When this video was released and I saw it for the first time, my eyes welled up with tears. Knowiing that this sacred cathedral, this sacred ground that so many Yankee legends have roamed whether alive or in spirit, from Gehrig to Mantle, from Rizzuto to Martin, from Mighty Mite to Torre from Jackson to Bernie Williams, will be no more…I could’ve gone on with this list but I won’t do it here. The list is practically infinite.

I have yet to really embrace the new stadium and it will take me a very long time before I can accept it and even then it’s questionable even now. I know that we are one game out of first place as I type this but whenever I go back to East 161st Street and River Avenue, it gets more difficult so I find myself whenever I go there I’m always at Yankee Tavern because it’s the one true piece of the Yankees from the Old School and you can tell from looking at the old style registers, simple menus, the same decor that has been a staple there for 80 years….a living breathing time capsule because I can no longer hold on to our TRUE Cathedral that is inevitably going to be torn down.

Bernie….invited to come back on a minor league contract was the management’s way of saying “Thank you Bernie for all you have done for the team but you’re washed up. We don’t need you anymore,” (almost in the same fashion they outsted Torre a year later), yet he was a fan favorite regardless of how the upper Yankee Brass saw him. He spent his entire Major League career there. The Bronx was like his second home…his baseball home and my heart broke when he did not come back the 2007 nor the 2008 seasons except for the last home game ever to be played at the stadium. That was a truly sad day. I don’t even want to think about it because I get upset too easily still.

At some point, I have to move forward…Bernie is doing it and in a strange way The TRUE Cathedral is doing so as well….I’m just simply put….not ready to do that. I am a baseball purist and I believe in the simplicities of what makes the sport awesome. A hot summer day, a simple menu of popcorn, peanuts, cracker jacks, pretzels, hot dogs, soda, beer, a killer double play, a beautifully executed outfield assist, a “Willy Mays” catch, a moonshot into the night, a no-no (like Jonathan Sanchez did in San Fran last night) and a roaring crowd that will back their thome team until the final out. Those are the things that makes baseball that much more beautiful and innocent at a time when there is so much corruption and violence in the world. This one sport makes feel like a kid again.