It's still hard to remember that the Mets don't play at Shea Stadium, and it will probably be a while before "The House that Ruth Built" stops being part of the shorthand for Yankee Stadium. You hear something long enough and it becomes second nature, but the new Yankee digs are clearly built by a different George than the old ones.
There's still a Babe Ruth Plaza in front of the building, though, and that's where an article by Ross of NYYStadiumInsider.com comes into play. He spoke with Linda Ruth Tosetti, granddaughter of the Babe, about how little the Yankees have involved her in the construction of the new stadium. She complains that the Yankees trotted her out at the groundbreaking and the final game of the old Stadium, but that her own requests of the team have been ignored.
It's tough to greet that feeling with anything more than a shrug of the shoulders. The majority of Tosetti's complaints come across as someone with a sense of entitlement not getting every last thing she asks for, while others, like demanding that baseball retire number three on every team, are enormously self-serving. She's also fond of spouting the back in my day rhetoric that holds that nothing in the present or future could ever be as good as it was in the sepia-toned past of memory.
All that said, she does have a pretty decent idea about putting a statue of Ruth outside the stadium in the plaza that bears his name. Such statues are commonplace at stadiums these days and it's impossible to overstate the role Ruth played in the growth of the Yankees and all of baseball. It would be a nice addition, which might even work to replace The Bat as an identifier outside the stadium.
But the idea that the Yankees owe Tosetti or any other Ruth descendent anything is a ridiculous one. With or without a statue, Ruth's legacy has been well taken care of by the team and baseball in general.
Josh Alper is a writer living in New York City and is a contributor to FanHouse.com and ProFootballTalk.com in addition to his duties for NBCNewYork.com.
