One Final Evening in the Bronx

After tonight, only two of baseball's legendary parks - Wrigley and Fenway - will remain open for business. I don't know if you've heard yet, but Yankee Stadium, arguably the most famous sports arena in the world is hosting its final sporting event this evening. Yankee Stadium, this most American of places, a venue where some of the most memorable (and hilarious) events in sports history took place, and home to baseball's most successful team for the last 85 years takes one final bow tonight. Here's to hoping the Orioles don't spoil the party. Hey, hey, enough with sentimentality already! Just because this is the final game at the Stadium doesn't mean the Yanks are about to relax their draconian rules for a second; no sir, not even for their own players.

On Saturday, the Yankees’ chief operating officer, Lonn A. Trost, sent a one-page memo to the players reminding them they are forbidden from taking anything from the stadium. “Like the fans, the players were told that they cannot take whatever they would like,” Trost said in a telephone interview on Sunday. “They were told that if they would like something, they can provide us with a list and then we will see if we can sell it to them and they will pay the same price as fans.”

Sigh. The more things change, the more they remain the same. Farewell, sweet structure. Speaking of buildings that can make grown men weep, Lambeau Field isn't being turned into a parking lot anytime soon, and will be host to the Cowboys and Packers tonight. NBC execs are hard at work, and hope to come up with a way to super-impose Favre's image over Aaron Rodgers's face by the third quarter. Crowd Gathers to Say Goodbye [NY Times]