At 84 Yankee Stadium is the stage of life where pain is constant companion. Each night it suffers as a wealthy man's baseball card collection takes the field. Where once great teams pulled together to create history, the 2007 Yankees stumble into irrelevance.

This summer and the next will pass and death will come, the grand old structure blown apart by carefully sequenced explosions. Sometime in the Fall of 2008 the remains will carted off for burial beneath the soft earth of New Jersey landfills.

Someone famously wrote that there would always be an England. Maybe so, but there will never be another Churchill. In 2009 there will be a New Yankee Stadium but no Ruth, DiMaggio, or Mantle to roam it's outfield. Those days are past.

Greed is good. It fills bank accounts and egos and gives us George Steinbrenner, Alex Rodriquez, Scott Boras, Roger Clemens, and 22-29. But it isn't Thurman Munson wiping off the dust and purposefully heading to the mound to lay down the law. It isn't Reggie Jackson standing at home plate watching a home run arc into the stands. And it surely isn't Lou Gehrig, dying young, standing at a microphone and calling himself the luckiest man on the face of the earth. And meaning it.

There was once joy in the "House that Ruth Built". Today there is apathy. New Yorkers may care about the Yankees. Some may even care about the way the game is played. Today's Yankees? They care in the way mercenary armies throughout history have cared about countries whose flag they marched under for pieces of silver. A house is not a home without a family, a stadium is not a home without a team. The 2007 Yankees are not a team.

In years to come they will talk of Kubek and Richardson, tell stories of Lefty Gomez, talk of the pride and glory that was the New York Yankees. One hundred years from now Steinbrenner will be gone and remembered only as an historical footnote. His greatest tribute to himself, the new stadium, will gone by then. But still they will remember Joe DiMaggio "the Yankee Clipper". There is justice in that.

When Yankee teams took the field under Casey Stengel in the 50's they swaggered onto it as rulers of the baseball universe. Hank Bauer talked, in his later years, about seeing teams watch Yankee batting practice and knowing the game was over before it begun. What do opponents feel today when they watch Johnny Damon, Doug Mientkiewicz, and Bobby Abreu in the cage? Pity?

The old stadium once saw great captains leading the Yankees. Miller Huggins, a small man with a watch works mind, made an uneasy alliance with Ruth and hoisted pennant flags in center field on opening day. Joe McCarthy retired with a .614 winning percentage and the respect of his players. Stengel laughed at himself all the way to the World Series each fall, and Billy Martin lived like a man running a step in front of death. Which he was.

In 2007 the Yankees are managed by Joe Torre, a man of careful words and cautious nature. The man who said he needed a 12th pitcher and didn't need Bernie Williams. A National League manager who sold his baseball soul for a "sure thing" that surely has gone bad.

Does Roger Clemens care for Yankee Stadium, feel pride to put on the pinstripes, stop to look around and think of who came before? Or is it just a grand Gotham stage for his ego to strut across six innings at a time? When Alex Rodriquez stands at third base is he thinking about taking the Yankees to the World Series, or some blonde to a high dollar strip club?

Tom Hanks said there is "no crying in baseball". But there is sentiment, and it requires the Yankees to leave Yankee Stadium in 2008 the way they entered in 1923. As world champions, as a team, as Yankees.

This season is history. Write it off. Let Clemens go home to Texas for good in September. Send Alex Rodriquez out to a get a lap dance and change the locks while he is gone. Send Torre home to the National League, buy Johnny Damon a mirror to watch himself in and send he and it to the West Coast. Give Bobby Abreu the news that it's over.

Then in the spring of 2008 put together a team of real ball players around Jeter and Posada who will ask for, and give, no quarter. Find eleven pitchers who want the ball and give it to them. Find players who play the first inning like the ninth. Give them a manager with brains and guts. And for one last season, let the stadium in the Bronx be home to real Yankees.