Baseball Toaster was unplugged on February 4, 2009.
I've never been to Yankee Stadium. Oh sure, I've seen the Yankees play in the Bronx more than one hundred times over the past 20 years, but Yankee Stadium, the limestone behemoth that was home to Yankee greats from Babe Ruth to Mickey Mantle is something I've only seen in books, grainy film footage, and in the background of old baseball cards. That cavernous coliseum, with its copper frieze trimming the roof that hung over the upper deck and its career-altering death valley in left center, was destroyed following the 1973 season. Its last game was a forgettable 8-5 Yankee loss to the Tigers that concluded an equally forgettable 80-82 fourth-place season for the home team.
Two and a half years later, in its place, sat a different Yankee Stadium. A modernized, yet instantly-dated, grey, concrete bowl filled with royal blue seats and orange light bulbs that relayed information from a flat-black scoreboard. The copper frieze had been melted down and replaced with a concrete replica that sat on a lower perch atop the outfield scoreboard, like an artifact on one's mantle. The roof had been largely removed. The wall in left center was now 27 feet closer to home plate and would come in another 31 feet before I ever got to see it in person. Behind that wall, the three marble-and-bronze monuments that had formed a half circle around the flag pole in the grass of center field sat in concrete and were surrounded by a black chain-link fence that separated the two bullpens.
Still, though the structure had been changed, and the field which had played host to 27 World Series and two All-Star Games had been torn up and replaced, there remained a connection between the remodeled Yankee Stadium, as it would become unofficially known, and the original. Just as the Yankees inaugurated Yankee Stadium with the franchise's first World Championship in 1923, the team inaugurated the remodeled Stadium in 1976 with their first World Series appearance in 12 years and followed that up with championships in 1977 and 1978. In its 33 years of existence, the remodeled Stadium hosted 10 World Series and two All-Star Games. Unless the Dodgers reach the World Series this year, no other stadium will have hosted more than four Fall Classics over that same span. The remodeled Stadium quickly established itself as a worthy successor to the original not because of its own grandeur, which was lacking, but because of the grandeur of the games which took place there.
When the last out at Yankee Stadium is recorded tonight, baseball won't be losing a great piece of architecture; the remodeled Stadium is no beauty. What it will lose is the living memory of some of the game's greatest moments. What makes Yankee Stadium great is not the concrete replica of the frieze in center field or the relocated monuments beyond the wall in left field. It's not even the great views from the upper deck or the camaraderie and passion of the bleacher creatures. It's the history that was made there.
One can look around the current park and see where legendary home runs by Aaron Boone and Scott Brosius fell into the left field box seats, Reggie's moon-shot off Charlie Hough clanged off the black batter's eye, homers by Tino Martinez, Derek Jeter, and Chris Chambliss made post-season history by clearing the wall in right, with and without help. One can envision Mariano Rivera and Goose Gossage appearing through the bullpen gate in left center, Derek Jeter diving into the stands behind third base, David Wells punching the air and David Cone falling to his knees after the final outs of their perfect games. One can see Dave Righetti, Jim Abbott, and Dwight Gooden celebrating no-hitters, Thurman Munson crouching behind home plate as Ron Guidry strikes out 18 Angels, Don Mattingly bringing down the house with a home run into the right-field bleachers, Dave Winfield ripping bullets down the left field line, Rickey Henderson and Mickey Rivers burning up the bases, Willie Randolph turning two, Tom Seaver, Phil Neikro, and Roger Clemens winning 300, Alex Rodriguez hitting 500, and George Brett storming out of the visitor's dugout, a victim of Billy Martin's chicanery. One can also see Paul O'Neill meekly slumping his shoudlers as an entire Stadium chants his name, Reggie doffing his batting helmet to the crowd in front of the home dugout, Charley Hayes squeezing the final out of the 1996 World Series, Wade Boggs riding a police horse around the warning track, and both Jackson and Chambliss plowing their way through the swarms of celebrating fans toward the safety of the clubhouse.
