Matthews called old Yankee Stadium "a tense, joyless cauldron."

"From a baseball standpoint, the first week of the new Yankee Stadium couldn't have gone much better, four wins in six games including yesterday's interminable 9-7 victory over the Oakland Athletics on Melky Cabrera's walk-off home run in the bottom of the 14th inning."

Today's game would be considered the best game of all time if it was a playoffs game.

Since it's a game that nobody cares about, it's "interminable" and Waldman and Sterling spent the whole time complaining about getting their delayed trip to Boston.


"But from a public relations standpoint, it hardly could have gone much worse.

Put it this way: If the first week of my marriage was as devoid of magic as the Yankees' first week in their new park, one or both of us wouldn't still be around 25 years later."

Nice. You nailed your wife really good on your Honeymoon then. Good to know.


Also, I can think of a lot of ways it could have gone worse from a public relations standpoint:

• Jeter was caught with kiddie porn.
• The ushers had murdered some of the fans and stolen their food.
• A column had collapsed, like at the old Yankee Stadium in 1998.
• Lee Mazzilli or Joel Skinner were still on the team.

"We are, and certainly, this place will still be here in 2034. Still, it makes you wonder if, when the Yankees moved across the street, they left more than just an old ballpark behind."

Lucky gal, lucky gal.


"The old Stadium was a vibrant, rowdy, sometimes dangerous but always living place where baseball was the primary language spoken."

Wrong.

I had a bleacher seat for David Wells's Perfect Game and half the people were there solely to collect their beanie babies.


"Here, it seems sterile, corporate and frighteningly devoid of buzz."

Of course it does.

We need Scott Brosius back.


"Thankfully, the blast Cabrera hit to put a merciful end to a nearly five-hour game needed no help from the wind and no explanation from an engineer or a meteorologist."

You really just don't like baseball.


"It doesn't bode well for the rest of the season, because if you're not feeling the mojo now, you probably never will. Sure, the place will sell out when the Red Sox or Mets are in the house, but for the first time in many years, get used to the place being half-full, or if the Yankees ever fall out of contention, a lot less than that."

The Stadium will never be half full, I guarantee it.

Also, I'm not sure why the second-place Yankees will fall out of contention.


This was a midday weekday game vs. Oakland in the rain.

Jeter hit a HR, Melky hit a freakin' walkoff in the 14th inning. The Yankee bullpen pitched eight scoreless innings (if you're keeping score.)

How spoiled are you? How unappreciative?


"Right now, if the Yankees were a Broadway show, these first-week returns are of the type that precede a closing notice. The show will go on here, of course, but for now at least, it looks as if the era of the daily sellout, no matter who the opponent is, who the starting pitchers are, or what the significance of the game is, are as finished as the old Stadium."

The "era" of the daily sellout, that "era" was exactly three seasons. You should call it the "ARod era."

For the 2001 season -- following the fourth title in five years -- a team with O'Neill and Tino and Brosius -- the attendance was 3.26 million.

The Yankees have already sold 3.5 million tickets this season.