A Tale of Sports, Pranks, Construction, and Charity

I love when three of my favorite interests combine to feature recent news for us all to read. Many people have heard by now of the Bronx construction worker who planted a Red Sox jersey before pouring concrete over it in the Yankees’ new stadium. It’s humorous to see how deep a rivalry can go. And since I’m a mafia movie fan, I loved this quote by Yankees President Randy Levine,

It’s never a good thing to be buried in cement in New York, so we thought about just pouring more cement on it.

Val always teaches me to factor in contingency costs when I’m setting up a cost estimate sheet. He always says, “You just never know what’s inside those walls when you start tearin’ ‘em down.” Do you think the Yankees organization factored that into their budget considering it was new construction? Don’t you usually know what’s inside the walls—or in between the rebar—when you’re building from scratch? Well, the Yankees now deal with nearly $50,000.00 in costs to dig up the jersey. It reportedly only took 15 minutes to use jackhammers to dig up and finish the job (cool!).

Here’s what excites me most about this story: Levine and the Yankees organization decided to turn what they called a “bad, dastardly act” into a positive outcome.

Levine said the extracted jersey would be cleaned up, put in a display case along with a Yankees Universe T-shirt and sent to Boston. There, the Ortiz jersey and Yankee T-shirt will be auctioned to benefit the Jimmy Fund, the Red Sox’ primary charity, which is affiliated with the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

That’s actually much cooler than a jackhammer only taking 15 minutes to dig up that jersey (I love power tools). What a great thing to do to turn this funny prank into a charitable outcome.

On a related note, the San Jose Earthquakes might finally have that new stadium they’ve been trying to get. I’ve been following this story for a while since my good friend, Deke Hunter of Hunter Properties, is involved in this project. Deke, just promise me something…please, please don’t let us find out that a refurbished Posh Spice CD or DVD is buried under the concrete of the new locker room. If so, you should make Mr. Posh shell out the $50K.