A Beautiful Moment Ruined

Tonight marked the last game in Yankee Stadium’s storied 85-year history. After a full Sunday of meetings, my roommates and I were able to get back to the house in time to catch the last 2 ½ innings and the postgame hooplah.

I was never a crazed baseball fan like many of my friends, but as a lifelong New Yorker I always enjoyed seeing the Yankees win, I always admired their history and tradition, and I always loved being in their house.

It was an emotional half hour. The kind you watch live and know that you’re one of millions out there seeing and thinking the same things. You know you’re seeing something special that will be viewed again and again and talked about for years to come.


You know it’s something special when Mariano Rivera enters the field for the last time silhouetted amidst several thousand flashing bulbs. You know it's something special when the announcers don’t speak for two straight minutes, giving viewers those rare, unblemished moments in sports where you can hear what what an excited crowd sounds like when two men aren’t trying to talk over it.


At one point after the game, as the team made their final lap around the perimeter of the outfield, the shots being beamed into our house were of cameras catching crying and clapping fans around the stadium. My favorite: A boy who couldn't have been more than 8-years old who looked like he was on that verge between tears and of being completely fine. Someone who was not alive in the 20th Century looked to me like he was about a fleeting glance of Derek Jeter away from breaking down and weeping.

One of the other images the cameras picked up was a young couple silently embraced in one of the upper decks. She had her head cocked, sobbing as she looked out onto the field. He had one arm draped over her, expressionless, looking down at his cellphone, furiously punching in something with his thumbs. It could have been one of those stunning, truthful moments that etch itself into your mind-- like the picture of that sailor who came back from World War II and kissed that woman in Times Square (my friend's grandmother as it turns out).

But instead, a cellphone ruined it. Technology ruined it. This future we’re all living in ruined it.

There was no one texting or calling with their cellphones 53 years ago. Even 20 years ago, would we have seen this same moment ruined by someone checking their beeper?

For one of our classes, we’re required to write something about culture each week. It could be anything. This week, I've decided to document the death of pure, untarnished emotion, by stating the following truth we just witnessed:

A beautiful moment in history was marred tonight by the spoils of the future.

dubs. out.