AS IT turns out, Sinatra sounds just as sweet in the new place. The walls rattle and shake with the same fevered fervor, and the new foundation can be battered to its core, and the air can be filled with grandiose glee that thunders down all the way from the upper deck. And even the old ghosts are welcome, billed as very special guest stars.
"As much as you think you know what it's like here," a kid pitcher named David Robertson said, wide-eyed and wonder-filled, "you don't know until you see it. And then it's so much better than you could ever have imagined."
Last night was for the newbies, and it was for the old-timers who had wondered all year if any of the old magic had been shoved across 161st Street. It was for an old superstar named Alex Rodriguez, suddenly liberated from his past, the shackles officially loosened from his bat, and for a new ascendant star, Mark Teixeira, who put a ball in the seats and got a pie in the face for his troubles.
It was for all of them... It was for the 50,006 people crammed into the stands, an old-school October crowd that crackled with life all across the night.
"I was running hard, making sure I got [a double]," Teixeira said later, after he had toweled off the remnants of A.J. Burnett's postgame cream-pie greeting. "And then, when the crowd started to go nuts, I figured it was a home run."
He figured right, then he pierced the night with his right fist, and he took himself on one of the grandest tours in sports, the one that takes you around a basepath in The Bronx. It isn't the one that all the ghosts and all the goblins used for all those years, but that hardly matters any longer. This place will do. This place works.
This place is home.
Sinatra was back, his vagabond shoes still longing to stray. The folks in the stands? There may be 6,000 or so fewer than there used to be, but they're all the way back, too, filling every seat again, engaged in every moment, pleading with their voices and believing in their guts.
.... There was a time when there was no harder chore in sports than getting 27 October outs against the Yankees, when they would chase you to the very last strike and beyond.We all knew it would take some time and a lot of getting used to, but finally I think the new house has become our house, our home. The 15 walk-offs during the regular season didn't hurt, but nothing makes a house feel like a home more than playoff magic. Hopefully there's a lot more of it in store for us as October moves forward.
"You don't always have to score early," Teixeira said, "you just have to score enough."
Words to live by in the Yankees' new house, one that feels just as comfortable and cozy as the old one all of a sudden.
I noticed how good the crowd was in the Bronx last night while watching the game on TV. It was how exactly what Vaccaro described. Into every pitch, living and dying with every emotional swing that only baseball can provide. It's a great sound to hear. There is no roar like the roar of 50,000 New Yorkers, I don't care what anyone says.
Later in the open thread I'll have some YouTube clips of A-Rod's and Teixeira's home runs from inside the stadium.
