Derek Jeter's Humble Abode Coming Along Nicely

When we last checked in with the construction of the All-Star shortstop's quaint future dwelling on Davis Island in Tampa, it was just being framed. Now it's beginning to take shape and you can see what kind of elbow room 30,870 square feet will give you.

Oddly, the Tampa Bay Online gallery that I'm linking to above calls the home an "English Manor". I'm not a European Historian, but I'm pretty sure most manor homes have more square footage on their property than they do in the home.

I Am Legend

Well, I was for a few hours yesterday afternoon, anyway. 

For the second half of my whirlwind birthday tour, a good friend who works for a major financial institution, invited me to accompany her to yesterday's Yankees game and sit in her company's Legends seats. I don't care where my tickets are when I go to a game, since I always end up standing in the same spot. There is no chance I would actually purchase one of these seats for myself, but since this outing was on Global Financial Conglomerate, Inc., I was more than willing to see what the "Legends Experience (R) (C) (TM)" was all about. 

Matt already did a fine job summing up what happened on the field, so I'm just going to try to paint a picture of the lavishness and excess that I partook in yesterday. 

The Legends Suites have their own (somewhat understated) entrance to the Stadium just past Gate 4, if you are walking from Babe Ruth Plaza. I was late, but not to worry because the Legends entrance has a little Will Call podium right there, and all I had to do was show my ID to get my ticket. There were probably 10 Yankee employees in this entry way, at least four of whom were just standing there smiling, ready to wait on ticket holders hand and foot. I tried to think of some ridiculous request I could make to test the limits of what they were willing to do, but couldn't come up with anything. I instead walked over and was affixed with a green Yankees wristband, or as it should be called, a gluttony bracelet.

I walked though a foyer framed by blue glass with little interlocking NYs, which is probably the defining design feature of the Legends club. It opened up into one of the two restaurants, this one with 10 serving stations in the middle, and tables all around the outside. Lauren recommended that we get to-go plates so we could take our food to our seats. I worked my way around, hitting up the most carnivorous options, so as to ensure I got my money's worth (or rather, her company's money's worth). She went with the grilled prawns and lobster ravioli and our two other friends sampled even more deliciousness. I caught Johnny Damon's first inning homer on one of the many giant flat screens as I was waiting for my suckling pig to be carved. 

Plates fairly heaped with fine food, we worked our way to our seats, which were in Section 27b. You have to first go through the 

downstairs restaurant, which has a ridiculous amount of free stuff for the taking. It's kind of disgusting, actually. There was a little station with the mini-helmets that you could fill up with candy. Have fun trying to control your kids here!

Next to that, they had free coffee, and one of those huge rolling hot dog grills. Just walk up and take how ever many you want. Around the corner, just before you stepped outside, they had a table, loaded with Twizzlers, Cracker Jacks, M&Ms, peanuts... just help yourself (fat ass). A guy walked up to this station while we were standing there and goes "I don't know what to say about this...". I offered "Only in America?"

Our seats were past the photographers up the third base line, a few rows from the field. As we sat down, attendants brought over trays that locked into your cup holders and had indentations specifically made for the to-go plates along with spots for two drinks. 

I couldn't help but dread that a foul ball would come rocketing down the line when I was cutting into my lamb chop or taking a bite of my BBQ chicken sandwich and be left completely defenseless. Luckily, Gary Sheffield plays across town now. 

The seats were awesome, don't get my wrong, but the really unbelievable thing about the whole Legends package is that there is a menu and you can just keep ordering from it constantly. The only thing that costs money is the alcohol. You should be able to click on the image and make it large enough to read. They had simple stuff that you would expect at a baseball game, but it also went well above and beyond that.

We just kept ordering, without worrying if it would be eaten. Lobster rolls, zucchini and potato chips with Gorgonzola cheese, crab and shrimp salad, truffle fries, nachos, ice cream sandwiches, cheesecake on a stick. Yeah, cheesecake on a fucking stick. It was like a Ben & Jerry's Peace Pop, except impossibly, even less healthy. We ordered a few $9 Coronas but I was mostly just drunk off of the food. 

