Joe Nocera is the new sports business columnist for The New York Times. You can read more of his columns here.
After the final out of every game at Yankee Stadium, the Yankees pipe Frank Sinatra’s last great hit, “New York, New York,” over the loudspeakers. The tradition is now 35 years old; George Steinbrenner, the Cleveland shipbuilder who bought the team in 1973, first started playing it during the 1980 season, a few months after Sinatra released his recording of the song on his otherwise muddled three-record album, “Trilogy: Past Present Future.