Pray at these cathedrals
GREEN BAY, Wis. — Look, intellectually, we know why it had to happen. We know why they had to tear down old Yankee Stadium — even if was actually new Yankee Stadium — and abandon the footprint on which the Stadium stood for 85 years, shift the business operation of the New York Yankees a few steps away.
It was particularly obvious why Shea Stadium had to go — its doors were barely open a few weeks when words like “dump” and “rock pile” were used to describe its more aesthetically pleasing elements, there was inexplicable water everywhere even in the most arid summers, it wasn’t anyone’s idea of paradise.
Understood or not, they are gone, and with them we lost such encyclopedic local history, all of it facing simultaneous wrecking balls six years ago. Progress happens. Ebbets Field is long gone. So are the Polo Grounds, and three prior versions of Madison square Garden. The especially nostalgic still can walk the converted sidewalks where these great New York sporting basilicas used to rise so gloriously. But it’s not the same, certainly not to an admittedly sentimental history freak like me.
So I have to admit, the dateline and the venue for Sunday’s Packers Cowboys game works me over good. Look, maybe that’s not entirely fair: It’s not like Lambeau Field is 100 years old, like Wrigley or Fenway (it’s a rather spry by comparison 58). And it has been expanded and refurbished so much it hardly looks like the grainy pasture we see on old NFL Films videos.
But here’s the thing: As different as the grandstands might look, as many luxury boxes as they’ve added, as sweeping as the wholesale changes to the physical plant may be, its the grounds (and the ground) that makes this place an historic and historical gem. On these grounds Vince Lombardi growled, prowled and patrolled. On these frozen grounds the Ice Bowl was contested, the quintessential game in the history of professional football. On these grounds Brett Favre threw deep, and Reggie White stalked quarterbacks.
On these grounds. These very grounds. If you are a history buff, that matters more than a thousand souvenirs places neatly on museum walls. You go to Gettsyburg and you admire the memorials and the lectures, but what hits you is when you walk the same acres that Pickett’s men did, when you see Little Round Top with your own eyes, when you imagine the unspeakable courage it took to do what Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and his Maine men did there.
Sports fans who care about history have the same feelings, the same understandings, and so they not only see the modern Cubbies at Wrigley, the more fervent among them see Gabby Hartnett’s homer in the gloaming too. At Fenway, the truest believers come not only to cheer David Ortiz but also to recall Ted Williams, who played every one of his home games on these very grounds. Every one. Right there.
We have so few places like that left. There is still Madison Square Garden, and if you know where you’re going you can still stand on the spotwhere the ring for Ali Frazier I stood, or the place on the court where Willis Reed knocked down those first two jumpers against the Lakers, or the spot on the ice where Mark Messier giddily shook the Stanley Cup.
But that’s really it. You want to see where the Beatles played, where Joe Willie hit Maynard with the strike that delivered the Jets to the Super Bowl, where the ball drizzled through Buckner’s legs? You’ll be strolling a parking lot. Want to wander where the greatest football game ever was played in 1958, where Babe Ruth hit his 60th and the Roger Maris his 61st, where three different Popes said Mass? It’s a city park now. Even Giants Stadium, where twice the home team qualified for a Super Bowl, where Pele introduced his magic to America, where Springsteen could’ve probably held 365 soldout concerts every year ... that’s a parking lot now, too.
So many memories, confined forever to scrapbooks back home. Yes. I’m going to enjoy the day at Lambeau. Me and the ghosts. That’s how we roll.