Oh yeah, so I don't know if I mentioned it, but there was actually a baseball game occurring during all of this face-stuffing.

A-Rod was the closest player to us and the two ladies in our group quickly noticed that, as Del Griffith from Planes, Trains and Automobiles might say, "Larry Bird doesn't do as much ball-handling in one night as [A-Rod does] in [a half inning]!"

It was a pretty sweet game, with the 5 run fifth inning and all. Teixeria's three run double rolled right in front of us. Amazingly, again with me in attendance, Melky Cabrera was the hero of the game. Just to refresh, after Melky's first walk off of the year, I wrote this post. Since then, I have been in the house for his other two walk offs and yesterday's home run. I'm not sure what that means, karmically speaking, but I'm enjoying it. 

It was an incredible experience, certainly different than any other sporting event I've ever been to. The odd part is that the more you take advantage of what the seats have to offer, the less you pay attention to the game. We were constantly talking to the servers, ordering, accepting, eating, paying for the beers, and trying to find a place for all the empty containers that kept piling up...

It first and foremost is a luxury experience and secondarily a sporting experience. It's so above and beyond what someone would actually need or probably even want from a baseball game, it's ridiculous. It would make sense if it was a more scaled down offering, only available to the $2500 $1250 ticket holders. That would have helped them sell the more expensive tickets and created a greater air of exclusivity around them. However, they have already crossed the Rubicon on this one. The facilities are huge and designed to cater to the entire Legends section. 

If I could offer one piece of advice to someone lucky enough to stumble into tickets like I did (thanks, Lauren!), it would be... Bring your appetite! (and a bag to hoard all of the free stuff you can grab).

Derek Jeter Is Recession Proof

You thought A-Rod's 8,300 sq. ft. mansion in Coral Gables, Florida was sick? Derek Jeter is not impressed. (via Neil Best)

New York Yankees slugger Derek Jeter is building a behemoth of a mansion just a stone's throw from downtown Tampa.

Once completed, the seven-bedroom, nine-bathroom house on Davis Islands will be 30,875 square feet, according to Hillsborough County public records. To give you an idea of how big that is, the average Best Buy store is 39,700 square feet. That's also twice as big as the Bayshore Boulevard mansion of Lazydays RV SuperCenter founder Don Wallace.

To give you more of an idea of how fucking ridiculous and excessive that is, I grew up just down the street from this place. It's only 20,000 square feet, and supposedly cost $32.5M to build... in 1992. It has a glass elevator and a "mermaid bar", which has windows looking up into their indoor pool. The cobblestone driveway is heated and it leads to a split underground 12 car rotating garage. The house for their two Dalmatians was (and maybe still is) a scaled-down replica of the main building.

It gets more ridiculous:

Crafted from over 1,200 tons of Ithaca’s Llenroc Stone (the same material used to construct the Llenroc dormitory at Cornell University), this elegant home has a first floor master suite with his and her bathrooms, 15 fireplaces, $3.5 million worth of imported Scandanavian marble flooring, hundreds of unique hand-painted Portuguese tiles, a formal dining room featuring 24 karat gold guilded ceilings and moldings, walnut design inlaid hardwood floors, miles of mahogany moldings, a five-floor glass elevator, four galleries, and a servant’s kitchen with its own elevator.

Because 18 karat gold guilded ceilings just wouldn't do.

Click through here and look at the pictures. It's astonishing. I could go on longer, but you'd be better served Googling "Llenroc" (Cornell spelled backwards) because it will blow your mind. The story behind it is pretty interesting also. Al Lawrence, the man who built that monstrosity spent two months at the very end of his life in jail for fraud, embezzlement, and tax evasion. It was only two months because his cancer was diagnosed as terminal and we was released to die at home (which he did in 2002). That seems fair.

Llenroc is excessive, garish, gaudy, decadent, ostentatious, ... yes?

Now make it 50% larger.

Because that's Derek Jeter's place. Imagine if A-Rod was building that home right now? People would want to burn him at the stake. What's the difference?