Belated Post #2 [just learned how to admin] - Baseball and the magic of places

This story is a few weeks old but was particularly amusing at the time. A Boston construction worker working on the new Yankee Stadium buried a #34 David Ortiz jersey in the cement under a future restaurant concourse, presumably to curse the Yankees. In response, Hank Steinbrenner is filing a lawsuit, has defamed the offending party in several media venues, and used expensive GPR techniques to search for additional Red Sox paraphernalia.

            When discussing a place it is easy to forget that the bundle of human relationships enabled by a locale are at least as important as the physical dimensions. In this case, the Yankees are moving from a storied national monument to a relatively new and profane stadium (in the parking lot). The fact that the place associations, rivalry, and history of the House that Ruth Built are being lifted wholesale onto the new park foregrounds the role of people in place. Also it shows how brutish Hank Steinbrenner is and how superstitious baseball fans can get.

http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/articles/2008/04/14/ny_yankees_remove_buried_red_sox_jersey/