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| flickr.com/photos/prettywarstl |
Someone really, really likes Busch Stadium. That person is
New York Times sports writer
George Vecsey.
Fresh from a trip to St. Louis last week for an All-Star Game promo,
Vecsey penned a piece for the Times on Monday comparing Busch Stadium to buried treasure. More specifically, he noted that the bronze statues of former Cardinals great outside the stadium seem to hold vigil "like ancient Xian statue-warriors guarding the Chinese emperor for eternity."
And Vecsey chastises New York for building two expensive, new ballparks with lots of flair but little soul.
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| The Mets' new Citi Field |
Meanwhile, New York has the $1.5 billion fortress of the Bronx,
which I like to think of as Yankeeland, where the great tradition is
enclosed behind forbidding walls, with great swaths of empty luxury
seats embarrassing baseball if not the un-embarrassable Yankee
management. And in Queens, there is the $800 million Mets stadium named for a failing bank subsidized by us, with sightlines that are enraging thousands of fans who expected more from their costly investment.
Vecsey continues...
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| flickr.com/photos/arnaudt |
| Yankee Stadium, c. 2009 |
The DeWitts have
paid attention to the basics at Busch III: wide corridors, attractive
food stands, lots of pleasant corners and plenty of the traditional red
brick, once made by the Berras and the Garagiolas at the Laclede
brickworks. There are plenty of income-producing advertisements, but
Busch III somehow seems more tasteful than the new Mets and Yankees
palaces, which have all the subtlety of a Nascar automobile.
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