My Yankee Stadium memory
Published: 9/22/2008 2:16 AM
Last Modified: 9/22/2008 2:16 AM
I'm not a baseball historian, though I've always wished I was.
But I am a writer. Real writers might think otherwise, but that's what I get paid for. So here goes, my Yankee Stadium memory.
It's short, just one game. And recent, middle of last August. Watching ESPN's all-day coverage of the Yanks' final game at The Stadium today makes wistful a grown man who's only been there once. As I watched the players celebrate after beating Baltimore 7-3, my attention was more drawn to the fans standing in front of their seats, some crying, some smiling, some just staring bleary-eyed, mouths agape – and some, many, actually, taking pictures.
I did a little of each.
Growing up in North Pole, Alaska, our viewing options in the '70s were pretty limited. We had three channels – CBS, PBS and ABC/NBC. No kidding, one station carried both networks and there were frequent letters to the Daily News Miner complaining that the Lower 48 got certain shows, why couldn't we? Stupid newspaper, right?
Anyway, we got a lot of West Coast football, mostly Raiders and Rams, so the Rams became my team because Al Davis was evil. And we got West Coast baseball, too, mostly the Dodgers, though for some reason I couldn't stand Tommy Lasorda and Ron Cey and Davey Lopes because they were a postseason thorn in the side of the Yankees.
I guess the Bombers became my team a bit by default. My mom was raised in upstate New York, and I've got extended family throughout the state. My oldest brothers were born in New York and impressed upon me the importance of rooting for the Yankees. And hey, The Babe, the Iron Horse, Joltin' Joe, The Mick, you read about legends like that even in remote outposts like North Pole.
So we fast forward some 30 years. My nephew got the Yankees bug from me a long time ago (I'd like to think that's where he got it, though he probably remembers a different genesis). We always said we needed to go to a game at The Stadium. I suppose I promised I'd take him at some point, probably when he was little and I was stupid. We caught the Yanks in Arlington once. They won, but that wasn't the real thing.
So, with wrecking balls on the south side of 161st Street and construction cranes on the north side, we decided it was now or never. The Stadium would come down whether we went to a game or not.
In August, he completed Air Force career training in San Angelo, Texas (he left for Langley, Va., just yesterday), so his time off was weekends only. I, you might have noticed at some point in the past five years, cover OU football. That's a full-time commitment already, but come August, it's around the clock.
So thanks, Bob Stoops, for closing your scrimmages. That gave me the impetus I needed on Saturday, Aug. 16, to find a Delta ticket from Tulsa to Newark, an American ticket from San Angelo to Newark (both landing at roughly the same time) and two nights hotel in Long Island City, N.Y. You can't miss a scrimmage if you're not allowed to watch it, right?
We caught the 4 train at Grand Central. It was stuffed, shoulder to shoulder, and hot. We got off the train, gushed over the new stadium, then headed to the Old House. Monument Park was closed, so we still had two hours. We found the will call window, then off sound advice from my New Jersey chef friend Bob (a Mets fan, but still maybe the best man on earth), explained that our names should be on a list provided, simply, by Joe from Giants Stadium. There it was. Bob had called Joe and we got the tickets for face value, $85.
We floated to our seats. We sat, talked with a few locals over batting practice and contemplated when to eat. Derek Jeter was smacking opposite-field liners, A-Rod was bouncing 'em off every wall. The sausages were exquisite.
At some point, I pointed to right field. "Babe Ruth used to play out there," I said. Then to center. "Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle played there." To first base. "That's where Lou Gehrig played." (He's 26 now, but was a far better baseball historian than I when he was 16, so of course he knew all that; I just said it for dramatic effect.) We reminisced about the old, gray images we'd seen a thousand times on TV, blabbered like old women over a baby about Reggie Jackson's three homers in '77 (I loved those candy bars), tried to guess which seats Jeter landed in on his over-the-foul wall catch.
We changed seats twice, leaving our perfect perch in the third-base loge for a spot just as good above first base, then sneaking unseen into two empty front-row seats in the second section behind home plate, maybe 50 feet from the giant interlocking ''NY'' that stamps The Cathedral like an "X" on a treasure map.
My camera, a good one, got a workout, capturing some 400 images. A few I really like. The Yankees cheerfully added some vivid strokes to our masterpiece day, beating Kansas City 3-2 in 13 innings (free baseball!). Robinson Cano was particularly helpful with two runs and an RBI, scoring the winner on a single by Brett Gardner, who had three hits to raise his average to .176. Yeah, that Brett Gardner. Jeter got two hits. A-Rod went 0-for-5 (big surprise). It took 4 hours, 53 minutes, and it was over far, far too soon.
I've been to a dozen or so Major League games in Arlington, Kansas City, St. Louis, Atlanta, Houston and Chicago. I've taken stadium tours in Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix, Cincinnati, Chicago and Denver.
But nothing compares with The Stadium. Maybe it's the pinstripes in my blood talking here, but it's not even close. Fenway and Wrigley are a distant second.
Covering OU football in the fall doesn't allow much free time. And when your team is fading out of baseball's postseason for the first time in 13 years, you sort of lose interest.
So tonight was special for all Yankees fans. For me, the evening brought back recent memories of a warm, sunny August afternoon spent with family. They are memories lived in one day, dreamed about for a lifetime.
I don't need to be a baseball historian for that.
– John E. Hoover
Written by
Guerin Emig
Sports Writer
