Shouldn't it have occurred to someone in the MLB offices when the master schedule for Major League Baseball was made up last winter that, oh yeah, this will be the final season in the long and storied history of Yankee Stadium and maybe it would be a good idea to have the Yankees finish the 2008 regular season at home, so their fans could give the old ballpark a fitting sendoff?

As it is, the final home game for the Yankees takes place Sunday night, September 21, against Baltimore, then the team goes on the road for the last week, finishing up in Boston, of all places, September 28. The schedule gurus, if there are such things, probably assumed New York would be making a postseason appearance, as they have every year since 1994, so what difference would it make whether the Yankees finished the regular season at home or not?

The kick in the teeth, of course, is that barring a miraculous Lazarus impression by the Yankees over the final three weeks, they will miss the postseason this year, so the Stadium will close with a whimper after so many big bangs over so many decades of baseball. I am by no means a New York Yankees follower, but as a lifelong baseball fan it seems to me the building that has played home to Ruth, Dimaggio, Berra, Ford, Mantle, Hunter, Jackson, Williams, Jeter and so many other transcendant stars deserves a more appropriate sendoff, and should have gotten one.

What would have been wrong with the Yankees hosting the final game at the Stadium the day after the regular season ended for everyone else? The attention of the entire baseball world could have been directed at the shrine just before the playoffs started. It seems to me that would have been far preferable to the ignoble finish in store for Yankee Stadium the way it is going down. It would have added one day to the already endless baseball season; big deal.

Instead, even though the final Yankee Stadium game will be televised nationally on ESPN, it will seem as though there is unfinished business when the lights are extinguished for the final time. Maybe that's how it seems to Yankees fans anyway, given the disappointing performance of their team during the 2008 season. They will be opening 2009 with a sparkling, brand-spanking-new ballpark, but things will never be the same.

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