Talk Bronx New York

First lady Michelle Obama hugs a veteran as Dr. Jill Biden greets other veterans at the James J. Peters Veterans Administration Medical Center.

 First Lady Michelle Obama swooped into New York on Wednesday to catch the legends of Yankee Stadium, but first she took time to honor some real heroes: Wounded U.S. veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Obama spoke at the James J. Peters VA Medical Center in the Bronx, where she visited with vets along with Dr. Jill Biden, the wife of the vice president, in advance of last night’s World Series Game 1 match-up between the Yanks and the Philadelphia Phillies.

The First Lady’s message: We can all do a little something to honor the men and women in the U.S. military. And please, she emphasized, don’t forget the families they often have to leave behind while serving overseas. Read more..

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post

The new Yankee Stadium

 The veteran artist Charles Spurrier and I journeyed to the new Yankee Stadium for the first time last week to watch the Yankees play the Angels. As a boy, Charles used to make drawings of fans at Cleveland’s old Municipal Stadium in exchange for hot dogs and I attended many a classic tilt at the old Yankee Stadium, every year for exactly 50 years.

The theme of the new stadium could well be “It is not about the game,” so many are the detours and distractions, done in the style of Las Vegas, where the layout of the casinos is deliberately disorienting, so that you will quit trying to get back to your room and just sit down and gamble. During a late inning Yankee rally the other night, for example, 200 people waited on line to enter the Yankee Museum on the second deck, which is next to a museum of work by the team’s “official artist,” Peter Max!

The Stadium is laid out like an open air mall. Because ushers check you tickets, the time-honored practice of moving down to unoccupied seats, known as “flopping,” is prohibited, and little kids can no longer congregate in seats near the field during batting practice to catch foul balls or collect autographs (unless, of course, their parents shelled out thousands of dollars for these choice seats).

Read more..

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post

The most shocking fact about the new Yankee Stadium in New York’s Bronx isn’t its $1.5 billion cost. No, it was the opening day top single ticket price of $2,625.

If, as leftist demagogues like to say, we’re “two Americas” now, surely one of the divides is between sports fans and non-sports fans.

A non-fan cannot understand how someone could shoot the price of 1,000 shares of General Motors (more!) on a ballgame. In a recession, too. But that’s a non-sports fan. To a sports fan, fighting traffic and crowds to get there on April 16, 2009, was being part of “history.” He or she would also spend the equivalent of a 401(k) contribution on a souvenir jersey.

The world’s most advanced ballpark sets a new standard of some sort. It includes shopping facilities and a team museum, plus what a news report calls “exquisite dining, private clubs, conference rooms, martini bar — and a farmer’s market!” If the game bores you, buy fruit and vegetables. Or hold a conference. Players’ amenities include indoor parking, a sauna, a pool, and at each locker a laptop computer. Read more..

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post

Before pitchers and catchers even reported for spring training, the New York Yankees have made unwanted national news - again. First came reports that the organization was gong to ask the city for additional money to complete its new stadium, then came Joe Torre’s book reviews that, among other things, had team mates referred to their star player, Alex Rodriguez, commonly known as A-Rod, as A-Fraud.

Read more..

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post

It’s the dead of winter, it turns dark by 5 o’clock, the temperature is sliding way below zero again and the economy is in shambles.

But fear not, baseball fans, all is right with the world.

Why? Because it’s OK to hate the Yankees again. In fact, I encourage it.

While I must point out that some of my best friends are Yankees fans, I submit that it’s our patriotic duty to hate the Bronx Bombers. It’s part of our heritage.

More than 50 years ago, when the Yankee Dynasty really was a dynasty, a wise old sage summed it up nicely, famously saying, “Rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for U.S. Steel.”

Famed sports writer Jimmy Cannon once wrote: “I imagine rooting for the Yankees is like owning a yacht.” Read more..

(No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ...
 Email This Post