If there were ever a time to show sympathy towards Yankees fans, it may be now.
With their team barely holding on to fourth place in the division and the playoffs all but out of reach, fans of baseball’s most storied franchise enjoyed the added misery of counting down the games until Yankee Stadium closed its doors for good.
Last night’s matchup against the Baltimore Orioles marked the end of what some consider the world’s most famous sporting venue, an event that did not go unnoticed among Yankees fans in Foggy Bottom. Fans and students lucky enough to get tickets made the pilgrimage to the Bronx, but many watched the game on television.
Senior Peter Kirschenbaum, who was in attendance Sunday and has been attending six to eight games at Yankee Stadium with his father each year since he was young, said the stadium’s closing is “a huge deal.” From his fifth-row seat on the first baseline, Kirschenbaum has seen numerous memorable games, from the World Series clincher in 1996 to this year’s All-Star Game. He said the stadium’s closing is “bittersweet,” because it prompted him to think of all the good memories.
“To a certain extent there will never be the same atmosphere,” the Connecticut native said. “The new stadium’s tickets will be much more expensive. It will all be corporate America, though I think the diehards will find a way there.”
Pennsylvania Avenue’s 51st State, The District’s only New York sports bar, was full for the New York Giants football game during the day, but it had emptied out by the time the Yankees game started.
Bjarne Heche, a Yankees fan who works at 51st State, said GW’s large Tri-State population frequently patrons the bar during Yankees games, but perhaps because the team is not playing well, the crowd watching was thinner than usual last night.
“I think people are watching it at home,” Ballston resident Shawn Callaghan, a New York transplant, said. “Especially college kids who don’t have much money to spend or can’t get into a bar.”
One such college kid is freshman Jeremy Merkel from East Brunswick, N.J,, who watched the game in his room in Thurston wearing a Yankees hat and jersey. He compared the experience to graduating high school: the end of something cherished, but looking forward to the future.
“When you’re a Yankee fan and they don’t win the World Series, the season is a failure,” said Merkel, who admitted to shedding a few tears during Sunday’s pre-game festivities, which culminated with Babe Ruth’s granddaughter throwing out the ceremonial first pitch.
And though the Boston Red Sox are the Yankees’ chief rival, Camden Yards, where the Orioles play, stands just feet from where Babe Ruth was born. That house, however, no longer exists. Soon, neither will the House That Ruth Built.
