Derek Jeter: 2,722.

This is the year that I finally let go of the New York Yankees. When they abandoned the real Yankee Stadium to move into the $1.5 billion fake one, killing acres of Bronx parkland along with their irreplaceable shrine, I opted out.

If ballplayers can become free agents, so can fans.

I've lived in L.A. for the better part of 22 years, and now I bleed Dodger blue.

(Alright, it's still just droplets, but you know what I mean...)

Still, there will always be a little Yankee in me, and I will always root for Derek Jeter.

Tonight in that faux Yankee Stadium, Jeter produced its first historic moment, breaking the team record for hits set by Lou Gehrig--the Iron Horse--when he singled to right in the third inning off Chris Tillman of the Baltimore Orioles.

Jeter did it 24 years to the day after Pete Rose broke Ty Cobb's record for most career hits. Rose played until he was 45, and finished with 4,256 hits. Jeter is 35, and has more hits than Rose did at the same age.

So here's to Derek Jeter, or as George Steinbrenner said today in a statement, "For those who say today's game can't produce legendary players, I have two words: Derek Jeter."

Read the New York Times account here.

The New Yankee Stadium Has A Hard Rock Café But No Middle Relief.

From the New York Times:

The Yankees cut by up to 50 percent the price of the $2,500-a-game Legends Suite seats for full season-ticket holders at their new stadium on Tuesday. They also announced that holders of the ticket plans behind home plate would be given an equal number of tickets free.

The price changes, announced in a statement by Hal Steinbrenner, the managing general partner of the Yankees, amounted to a major shift in strategy for a team that is charging the most of any team in baseball for seats in its $1.5 billion stadium. But the highest priced tickets have been among the toughest for the team to sell, and those unsold or unused Legends tickets have formed empty swaths of blue seats that have been painfully visible on television.

The moves by Steinbrenner amount to changing the prices on just a few hundred seats and follow up on his recent comments that some prices were too high.

“A few weeks ago I indicated that in light of the economy we would review the pricing of a small number of our premium locations at Yankee Stadium,” he said. He added that the team had sold 85 percent of its 4,000-plus premium seats.

Yeah, the Yankees planned this Disneyfied version of the real Yankee Stadium and set their pricing prior to the economy tanking. But gaudy greed is obnoxious in good times, too.

Hey, who wants to sit next to Rudy Giuliani, anyway?

It's a brand-new era, and the Yankees don't play at Yankee Stadium anymore. And I'm rooting for the Dodgers.

Jesus, I Gotta Pee!

      Notice anything missing in this picture?

     Yup. Paying customers in the A-hole Seats at the new, Disneyfied Yankee Stadium.

     There's something else missing in Yankeedom, too: the freedom to ignore flagrant displays of manipulative jingoism and religious dogma in a facility that was built with lots of public, secular funds.     

     Excerpted from The Nation:

     One day last August, Bradley Campeau-Laurion just wanted to leave his seat and use the bathroom at the old Yankee Stadium. The 30-year-old New York resident had no idea that nature's call would lead him down a road to perdition where he would be accused of challenging God, country, and the joys of compulsory patriotism at the ballpark...

     Not only do the Yankees expect fans to stand during the singing of patriotic songs, but during the Bush era they virtually mandated fan support for the Iraq War, all the while extorting tax breaks and other public subsidies from city, state and federal governments to build their new $1 .5 billion cathedral of baseball. (Separation of sports and state anyone?) For the Steinbrenners and the high-rollers who occupy Yankee Stadium's $2,500 (editor's note: actually, $2,625.00) top-shelf seats, this kind of power patriotism wedded to corporate welfare must be sweet as champagne...

     All Campeau-Laurion did was try to go to the men's room during the seventh-inning stretch. In swooped two New York Police Department officers working security detail, who reportedly roughed him up and threw him out of the ballpark. Now Campeau-Laurion has filed a civil suit against the the city, the cops and the team for violating his rights...

     (Campeau-Laurion said): "I don't care about 'God Bless America.' I don't believe that's grounds constitutionally for being dragged out of a baseball game... I simply don't have any religious beliefs... It devalues patriotism as a whole when you force people to participate in patriotic acts,..."It devalues the freedom we fought for in the first place."

     This ugly incident raises a series of inconvenient questions: why does America feel compelled to bind sports to patriotic ritual? Why are publicly funded facilities like stadiums used to promote private religious or political beliefs? And given the putrid start of the Yankees's season, shouldn't management be more concerned with what's happening with the players than with the fans? All should stand with Campeau-Laurion until we get some answers.

     Although Campeau-Laurion's run-in occurred last year at the real Yankee Stadium, there has been no change in club policy, and Yankee fans continue to be serenaded with both the standard pre-game "Star-Spangled Banner" and the additional "God Bless America." The latter--along with "Take Me Out To The Ballgame"--has remained a fixture of the seventh-inning stretch since immediately after 9/11. 

     It seems that according to Yankee brass, you'd be well-advised to take care of your business when you're buying your peanuts and Cracker Jack, and after you're expected to acknowledge an apparently pinstriped entity blessing the land of the free and the home of the brave.

     Yup, baseball's here. Go Dodgers. 

Is That The Matterhorn Next To Monument Park?

     Joel Sherman in--of all places--the New York Post, on the new Disneyfied Yankee Stadium:

     The Yanks also want to make you believe that the history and romance could be easily shipped from the old place to the new one simply by recreating dimensions, reconstructing the facade or replanting Monument Park. However, the new Stadium didn't make me think of the place just across the street. It made me think about Vegas or Disney World, since it made me think of a fake place designed to manipulate my emotions and get into my wallet.

     "We don't see it as ostentatious or flashy,"Hal Steinbrenner said. "We see it as classy."

     For me, class is out. In truth, sadly, the Yanks have conjured up a building that defines them: cold, corporate, over-privileged. At a financially distressed time in which Bud Selig has appealed to teams and players to be more fan friendly than ever, the Yanks have constructed even more of a moat between their players and those paying for all the goodies.

     For example, Yankee executives see it as a positive that the players now have underground parking rather than in the old place, where they had to walk 50 feet outdoors from the parking lot to the Stadium. In those 50 feet, fans held back by barricades could scream to their favorite players and -- if one of those players indulged -- get an autograph or two.

     Now the interaction between fans and players, and media and players, will be less than ever. I know no one sheds a tear for the media, but I think the new clubhouse, overstocked with off-limits areas and clandestine exits, only leads to a group that will feel less accountability. And an over-privileged nature and lack of accountability have hurt recent editions of the Yankees.

     "We are not a regular team," Brian Bruney said. "We are the New York Yankees, and it has to be nicer."

     Nice is in the eye of the beholder, and if you work for one of those few places left where the corporate card is still set on unlimited, then the new Yankee Stadium is for you. For many others, this place will have all the charm of Bernie Madoff.

     More pine tar, Jeeves.

Cushioning The Blow.

     The best seats in the house at the new, $1.3 billion Disneyfied Yankee Stadium will set you back anywhere from $500.00 to $2,625.00 each.

     They have teak armrests and come with concierge service.

     Those seat cushions sure will feel nice after all that pinstriped sodomy.