Though the field has been torn up, replaced, moved, and lowered, it doesn't take much imagination to envision the old park. In fact, that has been one of my favorite things to do when visiting the Stadium. I'd squint at the left-handed batters box and imagine Babe Ruth taking a mighty swing and christening the new park with a home run or Lou Gehrig, hat in hand, addressing the crowd. Looking around, I could see Joe DiMaggio kicking the dirt near second base, Mickey Mantle launching a ball off the frieze, Jackie Robinson breaking for home, Yogi Berra leaping into Don Larson's arms, the Dodgers celebrating Brooklyn's first and only championship, Roger Maris circling the bases after number 61, and Bobby Murcer chasing a ball around the monuments in center. Because the Yankees were in the World Series with such regularity, all but a select few of the game's greats (most of them Cubs) played there, from Ty Cobb, to Ted Williams, to Tony Gwynn, Walter Johnson, to Sandy Koufax, to Pedro Martinez, Jackie Robinson, to Curt Flood, and Roberto Clemente, and so on. In 1928, Knute Rockne implored his team to "win one for the Gipper" there. In 1938, Joe Luis beat Max Schmeling there. In 1958, Johnny Unitas beat the New York Football Giants in the NFL Championship Game there.
That is what will be lost. Not the building, but the place and the tangible connection to what happened there. The Yankees may only be moving a few hundred feet to the north to play on a field of similar dimensions in a ballpark with an identical name, but Yankee Stadium, the real Yankee Stadium, in both its incarnations, will soon be resigned to the page, the screen, and the memory of those who were fortunate enough to have seen a ballgame there, whether they witnessed a great moment, or simply gazed out at the field and imagined all the great moments that had come before.
I also remember him swallowing a chaw and barfing on the mound one hot afternoon.
The Yankees have always been an important mode of communication in my family, especially among the men. It's intrinsic to what I remember about my grandfather and to his place in family lore; and no matter how difficult my relationship with my father became in my teens and twenties, we could always talk Yankees, and we could always go to games.
For me, Yankee Stadium has ghosts beyond Ruth, Gehrig and Mantle. It's a repository of family history - hifalutin' as this may sound, it's like a Balinese shrine to me, the place where my ancestral spirits still dwell.
So to all those who say that this incarnation of the Stadium is a fundamentally different place, who believe that the only history there is recent history, who insist that this is not the Stadium where 3, 4, 5 and 7 played, I respectfully say: you're wrong, and you don't get it at all.
I've never for a moment doubted that this was the same Stadium, revised and renovated - gracelessly, to be sure, but still recognizably the same place. It's in the same location, the building has the same general configuration, it encloses the same space. The field may have been replaced - yet it's still right there, in just the same place as it was then. The dimensions have changed - but there's the old outfield wall to marvel at, the monuments that used to be on the field, the old bullpens.
And different though the stands may be, I can still say: there, in the upper deck, along the first-base line, that's where we sat when my grandfather took me to Old Timers Day a month or two before he died. Not only can I imagine Lou Gehrig on that field, giving his speech - but somewhere over there, that's where Dad was sitting that day. There are the old ticket booths where Dad bought tickets the day of the game, the ticket seller reaching up to the cubbies above the window to find us seats.
Every cell in my body has been replaced countless times, none of the materials are the same, I don't look anything like I did in 1973 - yet I'm still me. The matter that composes me is irrelevant; it's about the knowledge and the experience of being me. Despite the changes, I've always recognized this as the same Stadium, and I've always experienced it that way. Ruth and Gehrig, Clarke and Gibbs, my father and grandfather - they're all still there, and they never left.
They won't move across the street, though.
Killer writing Cliif, ya big red dog
Yay! Bob Shepard!!
What a horrid mistake. I can't say it enough. The corporations are in, the true fans are out. Much more is being lost here then just the Stadium. This is a very sad day. A historically sad day.
Hard to believe I could watch hours of Yankee coverage and be turned off. Tons of great material, presented as poorly as possible. What a bunch of boobs.
19 yes, he is...but it's really loud! he also wrote a great piece here at the banter!
crowd went pretty nuts for Paulie O
Willie! Apparently it isn't Willie's fault the Mets choke.
Bernie!
Bernie!
This is just bullshit.
Classy way to say thank you to Bernie.
Lots of pomp, lots of circumstance, but it still feels all kind of artificial. All these players, all this history, it's great... but they're just moving across the street, after building a stadium constructed to milk more money from us fans. Anyone else get that feeling?
kind of .... sad ...
I do think it will be honestly sad when they take the dynamite to the place sometime this winter. That will be hard to watch.
Totally fucked up and all wrong.
Who the hell wants to go to a four-star hotel to watch a ballgame?
You go to a ballpark to watch a ballgame.
Period.
You want all that other bullshit, stay in fucking Manhattan.
sad that they're tearing it down ... and moving to that $$$-sucking vacuum across the street ....
a classy organization, that's now personifies corporate greed
I'll be sure to come back to see Rivera (hopefully) close it out and the post-game festivities
i guess to me this night is about the players i loved watching and remebering the great memories at yankee stadium.
i'm trying not to think of the 4 star hotel, but it is unavoidable.
