Yankees unearth buried Red Sox jersey from new stadium

A construction worker’s bid to curse the New York Yankees by planting a Boston Red Sox jersey in their new baseball stadium was foiled when the the offending shirt was removed from its burial spot.

Take a behind-the-scenes look at Yankee stadium

After locating the shirt in a service corridor behind what will be a restaurant in the new Yankee Stadium, construction workers jackhammered through the concrete and pulled it out on Sunday.

The Yankees learned that a Red Sox-supporting construction worker buried a shirt in the new Bronx stadium, that will open next year across the street from the current ballpark, from a report in the New York Post on Friday.

Yankees president Randy Levine said team officials at first considered leaving the shirt where it was.

“The first thought was, you know, it’s never a good thing to be buried in cement when you’re in New York,” Levine said. “But then we decided, why reward somebody who had really bad motives and was trying to do a really bad thing?”

Construction workers who remembered the employee, Gino Castignoli, phoned in tips about the shirt’s location.

It took about five hours of drilling to locate the shirt under half a metre of concrete.

In shreds from the jackhammers, the shirt still bore the letters “Red Sox” on the front. It was a David Ortiz jersey, No. 34.

Castignoli, 46, said he worked just a single day at the stadium project and planted the jersey.

“It was worth it,” he told the Boston Herald today. “It’s not like I snuck in there. It didn’t do any structural damage. I didn’t put anyone in harm’s way.”