I Love Rock N' Roll, and I Hate Yankee Stadium

That's today's front/back cover The New York Post (collated courtesy of Gothamist). Yesterday was the last opening day at The House That Ruth Built. A new Yankee Stadium will open next year.

I first attended a game at Yankee Stadium in 1999, the year that I moved to New York. Since then, I've been to about 40 games at the stadium. I've rooted against the Yankees in each and every one, including a bitterly cold opening day win over Boston in 2005 and a 6-1 triumph over Florida in Game 2 of the 2003 World Series.

I may live in New York (Brooklyn to be exact), but I hate every team from the city (save for the Brooklyn Cyclones, the Mets rookie ball affiliate). I can't help it; I grew up in the D.C. area and that means hating New York teams with a passion. It does not mean that I can't appreciate the teams, or their stadiums, however.

Yankee Stadium is, of course, sacred ground for baseball fans. No need to rehash its glorious history. I'm pained by the fact that I hate stadium, but I just don't believe that the stadium in its current form is much of a stadium.

The Yankees spent the 1974 and 1975 seasons sharing Shea Stadium with the Mets. During those years, the City of New York renovated Yankee Stadium, drastically changing the dimension of the playing field and, in my opinion, the character of the park.

The current Yankee Stadium is a rather dingy facility. The upper deck is at nauseating pitch, the seats are small and the amenities are horrible. The saving grace is that it's easy to get to by subway and that there's a decent bar around the corner where you can get a big, Budweiser draft for $3.00.

The worse part about Yankee Stadium is the fans.

Yankees fans will always have a sense of entitlement, but today's fans are far more annoying, loud and stupid than those of generations past. To be a non-Yankees fan in Yankee Stadium is akin to being a woman in Saudi Arabia. It's not a position that any reasonable person would want to find themselves in.

What I hate about Yankee Stadium is that when I go to the games, if I sit anywhere in the upper deck or bleachers, I have a feeling of imminent violence. The "cheap seat" Yankee fans are boneheads who live in their parent's basements despite being of an age where they should be living on their own. They take pride in racially-tinged and homophobic jeers and have no problems getting in your face if you're wearing the colors of the opposing team. I've seen grown men scream obscenities in the faces of seven-year old children wearing Red Sox and Orioles hats. Stay classy Yankees fans.

I'm not a snob (I prefer the blue collar atmosphere of Memorial Stadium over the white collar atmosphere of Camden Yards in Baltimore), but I can't wait for the new Yankee Stadium to open next year because I think the seat prices alone will cut down on some of the riff-raff.

I'm a baseball fan and I enjoy going to games regardless of who is playing. What I don't enjoy is feeling like I need to bring a weapon to a game to defend myself.

I've got tickets for two Yankees home games this season. Hopefully I won't have to deal with idiots. Unfortunately, I'll be surrounded by about 55,000 of them.