It'll be nice if Waters lets the ceremony get to him, I prefer the other team's rookie to melt down rather than URP us.
I have argued vehemently that baseball is not just a buiness, but indeed America's national time. I understood the reality, but I fought to hold baseball above mere business even knowing it was futile.
Well tonight we are officially saying goodbye to the pastime, and next Spring, we can say hello to big business.
'Progress' doesn't have to go this way, but it always seems to.
And yeah, I've been thinking along those lines, too. It's like two different worlds. We could be facing another Great Depression. Some are saying worse than the Great Depression. Wall Streeters and Congress critters are running around like chickens with their heads cut off.
But the Yankees are blithely preparing for their fancy new stadium. Which I suspect may be harder to fill than they think, at least if the economy goes the way I greatly fear it will.
rainy monday morning here, no emotions for the game at all...but will still watch the ceremony, etc tonight on replay...
rainy monday morning here, no emotions for the game at all...but will still watch the ceremony, etc tonight on replay...
but good for lance berkman for ripping mlb. certainly us fans have a big complaint against mlb and our local team as well.
Lance Berkman told the Houston Chronicle that MLB values the dollar more than players and their families and added, "That's one reason why players try to exploit the system to the max because they know they're being treated the same way. That's a sad part of the game."
I was going to say that I really think Alex will do it, but yours is the likelier candidate.
Ugh.
But I don't read Japanese. Did they cut him? He doesn't seem to have played many games this year. If I'm reading the stats right. Which I might not be, since it's in Japanese.
http://www.wholesomereading.com/
Great spot you picked, Damon, thanks for the flashback.
105 I caught that, too. Funny.
I like them both, but for different reasons. I like the construction of the old Stadium better, but I like the caliber of play from the Yankees in the new Stadium a lot more. I was born in '65, so there was a lot of mediocre play for me in the old Stadium.
You heard Whitey talk about how Joe D. lost many HRs in just one day. I hated it when Mantle hit the ball 420' and it looked like a lazy fly out. Ellie Howard who was not a pull hitter, also hit many 400'+ balls that were easy outs.
I hated it. Shots we see these days that we call 'absolute bombs' didn't even reach the warning track. Of course RF helped Murcer and many others, but still, I thought the Stadium dimensions were inherently unfair. The walls should have been brought in long before they were. Making the lines a little longer was also good.
I recognize that the frieze was moved, the fences shuffled around, monuments moved, and the upper decks reshaped, but the exterior is mostly the same and it's located on the same footprint of the old park.
And there's more history in the current version of the park alone than most other parks throughout MLB (6 titles, 10 pennants, 2 AS games, etc. etc.)
(LHYSS)
Of all people.
Much more appropriate than Damon.
I like that.
132 i don't know Jeb, if it smells like a dump and looks like a dump...(inside, i mean)...
I'm waiting for Brian Roberts to launch an inside-the-park HR .... :-)
I'm not gonna touch that one.
just pointing it out....
Jason Giambi playing the role of Jake Taylor, Jeter as Willie "Mays" Hayes scoring the winning run. :)
Yankee Stadium seemed clean enough to me this Summer.
155 you'll have to contact snacks pontoon for your money since he is the bronx banter treasuer.
Parking would have been a bitch, but...
the yanks have had some real characters as pitchers with whitey ford, sparky lyle, goose, cone, wells
And when I was in Columbia SC for a few years they had the Capital City Bombers who played in a horrible place. The outfield walls were about 15' tall of plywood, braced up by 2x4s. Ugh.
167 I'm going to assume it was George.
I didn't know that you couldn't implode in NYC.
So now my recording's screwed up. Why couldn't they just agree to simulcast the thing on YES...?
That, and an EDSP sighting.
Phil Coke will be on the 2009 Opening Day team for sure!
If you were pressed, what would be your favorite regular season and post-season memory?
I'll start:
Regular season -- August 6, 1979 Murcer drives in 5 for Thurman
Post-Season -- Games 4 and 5 of the 2001 World Series.
http://tinyurl.com/3mkfnu
i'm sure the land around yankee stadium is a lot more valuable and needed than the land tiger stadium is on.
I love it!
:)
As for postseason, I'll take the 1977 World Series. I got to stay up late and it was the first WS win for the Yankees. Reggie's three homeruns were icing on the cake. Rich, creamy icing. Made into intricate designs.
