Red Sox 1, New Yankee Stadium 0

It wasn’t the first game of the 2009 renewal of baseball’s fiercest rivalry, but perhaps it was important. In a typically long Red Sox-Yankees affair made even longer by a 2+ hour rain delay prior to the start of the game, Boston outlasted the Bronx Bombers Monday night (and Tuesday morning) for a 6-4 victory in the Sox’s first foray into the Yanks’ new ball yard.

To put this is historical perspective, the Red Sox played the Yankees in the very first game at the old Yankee Stadium on April 18, 1923, which the Bombers won 4-1. For 80 years afterwards, Boston had a very rough time facing New York on their arch-rivals’ home turf.

Much has been made of the construction worker who buried a David Ortiz jersey in the cement of New Yankee Stadium to curse the Yanks for years to come. How seriously does baseball take it curses and superstitions? The Yankees actually spent the time and money to dig out the jersey. (Considering which, I’m amazed that a Red Sox fan even made it onto the construction crew; I think the Steinbrenners would have demanded a pre-screening process.)

So far that expense does not seem to be well spent. New Yankee Stadium has not been particularly friendly to the Bombers, and not just when playing the Red Sox. The Indians 22-4 smack down of the Yankees will live in infamy. Perhaps the Ortiz jersey curse set with the cement, and no amount of digging can save them.

Or, more likely, the transformation of the Pride of the Yankees into the Greed of the Yankees is netting its just deserts. There were six thousand unsold seats for last night’s game. Six thousand unsold seats! For a Red Sox-Yankees game!  Most of them, of course, in the ridiculously overpriced luxury seating behind home plate and around the dugouts.  Talk about taking the energy out of the home crowd.  I’m not sure if the Steinbrenners are releasing those tickets on a game-by-game basis or are refusing to sell them except to non-existent season-ticket holders, but you would think they would see the importance of putting butts in those seats when the Sox are in town if nobody else.  The new “incentive” program still doesn’t cut it on a game-by-game basis.

But if they Yanks can’t sell those seats, how do they ever expect to continue to offer such oh-so-productive contracts as those they handed out last off-season to CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett and Mark Teixeira?

• April 29, 2009 -- The Hate List: 4/29/09 – My Top Two Most Hated Sports Teams (11)
• February 7, 2009 -- A-Fraud (2)
• December 10, 2008 -- ¢¢ $abathia (0)
• April 8, 2009 -- Panic in the Bronx (or, The Soap Opera Continues) (2)
• February 10, 2009 -- Poor Economy Doing It to Manny and the Mets (1)