Ballparks - # 7 - (old) Yankee Stadium, Bronx, NY

15 June 2003

It’s still baseball season and I really should advance the ballpark quest…at least before football takes over and the ball players go home.

The day after Frank, Don and I saw a game at Fenway Park in Boston, we were in New York City to see the home town Yankees play the St. Louis Cardinals.

Yankee Stadium (15 June 2003)

I grew up in the Bronx. A Yankee fan born and bred, like my father before me. In those days, New York had three, count ‘em THREE major league teams. The first idol, maybe the only idol I remember having in my jaded life, was Mickey Mantle.

The very first time I attended a major league game, it was here in Yankee Stadium…the old/former Yankee Stadium. To my best recollection, it was 1957 and my father took me to a night game against the Boston Red Sox. If you ever heard Billy Crystal describe his introduction to the game in the same place, he tells the story exactly as I have. We were enthralled by the star power of the Yankees in the 1950’s, the size of the place, the lights, the striking color of the grass under the lights…a green like I never saw before. My neighborhood didn’t have parks that were lit at night. With one exception, all the playgrounds and school yards ball fields were concrete. I played a lot of ball games growing up but can count on one hand the times they were on a dirt and grass field.

In the summer of 1961, I took my first girlfriend to see a Yankee game…she was a baseball fan too. We saw Mickey Mantle jack two moon shots into the left-center field bleachers. This was when that fence was 457 feet away from home plate. No ballpark today has such cavernous dimensions. Given that prodigious feat AND the fact that it was done by a Yankee, ESPN would bray about it for ten minutes if it happened today.

Yankee Stadium (15 June 2003)

Opened in 1923, the ‘House that Ruth Built’ was a palace compared to other ballparks at the time. It held over 57,000 fans and with Hall of Famers like Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle, the team won more World Series’ than any other team in the game.

As you might imagine, the grandest venue in the biggest city was the scene of many historic sporting events. The “Greatest Game Ever” NFL Championship game between the Baltimore Colts and New York Giants was played there in 1958. The stadium hosted Notre Dame and Army college football games when those schools were national powerhouses. Boxing title matches were held there, including the iconic fight where Joe Louis defeated the German Max Schmeling in 1938.

By the end of the 1973 season, the stadium was in bad shape and was closed for major renovations. The Yankees played their home games at Shea Stadium in Queens in 1974 and ’75 and returned to their shrine at the start of the 1976 season. While it cost $2.3 million to build in 1923, the refurbishment topped out at $167 million. The place was demolished after the 2008 season and the team moved to their new, overpriced playpen the following year.

The Yanks beat the Cards 5-2 that day and would go on to win the American League pennant before losing the World Series to the Florida Marlins. A look at the box score will show the catcher for St. Louis that day was Joe Girardi…who has been the Yankee manager for the last ten years.

I guess I have to make it back there one day to further this Quest. I might be FROM New York but I hold no allegiances to the team or the place. We experience Yankee fans here in Baltimore since it’s an easy distance to travel and the matches are often scheduled on weekends so the visitors can extend their stays around our local attractions. But, being ‘New Yawka’s’, they bring that ‘fugget-about-it’ charm with them. When I do get there, I’ll leave my O’s cap home.