Just sayin' is all.
Maybe 10 years from now we'll be picking games and someone will mention tonight.
Reggie my all-time favorite Yankee after Donnie B
regular season is less about moments, somehow: ebb and flow, you know? just give me a randomly selected opposite-field double by Mattingly....
update from pete abe on the countdown lever - corniest thing i ever heard and wished i hadn't bothered concerning myself with the whole lame thing.
UPDATE, 10:43 p.m.: In keeping with how they screwed up the countdown all season, the Yankees did it again. This time Michael Kay pulled the lever. But instead of the count going to zero, it said "forever" as Kay said something about the Stadium being around forever, which it won't be.
People would ask me, "Oh, after Reggie Jackson?"
And I'd say I just thought it was a cute name for a cat because I was a little embarrassed because I guess on some level I thought it was kind of hokey.
No one believed me, though, seeing as how I had an autographed picture of Reggie, a couple of shirts and embraced him as my favorite player.
But of course, I just thought Reggie was a cute name for a cat.
Regular season: So many. I guess I'll choose one of my first as a kid in the early 80's, when my parents got us killer seats down the first base line — I had the clearest view you'd ever want of my idol at the time, #23.
Post season: Easy. Game 5, 2001. Nervous as hell to be attending in person so soon after 9-11, but Brosius made us all forget for a night.
Close second would be Boone's HR. I was in my new house, boxes stacked up all around me — I'm sure my new neighbors were more than a little freaked out as I screamed at the very TOP of my lungs once the ball went over the wall.
coming from someone who gave herself the screen name ms. october no way i can pretend :}
231 :)
The Chambliss shot was great.
Same with game 5 in 2001. Litterally a fairly tale.
And the Boone HR was sweet, but Mo going 3 shut out innings, and pounding the ground after the win was just an amazing sight and game.
He does work for the company, I don't see why they wouldn't.
was it someone on the Banter who told the story about Rizzuto and Meatloaf??
that was a little bumbling.
261 Think Les Nesman on WKRP in Cincinnati on Chi Chi Rodriguez.
Hmmm, root for a rout at this point, or give Mo a save?
I guess we could play a recording of Ella singing it or something. :)
264 sometimes kay is okay by me and other times beyond annoying. i think he actually seems to do better in "biggger" situations.
rocky cherry - great name.
Yet get most of it wrong.
and no dimaggio or gehrig relatives on hand.
maybe it is a stretch but they could have put mickey rivers on the list with the center fielders (unless they did and i missed it).
and while i am on this - i guess the yanks couldn't put roger up with the pitchers, but damn.
Well, Millar did not do anything so that's good.
298 gardner just runs the ball over to damon and then runs and gets it back - but since he's so fast we don't see it
The last inning to be played in Yankee Stadium.
The last inning. Unbelievable.
Or am I the only one who's happy about that?
309 i am - but am having a hard time getting into football now.
Sniff, one last out.
Cliff's fine piece made me both appreciate the place and feel less misty eyed about the building itself being knocked down, but I had few fine memories of my own from there over the years and all the other fantastic and important games. It's not the same as the building opened in 1923, but the memories all feel interconnected.
I also always get sad when American landmarks get knocked down - it seems we're always paving over our past - but of course they can't just have an empty, rotting stadium sit there vacant, that would be even sadder. Still, it makes me a bit sad.
Anyway... thanks for the memories.
At least the Banter will still be around.
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
night all.
The one he made off of Derek in 2002?
That was like a dagger in my heart.
As has been said before, I thank the good lord for making me a Yankee fan. Also, so glad that the Banter is here. Thank you Alex, Cliff, & Ken, and you Banterites to whom I can relate.
why Weeping....Why????
I just wish a few more games had gone the other way this year so this wasn't the last game at THE stadium. Obviously we (as Yankee fans) have had our fair share of breaks, yet I find myself feeling greedy. Of couse the beer could be assisting in that greed...
Sigh.
I guess I won't have to relive that memory anymore.
Or the last day of the season, maybe like in 1983 or 1984, when my best friend had his birthday party at the Stadium and we all got to watch the Yanks get cremated 13-3.
Happy offseason, everyone!
The the regulars, the lurkers, the people who would be here and the ones who are gone, stay good to each other. We are where we are, and that's where it's at! >;)
(If I had a glass, I'd raise it! :)
I'm mostly a lurker around these parts. Many thanks to Alex, Cliff, and the commenters for making this such a great blog to hang around.
Comment status: comments have been closed. Baseball Toaster is now out of business.