The New York Yankees will receive their World Series rings as they begin their home schedule Tuesday.
Chase Utley hit a pair of solo home runs, and Cliff Lee struck out 10 Yankees, as the Phillies won Game 1 of the World Series Wednesday, 6-1. Utley has reached base in 26 straight postseason games. Game 2 of the Series is Thursday in New York.
By Christian Wiessner
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Say it ain't so. An era ends on Sunday when the curtain comes down on baseball in storied Yankee Stadium, scene of more moments that will live in sporting history than any other place in America.
Strangely, in Sunday night's final contest between the New York Yankees and the Baltimore Orioles, nothing more than pride is at stake. The Yankees have had a rare down season and will not be adding to their championship record this year.
Wrecking balls and sledgehammers, not baseballs and bats, will soon be the equipment of choice as the stadium is demolished in coming months, although there may yet be a "closing ceremony" featuring big name rock stars before the wrecking crews move in.
Next season, the Yankees will take their bats, balls and fabled pinstriped uniforms to a brand new Yankee Stadium nearing completion across the street from the current one.
Americans have always been wistful about their National Pastime. Many cherish memories of playing catch with their fathers and of their first childhood visits to ballparks.
"This field, this game. It's a part of our past. It reminds us of all that once was good, and it could be again," James Earl Jones's character said in the film "Field of Dreams."
Through baseball history, no venue came closer to capturing that mystical quality than Yankee Stadium.
Yankee Stadium to host last game before demolition....
By CHARLES V. BAGLI
More than two years ago, the Bloomberg administration came up with an aggressively creative way to use tax-exempt bonds to finance two of the most expensive stadiums in the world, one for the Yankees in the Bronx and another for the Mets in Queens.
The Internal Revenue Service initially approved the use of the bonds for the ballparks, but quickly issued a proposal in 2006 to tighten the rules governing the use of tax-exempt bonds so that it would be more difficult, and perhaps impossible, for this kind of financing to be used again by profitable, private enterprises like professional sports teams.
Now state and city officials say the proposed rules are jeopardizing what is planned to be the city’s next big sports palace: the $950 million Barclays Center, an 18,000-seat basketball arena for the Nets that is the centerpiece of the huge residential and commercial complex in Brooklyn known as Atlantic Yards. The project’s developer, Forest City Ratner, says it plans to break ground on the arena this fall and has long expected to use tax-exempt financing to reduce its borrowing costs by tens of millions of dollars.
Barclays Center is expected to be the most expensive arena in the world, and the lack of tax-exempt financing would substantially increase its cost. The $4 billion Atlantic Yards project already faces delays because of litigation, a sluggish economy, the lack of commercial tenants and the reluctance of lenders to finance large real estate developments.
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