With all the hoopla surrounding the new Yankee stadium you would think it was being built in the heart of the city, namely Manhattan. Instead this new remarkable stadium is being built right across the street from the old one, on top of one of the few well maintained public parks/playgrounds in the city, in what happens to be the poorest congressional district in the United States.

“You don’t have progress unless you inconvenience a few people.” That was what New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg had to say when he was asked to comment about the replacement parks promised by both the city of NewYork and Yankee organization. He was asked to comment due to the fact that some of the parks will not be finished until 2011, while

the new stadium opens before the start of the next baseball season. Distance is also an issue with many of the new parks with some being quite a distance away, and requiring children or anyone looking to use the facilities a significant amount of travel.  A trip to the park for these children will require them to traverse busy streets and an over pass for the Major Deegan Expressway. Now is it justifiable to wonder if Mayor Bloomberg is under a belief that only the poor need to be inconvenienced?  

 So often in great cities across America it is the poor who inconvenienced in the name of a neighborhoods progression. With the city pledging $160 million to this stadium while in that very same neighborhood lunch programs for the local school kids have lost all funding, is it not odd to have Heather Mills flying in from the U.K. to provide food for these very same kids, just to raise awareness about the lack of funds for such programs? Not to mention the city raising that monetary amount to a staggering $217 million according to the New York City Independent Budget Office.

Yankees are important to the New York City’s economy. However, is it justifiable to spend over $1.3 billion just to move a baseball team from one facility to another across the street? The old stadium will be taken apart piece by piece instead of simply being demolished, while the poorest children in America lose their playground.  The local public schools lose their sports fields and an impoverished community is inconvenienced for the sake of progress. It’s hard to imagine that with the rising ticket prices for the new stadium that anyone currently residing in the neighborhood of the South Bronx will even be able to enjoy a game. It’s apparently all part inconvenience for progress, at least according to Mayor Bloomberg.