Tag Yankee Stadium

Boss, and Ballyard—both gone

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

In March, in the days when the final slashes of the cranes were knocking down the last pieces of Yankee Stadium in that old cow pasture in the South Bronx, I wrote about my family’s history with the Big Ballyard.

Today, the old building is gone…and on the day that Yankees’ owner George Steinbrenner gave up the ghost, New York Times sports columnist William C. Rhoden wrote about time, The Boss, and the old stadium, looking out at the empty lot from his bedroom window across the Harlem River.

I’ve spent the last two years avoiding the sight of the old Stadium being dismantled, and wondering, Would you rather be demolished and go quickly, or be dismantled like this, little by little?   The symmetry of watching the vibrant old Stadium and the once robust Boss deteriorate became a daily reminder of my own mortality, a reminder that nothing lasts forever.

10 acres, river view

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

Wondering about that picture in the banner up there?  (Of course you are.)  It’s the subway station at the Yankee Stadium stop.

I was born less than three miles from the Big Ballyard: Union Hospital, 188th St. and Valentine Ave.  Both of my parents grew up just two miles further uptown from there, 205th St. and Perry Ave.

Yankee Stadium is in my family history:

my dad, a teenager working there for concessionaire Harry M. Stevens, on the day he planned to dip into the till to fund his running away from home, popping his head up from behind the counter, cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, and coming face to face with his own father, who talked him into coming home (and prevented the crime!)

my mom, the single working woman who got free tickets behind the dugout from her employer, on the day she was appalled that the visiting team player who she’d been fixed up with got into a fight on the field with Billy Martin (no second date for you, Clint Courtney!)

I became a Yankees fan in adulthood but the Stadium and its history fascinated me long before that.  So I’m sad to see it being torn down, although I understand all the good reasons why that has to happen.

A thoughtful piece in today’s New York Times brought me to the destruction site; then I took myself on a trip—to my first adult visit to the park in the 1980s, to the team’s glory days of the 50s, to my family’s history in the 40s and 30s, back to the first Opening Day (1923, Yanks beat the Sawks 4-1), back to ten acres of farmland overlooking the Harlem River with a view to the Polo Grounds.

Oh well…I also found a story in the Daily News that offers some explanation of why this is taking so long, and another site photo-documenting the  demolition.  Which also fascinates me.

TV rots your brain…and that’s not all

Pat Ryan Leave a comment

Television has been my friend since I was just a boy; it still is.  It’s taken me to the Enterprise for Tribbles and to the moon for Tranquility, to Yankee Stadium for Larsen’s perfect game, to Berlin to see the wall fall.  Color television made it clear that the Ponderosa was fake, and thrilled me when the peacock fanned its tail.  I’m still drooling at what I see on my HDTV.

Tee Vee has made me laugh, made me cry, and for years has made me my money…although I laugh about that part to keep from crying.

But who knew it was taking dead aim at my heart!

The conclusion of the Australian researchers, reported today in the American Heart Association journal Circulation, is that more time spent watching television comes with a significant increase in risk of death than does watching less television.  They also find that exercise alone is not the answer, that “we also need to promote avoiding long periods of sitting, such as spending long hours in front of the computer screen.”

Just a minute…gotta stretch.

No long periods of sitting?  What if I sit for four or more hours reading?  Have there been reports of high death rates among the world’s book editors?  And woe to those who sleep sitting up, like your cube farm neighbor.

Personally, I wonder if there’s any special dispensation: does it count against me when I watch TV professionally?  And, is there transitive benefit I can gain by watching other people exercise?