Announcing: PANENKA!
That is, scoring a penalty goal by coolly arcing the ball down the center while sending the keeper in the wrong direction.
In our May issue, NYRA inaugurated a series called PANENKA!, dedicated to the memory of Leijia Hanrahan.
Leijia was a friend of NYRA, a member of our community, and a regular contributor to our pages. Last November, she took a deep look into the financing and labor behind the 2022 Qatar World Cup. In her first piece for us, she turned her critical eye toward New York City’s purposely viral—and pricey— observatories. Leijia brought to her writing the kind of bravura and wit necessary to complete the soccer move - scoring a penalty goal by coolly arcing the ball down the center while sending the keeper in the wrong direction - after which this series is named. A few times a year, PANENKA! will spotlight pieces that do the same.
We are now proud to share online the first piece in the series, Moneyball. Authors Avi Garelick and Andrew Schustek delve into the redevelopment, following years of neglect, of Citi Field.
In November 2020, billionaire Steve Cohen bought the New York Mets for $2.4 billion, bringing instant relief to millions of Mets supporters (the authors included), who had suffered under the two-decade rule of the previous owners, the real estate developer Fred Wilpon and his failson Jeff. As credulous investors in Bernie Madoff’s fraudulent empire, the Wilpons were among its biggest suckers: Fred, with his brother- in-law Saul Katz, lost $500 million almost overnight, and father and son were forced to borrow $880 million just to keep the Mets going. What was already a volatile situation was compounded by the Wilpons’ constant meddling in team affairs—back in 2005, Jeff notoriously forced inner circle hall of famer Pedro Martinez to pitch through an injury—and penny-pinching. From 2008 to 2013, right when the Mets’ new digs, Citi Field, should have delivered a bump in attention and attendance, payroll dropped by 48 percent—and fan morale along with it.
Read the whole piece on our website.
NYRA would like to thank the following people for making this series possible:
Ronnie and David Parker
Nancy and Kip Hanrahan
Debra Bergoffen
Jason Weiss
Lesley Karsten
Scott Marcus
Jeff Lynch and Bebe Mullaugh
Jun Abe
New York Review of Architecture reviews architecture in New York. Our editor is Samuel Medina, our deputy editor is Marianela D’Aprile, and our publisher is Nicolas Kemper.
For their support, we would like to thank the Graham Foundation and our issue sponsors, Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects and Thomas Phifer.
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