Whiteflash-Diamond Playground

From: Sportingnews.com At the corner of East 161st Street and River Avenue in the Boogie Down Bronx is one of the most hallowed temples of sports. Not just baseball, of all sports. Yankee Stadium is closing its doors tonight after the Yankees/Orioles Sunday night game. The Yanks cling to a slim, slim chance that they can run the table of the weeks worth of games and the Red Sox will totally collapse to get them a last playoff hurrah. But for all intents and purposes, that grand old lady of a stadium will see its last sporting event tonight

Consider the events that have occured at Yankee Stadium

Joe Louis beating Max Schmelling in 1938, and further blowing holes in Hitler’s suppposed master race theory.

The Colts beating the Giants in the 1958 NFL championship game, called “The Greatest Game Ever Played” it was the first NFL title that went to sudden death overtime and the game that ushered in the modern era of the NFL.

Knute Rockne’s iconic win one for the Gipper Speech proceeded a Notre Dame battle with Army.

Muhammad Ali beat Ken Norton in the last championship bout to be held in Yankee Stadium in 1976.

Chuck Bendarik’s thunderous but clean and legal hit on Frank Gifford that knocked him out for the better part of 2 years.

A precursor to the modern day College Football Coaches Classic, then called the Whitney M. Young Urban Classic was played from 1971-1987.

3 popes have celebrated Mass there.

And of course lots of baseball. The Yankees in their storied history have had so many iconic games. Including:

Don Larsen’s Perfect Game in the 1956 World Series, to date the only no-hitter in the World Series. Along with perfect games by David Wells in 1998 and David Cone in 1999.

Roger Maris’ 61st Home Run

The three home runs on three swings by the iconoclastic Reggie Jackson in the 1977 World Series

Jeffrey Maiers theivery of a fly ball by Derek Jeter in the 1996 ALCS that was ruled a home run in spite of Maiers interference. The homer stood as the games winning margin and Maier became Yankee Stadium lore.

The Pennant Winning Walk Off home runs by Chris Chambliss in 1976 and Aaron Boone in 2003

Not all baseball highlights have been by the Yankees, consider:

Sandy Amoros racing one handed catch of an opposite field drive by Yogi Berra in the 1955 World Series and the perfect relay that doubled a streaking Hank Bauer off first in the same play

Or Al Gionfriddo leaping catch of a Joe Dimaggio drive to left center in the 1947 series. Contrary to what many think, had Gionfriddo missed the ball it wouldnt have cleared the fence. Gionfriddo momentum on making the leap and catch took him to the fence. I always loved the shot of Dimagggio’s stoic frustration as he kicked at the dirt after being robbed.

The Brooklyn Dodgers clinched their only World Series title here in 1955.

The perfect ceremonial first pitch by President Bush made in the wake of the 9/11 tragedy.

I could go on and on, but I’ll drop a bit of knowledge on Yankee Stadium. The Yankees were at one time 2nd class citizens in Gotham. Hard to beleive but true, the city’s top team in popularity was the New York Giants. The Brooklyn Dodgers were kind of the daffy but popular cousin and 2nd and the Yankees were third. The Yankees were tenants of the Giants at their home the Polo Grounds. The Yankees scored a major coup when the acquired Babe Ruth a pitcher and burgeoning slugger from the Boston Red Sox. The Yankees became the marquee draw in baseball as Ruth slammed 54 home runs in 1920 and 59 in 1921. The Yankees won their first of 39 American League titles that year and though they lost to the Giants in the World Series there was no questioning who was the city’s top team as they outdrew the Giants for the 1920 and 1921 seasons.
Giants owner Horace Stoneham figured he could curtail the Yankees rise, by evicting them from the Polo Grounds, Stoneham deduced that the Yankees would “have to move to Queens or somewhere” and the Giants would again rule the roost as New York’s elite team. To his chagrin the Yankees built their stadium, right across the Harlem River in the Bronx on the site of an old lumberyard (hard to imagine a lumberyard in the Boogie Down ain’t it?) this was after giving consideration to site on the west side of Manhattan, Long Island and on Amsterdam Ave in Harlem. (The Yankees in Long Island? Harlem??) Ground was broken in May of 1922 and opened less than a year later. Yankee Stadium was the first sporting venue to be given the name of a stadium. Initally ringed with a quarter mile track, it was a forerunner of the modern day warning track to stadium fences today, a requirement for all baseball venues. Yankee Stadium also had the first to have an electronic scoreboard with lineups and out of town scores.
Yankee Stadium has had various capacities in its early years ranging from 60 to 80 thousand. After its remodeling the capacity was 57,545 the largest in the AL.
In 1971, New York City bought Yankee Stadium from Rice University, you read that right. The private school in HOUSTON owned the rights to Yankee Stadium from 1962-1971 after an alum of Rice gave the Stadium to the school. How this alum acquired the rights to the halllowed stadium is a mystery but until New York City used eminent domain to buy the stadium for 2.5 million dollars, a school in Texas owned the building.
Yankee Stadium underwent a massive renovation in 1974, and the Yankees had to play that season and the next in Shea Stadium. There had been talk that the Yankees would move to New Jersey and play in the Meadowlands Complex that were built for the football Giants, talk that was quashed soon after George Steinbrenner bought the Yankees in 1973. The renovations were massive and the dimensions of the park, were softened some. There still was the feared “Death Valley in left center and center but instead of the fences being better than 450 feet from home plate, they were now closer to 400 feet. One time Yankee Don Baylor ruefully remembers in his autobiography how he would hit mammoth shots out to left center off of Ron Guidry and how they would stay in the park and “Gator would be laughing at the long out.” The ridiculosly short right field porch of 296 feet in right would go slightly back and be 314 feet. In the new stadium, if Yankees have that short a porch you can be sure that it will be guarded by a high fence. The daunting monuments to Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth and Miller Huggins were at one time so distant that they were in play, but after the renovations, they became part of monument park and only reachable by a home run shot.
The “New” Yankee Stadium opened in 1976 and hosted playoffs in 5 of its first 6 seasons and World Series in 4 of 6. Aside from the dry spell of 13 seasons from 1982-1994, Yankee Stadium never went more than two seasons without postseason baseball.
Sad to say, I never got to see this cathedral of sports history in person, but I’ve always appreciated the long and rich history of this grand old lady of sports.