Take Me Out of the Ballpark

Michael Kimmelman fr. “On the Bad New Ballparks” in the Nov. 19th, 2009, issue of The New York Review of Books:

“At the [new] Yankee stadium . . . [T]he stadium sound system, echoing against the hard walls, keeps up a torrent of advertising, music, and instructions for spectators to ‘Get Loud’ and ‘Make Noise.’ . . . Major league baseball used to be a game of reverie. It was, and in amateur pickup games and at minor league fields is still, experienced as long stretches of near silence, interrupted by bursts of excitement. The soundtrack has long been the steady murmur of the crowd and the burbling chatter of radio or television announcers free-associating between plays. The new stadiums subvert this reverie. They fill the silence for the crowd that seems to number more and more multitaskers, who text or chat on cell phones during the game, and gladly pass an hour dawdling in line at the Shake Shack outlet at Citi Field rather than watch the action from their seats. As my friend . . . put it, marveling at the long lines, ‘They’re buying tickets to a mall that happens to be at a baseball stadium.’”