Former Red Sox Kevin Millar was on the MLB Home Plate channel on SIRIUS XM Radio yesterday when hosts Seth Everett and Jim Duquette asked him about his first visit to the new Yankee Stadium. Here's what he said:
Host, Jim Duquette: “What’s your impression of the new Yankee Stadium?”Normally I'd like to disagree with Millar, but right now I can't. You know my feeling about the new place, and his complaints are the same I've had and the same I've been hearing all year from other Yankees fans. The crowd/atmosphere isn't the same, and it isn't, monument cave is hidden, too much exposes concrete, etc.Kevin Millar: “I’m going to be honest with you. You know I’m going to shoot from the hip. I’m not a big fan of it. Nothing pops there, nothing pops. The old stadium, you walked in, you knew this was where [Mickey] Mantle played and [Joe] DiMaggio. It was just that old school. I got booed a lot louder. They didn’t boo me as loud here. I like to get booed. They were too nice to me here. They’re too nice to me. I don’t know if it’s all corporate, but they’re too nice. But it’s just like a big, huge – it’s a beautiful facility, don’t get me wrong – but the navy blue seats, a lot of concrete and nothing pops. I mean, nothing pops there, personally. Now, it was our first trip in and I don’t know if I was expecting more, but that’s the truth and it’s just I loved the old stadium.”
Host, Seth Everett: “Is it impossible to ever live up to that old stadium?”
Millar: “It’s not impossible, but yes, all the comeback wins and all the memories there, of course, it’s going to take time. And this is year no. 1 and there’s some tinkers. Like for one, you know, it’s a beautiful scoreboard but they have the radar gun readings at the very top of the scoreboard with the pitch count. Fans want to know how hard the pitcher’s throwing, for instance. You come to the game, you want to see, ‘Yeah, Brandon League’s on the mound, he’s throwing 90-what?’ You don’t want to have to look around the stadium to find it, and this is at the very top, a very little scene up there with your miles per hour where most stadiums have them above the dugouts on the second tier of the second deck so you can kind of see it easier. You know, it was hard to read what the guy’s hitting for the batting average. It was tough to find certain things. And for a stadium that’s got $1.5 billion in it, you would think it had been just some easier scenes, and I’m just using those as examples and those might be nit-picking. But for the monuments: I wish they would’ve pulled the monuments up so you could see the monuments. I mean, they’re behind center field and it’s kind of blocked off with the hitter’s eye so you don’t even see them. At least in the old stadium, left center, you kind of saw them a little bit, glimpsed through over there from the bullpen area, and when you’d hit a home run to left center they’d bounce in the monuments. So there’s some things that, in my opinion, nothing’s really popping out. But it’s a gorgeous scene, I guess, for the fans inside - the food, the televisions, all the marble and stuff. But from what we see as a player, you walk in the lobby and it was straight concrete. We walk in the locker room, beautiful locker rooms, but it was just, it was OK, personally.”
Everett and Duquette host “Power Alley” weekdays (10am – 1pm ET) exclusively on MLB Home Plate (XM channel 175 and SIRIUS channel 210 with the “Best of XM”).
20 Comments:
so true...it's a shame....
They also could have done a lot worse. Theres positives and negatives and it's the first year in this stadium. Im sure changes will be made throughout the decade and it may eventually get closer to what the old stadium was. Or it may get further away but in a good way. I think a lot of changes will occur in the first ten years of this stadium.
-G
With the amount of time and money they had for this I actually don't think they could have made too many more mistakes.
What were they going to do, forget to build the dugouts?
love the Lobel's sandwiches and the ability to stand and watch the game if you want. Has anybody sat in the Hard Rock Cafe to watch a game? Just wondering how that was. Seems small and cramped.
$1.5 billion to build...and another $1 billion to make changes...
Anon, I agree about the Lobels stand and the ability to stand and watch the game. Those are two of the many great things with the new stadium. There are just a lot of other things that bother me. If I wasn't comparing it to Yankee Stadium I'd probably love the place.
The biggest problem I have now is that lack of atmosphere. I've been to 10 games and for the most part the crowds have sucked. The atmosphere is completely different than the old place.
Great hall elevators up to/down from the Upper Deck save a great deal of time.
Vibe is a problem, but it has improved since the beginning of the year.
Millar used to get booed more...maybe when he was a Red Sock? I still hate the guy, but I reserve my biggest boos for Sox players, naturally. It takes quite an inflated ego to complain about not getting booed enough.
