Did the Giants Really Need a New Stadium?

Talk about bad timing huh? In a time where people are cutting down on their personal spending faster than Sarah Palin is sinking into the abyss of forgottenness, the Giants picked a bad time to open up their new digs at the beginning of the 2010 season.

This can also be said for both local baseball teams as well. To be fair to each of these teams, I don't think they were able to foresee this depression. If this nation's brightest economists couldn't, then I can't see a bunch of sports executives doing the same thing either.

Even so, I find it hard to believe that the current Giants Stadium wasn't fit enough to stay in operation for many more years. It's a great place to play and in terms of football itself, has an intimidation factor. It also has loads of history to it, and as a lover of history (As of today one of my degrees is in Political Science) I really appreciate nostalgia.

It's not like Shea Stadium, which was one of the least aesthetically pleasing sporting arenas. The case can be made that that was a construction project most needed among any of the local sports teams, although I would have preferred the tax money that was spent on Citi Field to have been used towards keeping St. John's Hospital on Queens Boulevard open instead. But that's another discussion for another time.

The bright side of this (if there is one) is that the new Giants Stadium was privately financed and no tax money was used to pay for it. I'm sure the new place will have all the bells and whistles, after all this is New York and the New York Giants are a model organization. So I don't doubt that they're going to give the team and the fans a great place to call home.

However, I think people are quick to discard old in favor of new. Old seems to have a negative connotation to it, like a four-letter swear word. But old can be good. Old is familiar, and familiarity has comfort. Old has history, and history teaches us.

All in all I'm sure the new Giants Stadium will be glamorous and pretty and all that fun stuff. I realize that this stadium is and will be built no matter what. But was it absolutely necessary?

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