An e-mail from a reader

Yesterday I received an e-mail from Scott, a reader, who was unhappy with the new Yankee Stadium. With his permission, I will publish what he wrote:

I read your review of the new stadium and I agree with much of it, although my assessment is harsher. The stadium sucks. Plain and simple. The beauty of Yankee Stadium was the majestic upperdeck that hung over the field. That's gone forever. And the outfield frieze looked great in the renovated stadium. The faux frieze they have now is a cheap imitation that lacks the beauty of the original stadium.

And lord have mercy, the exterior of the upper deck looks cheap. Trailer park cheap. Absolutely hideous.

The Yankees have a great PR team and they've succeeded in getting big media to recite their stadium talking points, but the smart fans know what's going on.

Yankee Stadium was a beautiful work of art. I used to walk out to the left and right-field runway in the lower level and stare at the stadium in full view, then I'd walk up the ramps up to the upperdeck and just stare at the beautiful stadium in amazement. Now it's all gone. I'll go to a couple games a year. I never actually sat in the seat I paid for at the old stadium because there were always so many no-shows throughout the stadium, and except for the lower level box seats they rarely checked your ticket, now they check your tickets everywhere and I'm not going to sit in the top row of the upper deck on a blistering July day when there are thousands of empty seats througout the stadium.

George Steinbrenner will forever be known as the man who demolished Yankee Stadium.

The upper deck was one of my favorite features of the old Stadium, and I think that the fact it is now recessed will contribute it Yankee Stadium losing some of it's intimidation factor.

Thanks for the e-mail, Scott. I don't know if I'd say that the Stadium "sucks," but there are definitely many things they could have done differently.