Heritage Field Opens Near Yankee Stadium Marcus Yam for The New York Times The Cardinal Hayes High School varsity baseball team warmed up for its first game this week at a baseball field at the new Macombs Dam Park, across the street from Yankee Stadium. When the new Yankee Stadium opened in 2009, not even the loudest of Yankee fanatics could drown out the howls of local residents over its tax-exempt financing, its construction atop two city parks and its pricey tickets and eateries. But now, in an unabashed bid for redemption, New York City officials have spared no expense to deliver on a long-promised, $50.8 million public ballpark across the street from the stadium that pays homage to the Yankees and their former home, a backdrop for some of baseball's greatest triumphs. Heritage Field opened this week on the site of the old Yankee Stadium, the last of which was demolished in 2010. Nearly every part of the 10.8-acre ballpark, including the pavement stones underfoot and the three natural grass ball fields, has been elaborately designed to evoke a sense of nostalgia and good will. Even the sod is the same that the Yankees, professional baseball's biggest spending team, step onto at their new stadium. The city's timing could not be better, coming just ahead of the Yankees" home opener next week. That gleaming stadium - frequently criticized as a luxurious enclave for the privileged - stood in contrast to this downtrodden section of the Bronx, a place where residents have long felt ignored by city officials and passed over by good fortune. Now it has a counterpart in arguably the finest neighborhood ballpark money can buy. Oldanny Morillo, 18, who plays second base for the nearby Cardinal Hayes High School baseball team, which was displaced for several years by the stadium construction, seemed startled by the V.I.P. treatment. "Usually when we run in the outfield, we have to watch for ditches and bird poop, and there's none of that," he said. Here it's like a carpet. Heritage Field is the last piece in the city's seven-year effort to replace the parkland used for the new stadium, capping off a $195.6 million parks project that was among the most expensive in the city's history. Today, the stadium towers like a concrete castle above a patchwork of eight newly created or renovated parks, including a new Macombs Dam Park that encompasses Heritage Field, as well as an Olympic-quality track built on top of a parking garage. "We felt an obligation to deliver superb parks to this community in particular because of the disruption they had to endure," said Adrian Benepe, the city's parks commissioner. Indeed, the city sprung for $1.2 million in commemorative touches to enhance Heritage Field, including $450,000 for a 12-ton chunk of the old Yankee Stadium frieze that has been preserved Berlin Wall-like in one corner. Another stadium relic - a 130-foot-high chimney shaped like a baseball bat - cost $120,000 to refurbish, though it no longer serves a purpose other than as a local landmark. To the delight of fans, the old stadium's diamond and outfield have been preserved, delineated with five-foot-wide swaths of blue polyolefin fiber meticulously stitched into the sod by a Desso Grassmaster machine that had to be shipped over from the Netherlands. And, no, that was not cheap: $160,000. These premium touches have helped repair some of the ill will from the 2005 deal that built new Yankee Stadium, which demolished more than 22 acres of tree-lined parkland including Macombs Dam Park and a portion of John Mullaly Park. While the city pledged to replace the parkland, as required by state law, residents and parks advocates protested that the new parks would be scattered and less convenient, and that they would offer fewer trees and more artificial turf. The complaints only grew louder as delays and staggered timelines for the various parks turned the area into a constant construction zone. The cost ballooned to $195.6 million from an initial estimate of $116.1 million, in part because several parks were expanded or had unanticipated cleanup costs, city officials said.