A composite shot of the new stadium taken on Wednesday evening from the left field entrance to the tier level in Yankee Stadium. Click the image for a bigger version. (Photo by Ben K.)
In all of my years going to games at Yankee Stadium and watching the Yanks play, through thick and thin, from Jack Clark to Alvaro Espinoza and Bob Geren to Derek Jeter and A-Rod, I have rarely seen the Yankees play as flat as they did tonight. The offensive was downright terrible.
After loading the bases with no outs in the first, it looked like the Yankee bats may finally be ready to wake up. The middle of the order — sans A-Rod — was up, and it was time to knock the struggling Jeremy Bonderman out of the game. The Yanks emerged from the inning up 2-0, but it certainly seemed like they should have gotten more.
After two innings, the Yanks had Bonderman at 42 pitches, and it seemed like a matter of time before the offense would put together a few more hits. Little did we know those two runs would be it for the Yankees as their offense eked out just two more hits the whole rest of the way. Bonderman threw just 58 pitches over his last 5.2 innings of work, and the Yanks managed just two more singles. They took weak hacks and did nothing. Sad, sad, sad.
On the other side of the ball, Andy Pettitte was rolling until the fifth. A Marcus Thames home run just out of the reach of Johnny Damon and, an inning later, a Placido Polanco solo shot gave Andy an ugly five earned runs in six innings. He fell to 3-3 with a 3.93 and 0-2 over his last two outings. He’s given up four home runs and nine earned runs over his last 11 innings pitched against the Indians and Tigers. Ouch.
Meanwhile, despite a few raised eyebrows, Phil Hughes’ injury is a real one, according to Kat O’Brien. That explains his poor performance on Tuesday, and this oblique injury could shelve him for six weeks.
Anyway, instead of dwelling on an ugly loss that caps off a losing April and the current spate of injuries, let’s look at photos of the new stadium that I’ve taken over the first month of the season. The full set of 32 shots is here on flickr. Select highlights are bulleted below:
- The front of the new stadium looks really good.
- The right field entrance is getting its own gold lettering. On Wednesday, it said “ANKEE ADIUM.” I guess they were some panels short when the bell rang.
- Two weeks ago, that same entrance looked far from completion, and on April 6, it was simply a metal frame.
- At night, the new stadium really looms over the 4 platform.