Yanked Around

This is what you get.

Last night's event in the Bronx was a game for the ages that by no means disappointed, but the buildup to it was bloated with false significance and overhype, colored by the interminable "End of Yankee Stadium" storyline. Those running "Great Moments in Yankee Stadium History" segments on SportsCenter are supposed to fill me with nostalgia, I suppose they do, but they also make me angry. SportsCenter may treat the demise of Yankee Stadium as inevitable, but it's not. It's being destroyed and replaced for basically no reason--a plan from a bygone era when the Yankees were strapped for cash. Now that they're the richest franchise in the world, there's no reason not to be content with the stadium they've got and the history that comes with it--but, of course, they're the Yankees, so they're not. When most of us are unhappy with the way things are going, we don't destroy one of the greatest living baseball cathedrals. I'm just saying, we restrain ourselves.

So, fine. The Yankees are destroying their history. They own it, I guess, so it's up to them. But I don't appreciate the hypocrisy of tearing down their past and then asking us to mourn its passing with them. New Yorkers have a tendency to assume that everyone loves New York as much as they do, but they may actually be right when it comes to Yankee Stadium, and it isn't right that they're taking it from us.

So, as an extension of the Yankee Stadium Destruction Neverending Nostalgia Tour, we got the hype surrounding the Last All-Star Game at Yankee Stadium, which was also misguided. Does it really matter if this is the last All-Star Game that Yankee Stadium ever hosts? Does anyone even remember what happened in the last All-Star Game that Yankee Stadium hosted? All-Star Games have given us some nice moments over the years, but in the end, they're just a fun midsummer spectacle. Why, in the last year of Yankee Stadium, have we suddenly decided that they are an integral part of the American cultural consciousness? For God's sake, just a few years ago we let it end in a tie. If the Steinbrenners suddenly decided to tear down the White House,* we wouldn't obsess over the fact that it was about to host its last Easter Egg Hunt on the lawn. We'd have more important memories to dwell on.

(A subplot to this subplot was the ridiculous"will Mariano Rivera start the All-Star Game???" debate. He was never going to, he shouldn't have, he didn't want to, no one really wanted him to, and no one really even wondered if he would until the media brought it up. This story was entirely media-created--I never heard any player or manager discuss it except in response to reporters' questions--except even the media thought it was a bad idea. Literally the entire story consisted of media members agreeing that their own idea was terrible. Great way to fill air time.)

All these elements combined to make the buildup to a perfectly ordinary All-Star Game feel like the buildup to Game 7 of the World Series. Of course, the All-Star Game did not end up being ordinary at all, but that was due entirely to J.D. Drew and Josh Hamilton, and not to Yankee Stadium. But that's the beauty of it. This should have been just another All-Star Game, but the Yankees and the media decided that it would be The All-Star Game to End All All-Star Games. And now that they've done that, the Yankees have to accept the fact that the MVP of the Yankee Stadium Sendoff and Weep-athon monstrosity was a player from Boston. That's what you get.

*This is by no means out of the question.