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Yankee Stadium used to be a place where opposing teams hated to play, with a raucous, hostile crowd jeering, insulting and making it difficult to perform. Now, that crowd has turned on the home team with empty seats, boos and insults letting the Yankees, down 2-0 and looking like they have no chance at all, leaving the Yankees glad to head to Detroit.
Here is some of what is being written about the Yankees and their fans on this Monday morning.
Bronx jeers for listless Yankees
The New York Yankees quietly dressed Sunday, mumbling clichés about not giving up, but they were curiously absent of bravado.
A franchise with a record 27 World Series titles will be hard-pressed to add a 28th, hamstrung by a punchless offense, booed by a moody, below-capacity crowd and shaken by the sight of captain and shortstop Derek Jeter felled by a broken ankle.
They will pack their bags today for a trip to Detroit, but the next time they convene at Yankee Stadium, it very well may be April 1, 2013, playing their season opener.
The Yankees lost 3-0 on Sunday to the Detroit Tigers, and trail 2-0 in the best-of-seven American League Championship series.
Even their fans, who arrived late but booed long and often, acted as if they really don't care if they see them again this year.
Yankees deserve boo-birds and empty seats after looking like $200M bust in ALCS - Yahoo! Sports
Gone are mystique and aura, the two temptresses of the Bronx, who blessed old Yankee Stadium with kismet and joy and brilliant baseball. In their stead are apathy and malaise, a couple of hags from Yonkers. They embody the new Yankee Stadium, a sarcophagus if ever there was one: no matter how gorgeous and ornate the outside, it remains filled with lifelessness.
No wonder Game 2 of the ALCS featured thousands of empty seats, like Game 1 before it, and like the do-or-die Game 5 of the ALDS, too. New Yorkers understand a fraud when they see it. They pay for expensive seats, drink overpriced beers, buy exorbitant merchandise and fund a $200 million joke, a team that for the second straight game couldn't score a measly run off the Detroit Tigers' Nos. 3 and 4 starting pitchers. These Yankees earned every last boo.
MLB Playoffs 2012 -- Alex Rodriguez, Nick Swisher sound excited to leave New York - ESPN New York
The "old" Yankee Stadium, the one across the street where Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle played and Joe Louis and Muhammad Ali fought, was famous for its reputation of being an intimidating place for opposing teams to play.
The "new" Yankee Stadium, where the Donald Trumps and Rudy Giulianis of the world are protected from the common folk by a moat and where thousands of seats go unoccupied even for playoff games, is developing a bit of a reputation, too.
For being an intimidating place for the home team to play.