In Dead of a New York Winter, Empire Field is Melting Away

(New York Daily Mirror - January 14, 2010)

NEW YORK - With each passing day, Empire Field, the home of the Knights since 2001 and a New York City fixture since the World’s Fair in 1964, disappears from behind the shadow of Knights Field, the team’s new home. In the last few weeks, demolition crews have been ripping down entire sections of Empire Field from both ends of the outfield decks toward its middle. What was once a semi-enclosed bowl with 57,000 seats is now a skeleton of a grandstand.

In the first weeks after the Knights finished their final season at the arena (with a win, their 73rd of the season), crews removed the seats, signs and anything else that could be sold to collectors or reused in city parks. Then demolition crews started knocking out the field level and the concrete decks that made up the loge and the mezzanine. But the structure of the stadium, built for nearly $30 million, was largely intact.

Not so anymore.

Since the beginning of the year, crews have clawed away at Empire’s walls and beams, exposing escalators, elevator banks and air ducts. The stands above Gates A and E have vanished and parts of the neon players that adorned the outside of the stadium are gone, too. Twelve sections of the upper deck still have their concrete floors, but the other sections that remain are outlined only by their steel beams. Unlike stadiums in other cities that have been imploded, Empire Field had to be taken down piece by piece because of New York City building codes and the sensitivities of Flushing residents who still have visions of 9/11 in their minds.

The rat-a-tat-tat of the construction machinery drowned out the noise of the jets taking off from nearby LaGuardia Airport . Tarps on chain link fences say “Almost Home,” a reference to the soon-to-be-opened Knights Field, but also the six-month process of erasing Empire.
In all, nearly 10,000 tons of steel and another 2,500 tons of concrete will be pulled out of Empire. Some of the concrete will be ground up and reused as the base material for the parking lot that will be installed in its place. The lot will include space for 2,000 cars and signs marking where home plate and the pitcher’s mound once were.

Team representatives said that the demolition will be completed some time in the coming weeks, which is not hard to imagine. On Wednesday, lines of dump trucks made their way onto what was once the outfield, weaving around piles of crumpled metal and concrete covered in snow.
Several Web sites have sprung up that have chronicled the destruction of the place where Mike Mussina in his prime once threw en route to a Cy Young Award, Javy Lopez once delivered a 60-homer season and where Jim Thome, the Knights first captain, manned first base. In a way, the sites are a testament to the morbid curiosity of Knights fans, who have endured many morbid Knights teams.

“It’s interesting how they are doing it piece by piece,” said Karl Erhardt, a Knights fan from Babylon, N.Y. “Most old stadia are blown up and it takes just a few seconds. It’s pretty interesting seeing it come apart in pieces over the course of four months.”
Erhardt and several other die-hard fans are organizing a final farewell at Empire at noon Saturday to share stories and take photographs of what is left of the ballpark.

As Empire Field diminishes, Knights Field emerges. While less imposing than Empire, the new stadium, at least from the outside, has an elegance that Empire lacked. Instead of the lattice of concrete ramps that constituted Empire’s exterior, Knights Field is covered in brick and punctuated with arches and an entrance rotunda. Flood lights highlight the outside while klieg lights illuminate what is left of Empire Field.

NASBL play at Empire Field began in the spring of 2001, after the dreadful North Celtic Druids were purchased by Knights Partners, L.P., were renamed the Knights and were moved to New York City as its first (and so far only) NASBL franchise. The family of Knights GM Mitch Pak are thought to be majority owners in the venture but Pak has never discussed his ties to ownership. Certainly his ability to retain his dual jobs as GM and manager after eight losing seasons in nine years, including a 118 loss debacle in 2008, could be explained by a familial relationship to the owners.

Empire Field was the brainchild of legendary New York master builder Robert Moses, who envisioned a grand, ultramodern baseball arena in the swamps of Flushing Meadows in Queens County . Thanks to his nearly unfettered power in New York City politics, Moses was able to launch the multi-million project and begin construction in 1956 despite not having been able to first lure a major league baseball club to actually play there. In early 1957, Moses offered the stadium site and the arena itself to Walter O’Malley, the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers who had become publicly disenchanted with decrepit Ebbets Field in Brooklyn . O’Malley advised Moses in no uncertain terms that unless he was offered a Brooklyn site, he was moving the club to Southern California . Moses remained obstinate, as usual, and after the 1957 season, the Dodgers left for the coast. Empire Field was completed, sans team, in 1959 and remained empty until 1961, when the New York Titans of the upstart American Football League came into being. The Titans, who became the Jets in 1963, called Empire Field home until 1984, when the team owner, Leon Hess, moved the club to Giants Stadium in New Jersey after a dispute with the stadium's owner, the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, over the lack of maintenance of the facility in general and the bathrooms in particular.

Empire Field most famously hosted a Beatles concert in 1964 and was also used for major league baseball by MLB's New York Yankees during Yankee Stadium renovation in 1974 and 1975 and the NFL's New York Giants for one season during the construction of Giants Stadium in New Jersey. It was then sporadically used for concerts, high school championship games and conventions from 1984 until 2001, when the Knights took possession and played nine star-crossed years there.

The Knights themselves were not very sentimental about leaving the old barn. "It was a dump, lets be honest," said Michael Young, the senior Knight who played there the longest. "When we travel around the country and play on the road, I'm always shocked at the modern facilities some of our competitors play in. Empire Field was past its prime. From what I understand, it never had a prime."

The Knights will open Knights Field for the 2010 season by retiring Mike Mussina's #35 jersey on Opening Day. Arrangements for the ceremony are still pending.