by Paul Elie
from Georgetown University

Down in the Corner

      One of the truly great pieces of sports writing I’ve read is “Mad Cathedral,” by my friend Thomas Kelly, an essay published in Esquire in 1998.   It’s a love song to the old Yankee Stadium, and a fight song raised up when the Yankees were threatening to build a new stadium on the West Side of Manhattan or in New Jersey.   Tom’s argument is that the old Stadium is so full of ghosts – of players past, of family members lost – that it can’t be rebuilt or replaced, and it’s heartbreakingly persuasive.

So I feel a little guilty, and a little shallow, going to the new Yankee Stadium and simply enjoying myself – feeling that the new Stadium is “close enough to the old one, in location and design, that all the old memories are still there.” And that’s one reason why going to NYCFC matches at the Stadium is so enjoyable.   All the old memories are still there – but they’re not burdened with comparisons to the old Yankee Stadium, or the old Yankee Stadium before the 1976 renovation, and so on.

An essay of mine about going to see NYCFC – that’s New York City Football Club – is up on the New Yorker web site.   (It’s my fifth piece there, I’m happy to say.)  I think of it as a pendant to Tom’s great essay, a shout-out to the Ghosts of Stadium Present alongside his hymn to the Ghosts of Stadium Past.