Goodbye Old Friend

When I was young I was an obsessed Yankees fan. All throughout middle school, I’d hang on to every pitch like it is the most important thing in the world because to me it was. When they were winning in the late 1990s, I never missed a game but then after the 2001 season, my cable provider didn’t carry the YES network for an entire season. Team that with a quick exit in the 2002 playoffs, and the spell was broken a bit by the time the YES network premiered in April 2003.

I like to think that I’m not a fair-weather fan; in fact I would still consider myself a rather good fan of the team. It wasn’t the loosing that did it. Season after season, I would watch important games and hold my breath for the entire playoff run but as I got older I realized that the Yankees are a part of my life but not my life. I mean really, would anything but a diehard sit in an Orlando bar watching the world series, surrounded by Phillies fans, and cheer her heart out not really caring if it led to a fight or a beer over my head?

It would shock Past Me but I haven’t been to the new Yankees Stadium yet, even though it’ll be starting it second season in about a month. However, ever since I started my job working in Chelsea, I do pass it every day on my way to work. It sit there, beautiful and majestic, right across the street from the Yankees Stadium from my youth. At first it was funny for me to see these two building standing side by side, almost identical, but as the winter went on things began to change.

They are taking down the old Yankees Stadium, my stadium. Time turns, seasons change and we all grow older but I don’t know something about seeing this happening right in front of me is too much to bear. I try not to look, I know that sounds stupid but it feels too much like watching an old friend or relative slowly die. I might not have visited as much as I could have in the last few years but I do love that place and all it stands for. To the city of New York it might just be some old building but there is a part of me that will always call it home.