Sunday, May 17, 2009

Northeastern University Graduation

Friday, May 1, 2009
TD Banknorth Garden
Boston, MA
The Graduate
Bachelor of Science
Political Science

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

New Yankee Stadium


In the past few months, with all the talk of bailouts and stimulus packages, the use of the word billion has dramatically increased. (That reminds me of the birthday card my son Caleb sent me a few years back: Dick Cheney to W: "Did you hear we're getting over 100 Brazillian troops to help us?" W: Wow... that's fantastic! How much is a brazillion?") It seems only fitting that the Yankees would open a new stadium that cost that much ($1.5 billion that is, not brazillion).


Jacob and I planned a trip for the first series in the new stadium, a Saturday afternoon game with the Cleveland Indians. We got there at least an hour before game time thinking we'd have time to look around, see monument park and buy a cheese-steak sub before the game started. Everyone else must have had the same idea. We didn't see the monuments, although they're the same ones as in the old stadium anyway, and barely did a circuit around the stadium before heading to our seats with subs in hand, 2 outs into the top of the first.


One of the Yanks' new acquisitions, (costing almost as much as the stadium) Mark Teixiera, hit a homerun in the bottom of the first with Johnny Damon on base, and the good guys had an early 2-run lead. We should have left then while we were ahead, because it went downhill fast from there.

The Indians proceeded to pummel Chin-Ming Wang and a recent minor-league call-up who replaced him, for a major league record 14 runs in the top of the 2nd inning. Unbelieveable! Cleveland probably is wishing they could play all their games there. They used to say that the clubhouse in the old stadium smelled funny. The new stadium is spacious and luxurious and its the team that stinks.

We hung in until the fifth when, at 2-19, it was not even funny anymore. The final score was 4-22. It was probably payback for the last time I saw the Indians and Yankees play, when the Yanks scored 6 in the bottom of the ninth, capped by a walk-off homer by Alex Rodriguez, to win 8-6.

Jacob and I took a detour to Columbia University on the way back to the hotel and visited the Mathematics Department where my father earned his bachelor's and master's degrees back in the early 1930s. It's a pretty campus although high on a hill--we imagined that all 8 million New Yorkers will be up there when global warming puts the rest of the city underwater.