A new Yankee Stadium is almost complete in the Bronx and just sligtly($225 million) over budget. With A-rod's admission of steroid use and the faltering economy, my friend is undeterred and lets me in on how he plans to enjoy the summer watching the Yankees.
It’s that familiar time of year again. The winter is dragging on and the Knicks are, as usual, horrible. It is this time of year that my neighborhood, the Bronx, looks forward to the spring and the beginning of the baseball season. Pitchers and catchers reported yesterday, and it won’t be long until the neighborhood is filled with people from all over the city and the tri-state area who come to the Bronx each spring to watch the Yankees, the greatest team in all of professional sports, begin another season.
This year will be different from all the rest. For starters, we had to cancel our pre-season stickball tournament because there is no place for us to play. The New Yankee Stadium is being constructed on the old park where we used to play and the "old" Yankee stadium is still standing. Wow! What an outdated building that is. I never noticed before, but they don’t even have luxury skyboxes in the outfield. We needed this new stadium so bad, I’m happy to give up my park. Let’s just go play on Park Ave. until one of us gets hit by an SUV.
Cancel that. We cannot afford a stick or a ball because my brother and I both got season tickets for the new stadium. After I mortgaged my house for the third time I was left with a windfall of $30,000 which let me buy the rights to two seats out in left field in section UU. Thankfully, I get a pair of binoculars for Christmas this year. My wife must have known I would need them to see who was up to bat. My kids didn’t mind not having a Christmas this year. I told them it would all pay off when we were able to sit 800 feet from home plate and catch home runs all summer long. My youngest wasn’t so sure anybody could hit the ball that far until yesterday when Aleks Rodriguez, the Yankees star third baseman, admitted to using steroids. Now we are making a net to put on top of a long stick to catch all of Aleks long balls that go sailing past the 800 foot mark. I had to steal the net from a nearby tennis court because the sports equipment store went out of business in our neighborhood.
I can’t wait to sit and waste away dreamy summer days in the new Yankee Stadium spending my unemployment right next to the children of wealthy Connecticut investment bankers. Of course, I will have to adjust my popcorn intake this season because of the tax increases coming my way for the new Stadium. I’m so happy that we have an owner like George Steinbrenner who would never settle for second best for his team or it’s fans. I’m glad that the Stadium went over budget and they had to ask the city for more money. I’m sure that the new Stadium will create so many new high paying jobs in the Bronx that it will cancel out the tax increases. Besides, I’m happy to pay the extra taxes for the right to live near the greatest stadium ever built. Those poor saps in Stamford don’t know what they are missing. Just think of all the great meals my kids and I will enjoy at the new Hard Rock Café out in center field. I can almost taste the 20 dollar burgers and feel the 30 dollar t-shirts now. Ah spring, can you ever come soon enough?