Librado Romero/The New York Times Give It an ‘S’ Yes, they really are serious about it: workers on Friday were busy installing the sign that will adorn the new Yankee Stadium.
By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDTAfter a game last month, a husky man clutched a large framed poster of Mariano Rivera as he boarded a subway outside Yankee Stadium. Grinning, he proclaimed that he had ripped the frame off a wall at the Stadium and had evaded security guards. He said he could not wait to tell his children what he had done.
On Saturday and Sunday, for what almost certainly will be the final games at Yankee Stadium, the Yankees have arranged to have 2,000 security workers on hand — roughly 1,600 more than usual — to prevent any similar thefts. They will include city police officers, private security, federal authorities and members of the Bronx district attorney’s office.
“Our promotion for this weekend is that if you have a ticket to get in, we will have a police officer with you,” Lonn A. Trost, chief operating officer for the Yankees, said somewhat tongue in cheek in a telephone interview. “Nobody is going to get in here with a crowbar.”
Yankees officials are trying to protect profits and prevent chaos. After a final ceremony is held in November to commemorate the Stadium, which will be razed in the coming months, some pieces will be sold to fans and memorabilia collectors. Everything else will be carted away to landfills. The proceeds will probably be split between the city, which owns the Stadium, and the team.
The Mets, who will have Shea Stadium demolished shortly after the season ends, have already been taking orders for seats from Shea, asking $869 a pair, not including tax.
The task of protecting Yankee Stadium will be daunting on Sunday. Fans will be allowed into the park at 1 p.m., more than seven hours before the scheduled first pitch at 8:15. And even that is probably an estimate; farewell ceremonies are scheduled to start at 7:05.
For the first three hours after they are allowed into the Stadium, fans will be allowed to walk on the warning track and through Monument Park. Security guards will be as vigilant about protecting the field’s dirt as they will be of its seats.
“We are going to try and tell you to show your hands,” Trost said, alluding to fans who might try to take dirt or grass from the field. “We hope to have the warning track at least for the game.”
Concession stands will begin selling alcohol at 6 p.m.
“Sunday’s going to be a long day,” said Ann Cincotta, who 27 years ago was the first woman ticket-taker at the Stadium. “I don’t know what to expect. I assume many people will be crying.”
Already this season, wrenches have been confiscated from fans. Some have been prosecuted for trying to take seats, and even cup holders.
“I wouldn’t want to give you a list of what people have tried to take because innocent people may think of things,” Trost said.
Neither Yankee Stadium nor Shea will be imploded, or demolished the way Ebbets Field and the Polo Grounds were. Instead, workers will take the stadiums apart piece by piece over three months. The Yankee Stadium field will remain and will be surrounded by two more fields and 12,000 trees.
Shea will become a parking lot.
Yankees officials remember the chaos at the Stadium on Sept. 30, 1973, the final game before the Stadium was shut down for two years of renovations. That day, fans descended on the field after the game, and used crowbars to separate seats from the concrete.
Several fans interviewed at the Stadium on Friday said they had little interest in trying to take a piece of the ballpark.
“There were three things I wanted to do: get a beer across the street, get my picture taken at Mickey Mantle’s monument here and see a ballgame,” said Gerry Butler, 60, of Dayton, Ohio. “So far I’ve done two out of three.”
Security at the Stadium will be looser than it was soon after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when President Bush, wearing a bulletproof vest under a New York Fire Department jacket, threw out the first pitch before Game 3 of the World Series.
“We aren’t going to have snipers,” Trost said.
No comments:
Post a Comment