YANKEE STADIUM – For both the defending World Champions and the visiting Angels, the American League season in New York opens with traumas of different degree and seriousness. For the Yanks – particularly their employees and fans – comes the unexpected shock of seeing the old ballpark across the street in mid-destruction. It looks like the remains of a sunken ocean liner, and most of the heavy work has been done in the last week. “We stand here staring at it,” said a member of the team PR staff. “I was looking into my old office yesterday.” For the Angels the sadness is perhaps not as broad but certainly as pointed. This is the last stadium in which their late and beloved television announcer, my friend Rory Markas, broadcast. “We all thought about it,” said his ex-partner Terry Smith, “but none of us were prepared for it.”. Opening Day us supposed to signal renewal and hope in our sport, qualities that have seldom been as soothing as some of us here hope they are today.
