Stadium and it’s rained out?” said Nick Buzzetto, 29, from Westchester. “It really stinks.”

Terry McNamee said the team was gouging fans by failing to at least try to get the game in.

“It’s not raining, they could have got something in,” said McNamee, 53, of New Haven Conn. “Now I have to pay for it all again tomorrow.”

SOURCE: NYDailyNews.com

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Bronx Awaits Community Benefits From New Yankee Stadium Construction

The Yankees still owe the Bronx about $1 million of community benefits in return for building a new Yankee Stadium, according to outraged attendants of Tuesday night’s Community Board 4 meeting, held in the Murray Cohen Auditorium of the Bronx Lebanon Hospital Center.

“This is important to the community and you allow only three questions from the community, that is not fair,” said a local resident.

But residents around the stadium say that even though the new Yankee Stadium is well under construction, the community has yet to see any benefits.

The Yankee Stadium community benefits agreement agreed for the Bronx Bombers to give each year $800,000, as well as $100,000 in sports equipment and 15,000 tickets to games – for the next 40 years.

“The community benefits agreement was carved and said that when the shovel went in the ground, when they took over the park,” said Gregory Bell, an advocate for the disabled. “That is when the $800,000 was supposed to start to flow.”

The head of the volunteer advisory panel for the benefits agreement attended Tuesday’s meeting to say the money is on the way.

“During April we will have started that process and organizations will start to see that money,” said Serafin Mariel of the benefits advisory panel.

“We know that people wonder if we exist - and if we exist what is our function,” said Michael Drezin of the benefits advisory panel. “So the first thing we want people to do is know that we exist. We hear them and we want to be responsive to them.”

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Park The Cash Here .. Sure We’ll Build The Yanks’ Lot

The group that received $237 million in city-sponsored bonds to build garages and parking lots at the new Yankee Stadium is hardly an all-star of public financing.

Bronx Parking Development LLC lists as its “sole member” the nonprofit group Community Initiatives Development Corp., which defaulted on two previous tax-exempt bonds in the past 10 years, records show.

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