It was the first time I have ever been in the thick of enemy territory, totally outnumbered. Everywhere I looked, Yankee emblems glared out from enamored fans and I, the lone Red Sox fan, was a spy. Not that I meant to be incognito, it just happened I wasn't wearing my Sox garb the day we descended on the Bronx.
Yankee fans, thinking I was one of them, pressed around us all smiles and eagerness. Vendors called out eager to sell me a Derek Jeter bobble head or A. Rod action figure. At the gate a lady handed me a 'limited edition' New York Yankee Hotwheel. Oh, if only they knew. 
I passionately root for the Boston Red Sox, the sworn enemy of all things pin striped. I love the history, I relish the rivalry and I appreciate a team that proves again and again that it's just not over, till it's over.
Now, rivalry aside, the Yankees' new stadium is beautiful. Pristine, wide open to the sky and four levels high, the Yankees finally figured out how to offer every seat a decent view of the field. The structure towers above the Bronx, with arches and soaring banners to recall athletic glory on the scale of ancient Rome-- there's more than a hint of the Colosseum in its construction. New Yankee is stunning. The best that money can buy, I suppose.
But then, there's a lot more to baseball than dollars.
I've not been inside old Yankee Stadium, a fact that disappoints me grievously since it was the third oldest park in America. Since it is still standing I hoped for a peek inside, but alas it's in the process of being torn apart. Sitting in the beautiful new stadium, watching the Yankees get their bases kicked, I kept coming back to one thought: how could they stand it
? How could the New York Yankees take more than eight of the most incredible decades of baseball history and turn it into scrap metal? Walking through an old ballpark you're met at every turn with the spot where something happened. Fathers tell their sons the story of what DiMaggio did in the House that Ruth Built, ending their story with "it happened right here, in this very spot!" The spirits of seasons past haunt the old parks and lovers of the game come as much for them as for the flesh and blood.
In the tearing down of the old stadium, those spirits have been disposed of like they never happened, like their rold in transforming baseball from pastime to passion no longer matters. Their stories can't be read in the House that Jeter Built. A Yankee fan told me he took his son to a game, looked around and said it was nice, but "nothing happened here." Granted, in 100 years, the new stadium will have its stories, but nothing will make up for what was lost. At the very least, they could have remodeled or better yet, used the scraps of Old Yankee to build new: recycle a ballpark, perhaps?
Touring the new stadium, I read that the old park's design set the standard for every other. And yet, when they knocked it over and traded it for a new model, that new one looked an awful lot like Fenway, the oldest park in the nation, predating the Yankee's old home by a decade. So much for setting the standard.
But I have to give credit where it's due. Unlike so many modern complexes, the structure 
of Yankee Stadium is one that tells a story and stirs up breezes of legend and awe. In 100 years, its history will have soaked in like blood and sweat. Of course, Fenway will have twice that glory, but by then maybe the boys in pinstripes will have accepted their place in the Red Sox' shadow.