Published July 16th, 2008
Apocryphal or not, one YogiBerra-ism I’ve always liked was his line about where Yankee players went for R&R. Referring to one particular hangout, he was supposed to have said, “Nah, no one ever goes there anymore; it’s too crowded.”
One place no one, Yankee players or fans, won’t be going anymore is Yankee Stadium, not because it’s too crowded but because it won’t be there.
Of course, technically, there will be a Yankee Stadium next year, just across the street from the old ballpark, but it won’t be THE Yankee Stadium which is scheduled to be torn down at the end of this season and replaced by the spanking new structure now in process of being built.
Watching the last MLB All Star Game at the real Yankee Stadium, the House that Ruth Built, a flood of thoughts and memories ran through my head including the times we kids without the $1.50 price of grandstand admission would try to sneak in and were always rebuffed by security people so we would loiter outside in the vain hope that Mickey would rock one out of the park and we would be there to catch it, not knowing that no one had ever or would ever perform that feat.
I also wondered as I watched the game why George Steinbrenner has to tear the place down. It’s still a magnificent stadium, the first baseball field ever called a stadium and rightly so. All gussied up for the All Star Game, with flags and bunting galore, the stands crammed with fans, its flawless emerald green grass all aglow on a Bronx summer night, Yankee banners reflecting its glory days and an unmatched record of 26 World Series conquests, it was a breathtaking sight.
I recalled the story of a young Babe Ruth, personally responsible for the stadium being built, and built as an in-your-face within full view of the Giants’ Polo Grounds just across the Harlem River. On first going out to his position at the Stadium, the normally unflappable Babe is said to have been almost speechless until he was able to get out his vastly understated words, “Some ballpark.”
And it was/is some ballpark, with its façade that once kept a Mantle homerun from clearing its confines, to its Monument Park with its tributes to the dozens of great Yankees down through its history, to its still cavernous outfield where, before its refurbishing in the 70s, there stood the original “monument park,” three tombstone-like stones. When I was lucky enough in my youth to gain legal entry—back then the fans were permitted to traverse the field after the games—I would invariably visit them with a hushed reverence and utter a silent prayer since I believed Miller Huggins, Lou Gehrig, and the Babe were interred beneath my feet.
I had another déjà vu experience while watching the game tonight, a remembrance of things past and a realization that what goes around truly does come back around to bite one in the arse.
Back in 1957, September 29th, to be precise, a bunch of us Yankee diehards attended our first and only game at the Brooklyn Dodgers’ Ebbets Field to cheer them on—on to Los Angeles, that is.