N.Y. Times: Schwarz: Some Players Hold Their Noses to Say Goodbye to Yankee Stadium (RR)

I know a lot of glutaraldehyde was spilled when Jim “The Mummy” Coates was embalmed, but still…

Yankee Stadium is holding up about as well as any 85-year-old can be expected to, but the ballpark’s 1970s facelift has begun to droop. Players found reasons for moving on easy to come up with.

Olfactory issues led the voting, although few players were able to identify what the problem has been. Is one of Babe Ruth’s half-eaten hot dogs still rotting under one of the grandstands? Are the foul lines marked with sulfur? And how long does pine tar keep, anyway?

“Especially when it rains, the smell that comes up through the drainage system is not pretty,” said Jason Varitek of the Boston Red Sox. “It affects your sinuses, I’ll tell you that much.”

Young added: “It depends on the day. The last time we were there, which was a couple of weeks ago, a pipe burst. I was going back up the tunnel, and there was a flood — a sewer line broke or something like that. So I still have that kind of in my nose right now.”