New Stadiums For New York Baseball
The Yankees And Mets Will Play In New Venues This Week
Mar 28, 2009
For the first time in over 30 years, New York baseball fans will enter a big unknown next week.
What is not to know about the New York Yankees, the most storied franchise in baseball history with 26 World Series Championships?
Or for that matter, the New York Mets, an expansion team created in 1962 five years after the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers moved to California?
The Miracle Mets of 1969 is a legendary story.
Both teams will be playing in their new stadiums next weekend beginning on Friday, April 3.
The Yankees will open the new Yankees Stadium on that date when they play the Chicago Cubs in an exhibition game.
The old Yankee Stadium, built in 1923 and remodeled in 1976, is still standing right next door and was named the House That Ruth Built. Nobody has yet to tag a nickname to the new digs.
Also on April 3, the Mets will host the Boston Red Sox at CitiField. It will be the first time the Mets will play in a new stadium since they moved from the old Polo Grounds to brand new Shea Stadium in 1964.
Shea Stadium was torn down during the off-season so there is nothing left of the venue that saw many sporting events, including Mets World Series victories in 1969 and 1986, New York Jets football, and various concerts which includes the Beatles.
New York Baseball Teams Facing a Big Unknown
Both New York teams took on their stadium projects prior to the economic meltdown of 2008 and 2009. There was intense debate on whether the teams needed new stadiums since the old ones were in adequate shape and the teams made plenty of money.
During the 2008-09 off-season, both teams had to borrow as much as $100 million from the City and State of New York to finish off the projects. This was after the teams, especially the Yankees, signed free-agent ball players to big money deals.
The Yankees were vilified for signing free agent pitcher C.C. Sabathia and A.J. Burnett to contracts totaling $1 billion in a bad economy.
The team hasn’t won a World Series since 2000, so there is an urgency in the George Steinbrenner owned team to deliver this season.
The Mets haven’t won a World Series in 24 years. The team has also blown first place leads to the Philadelphia Phillies in the National League Eastern Division two years in a rowl.
The neighboring Phillies also won the World Series last year furthering the Mets embarrassment.
The Mets are hoping a change of scenery will help their fortunes.
How Will New Yankee Stadium and CitiField Play
The first games at the new ballparks will answer questions that are unknown right now.
The first is, how will the baseball carry? Will the wind blow out or in? Will they be pitchers parks or hitters parks.
The new Yankee Stadium will have the same dimensions as the old, but will be facing in a more easterly direction. How will the sunlight affect twilight games, etc.?
CitiField, named after a bank bailed out by the federal government, will also be facing in a different direction than Shea Stadium and its dimensions will be comparable, but not the same as the old park.
CitiField will have an outside look resembling Ebbets Field, the old home of the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Yankees and Mets fans will have their questions answered very soon.