Also, complaining about where the pitch speed is displayed? Give me a break. You turn your head an extra 45 degrees. The old stadium under Torre didn't even display MPH. Nitpicking indeed.
There are certainly plenty of egregious errors in the new stadium, but the Yankee players seem to love playing there. So is it really so bad the opposing players don't?
Wa wa he doesn't get booed like he did before
I agree with the atmosphere but that's more of a result of the growing number of corporate seats over time than anything. I sat down in the bottom once this year and was the only person yelling and people looked at me like I had two heads. I think the bleachers and the sections around it are just as good as before if not better. Just have to get the rest of the stadium involved.
Maybe drop down that upper tier a little more towards the field and get another 4 or 5 thousand voices in there?
-G
Of course he doesn't get booed like before. He plays for the Jays now.
G,
I've sat in the upper deck and bleachers. The upper deck is actually louder because of the overhang. You don't feel the same but it does get loud. The bleachers are OK, but they were better in the old place.
I happen to like the new Stadium although I do think it needs some tweeking.
Of course, I also never thought the old one needed replacing.
But the new Stadium needs to get it's own World Series victory before even beginning to get a speck of the charm of the old Stadium.
Some history may have come across with the team but the Stadium needs to build it's own too and that will take time.
As for Millar, he isn't booed because Yankee fans don't even care about him anymore.
He's a .233 hitter on a club that is going nowhere.
I think I just remember the roar of the upper decks more than the bleachers. I feel the bleacher area has more people and more traffic through it now which made it a little more exciting to me than the cut off island it used to be. I was just a huge fan of the tier section in the old one and really want them to extend that down a little more towards the field.
-G
"The biggest problem I have now is that lack of atmosphere. I've been to 10 games and for the most part the crowds have sucked. The atmosphere is completely different than the old place."
AGREED.
Maybe it will change as seasons go by and we can get rid of all the corporate ticket holders giving away each game to another douche who hasnt seen the new staidum yet. Eventually these tickets are going to find their way back into the hands of real fans, even if those fans are corporate monkeys, there are still plently of corporate monkeys who are going to watch the game and actually know something about that particular years NY Yankees. It just going to take time to get all the super casual douche bags (who arent real fans) into the stadium and then back out, never to return, new stadiums attract different than average clientele. That's my theory at least. The moats, and upper deck in the boonies doesn't help either but times have changed. What are u going to do? Just hope as the years go by less strangers to the game are going to "see" the new stadium and more fans of the baseball and the team are going to watch a baseball game.
for the idiot who said that there wasn't a speed readout at the old stadium: you are not smart.
the duane reed readout in center field (might have had different sponsorship in the past) has been there as long as i've gone to the stadium (early 90s). i'm pretty sure torre was managing during that time.
Of course it doesn't have the same atmosphere. It's a different stadium. People seem to have a problem accepting that it's not the old place.
The fan experience is about 1000 times better. I finally made my first trip there last week and the wide open concourses, easy access to food and restrooms, more leg room, wider seats, etc made it much more enjoyable. It was plenty loud, the freize is gorgeous (and much bigger in person) and overall the stadium looks beautiful.
Sure there are some annoyances, but there are at pretty much every ball park. And yes, some of them could have been avoided. However, in the end, the experience of watching a game at the new place is much better than the cramped, dungeon like experience at the old place. Sure, we all miss the "history" of it, but it's time to embrace the new place as the NEW place, not blame it for not having the history or "feel" of the old place. I'm personally glad that most of the feel is gone, because other than the fact that it was Yankee Stadium, the old place was a pretty crappy place to see a ballgame, all the history aside.
As for Millar, he's a joke. Nobody boos you Millar because most of us forgot who you are. You're a washed up, back up player for a 4th place team.
If your "fan experience" includes food and other riff-raff than yes, but I go to a game to sit in my seat and watch the game. To me, that experience was better at the old place.
Millar is a bum who cares if he likes the stadium or not. The yankees have one of the best home records in baseball thats all I care about.
Millar last year basically said Hughes had no talent. Noone booed Millar because he no longer is relavant he is benchplayer that cant hit.
Been there over 20 times so far and the disappointment remains. Millar is right. It should have been, could have been great, but they screwed it up big time and it simply disappoints. Open concourses are not new, they're the norm and the stadium is no better than any other new stadium I've been to in the last 10 years. There is much to "tweak" and much to change.
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