Death of a Stadium
Tonight the Yankees will play their last game in Yankee Stadium. The House that Ruth Built will eventually be turned into parking for the House that 1.3 billion dollars built.
As a child growing up in NYC I had a choice to make at about 6 years old. Yankees or Mets? My Dad's drugstore was only two miles from Shea and I would see many more Met's games in the coming years than Yankee games, but it was the Yankees I chose.
Perhaps it was Phil Rizzuto's ramblings on Channel 11 or it was the facade or the monuments or the fact that Lindsey Nelson's sport jackets could scare a small child. Either way it was Yankees all the way for me. And in 1967 when I became a Yankee fan the team sucked. And while they continued to stink, (Horace Clarke, Jake Gibbs, et al) I continued my devotion.
Things did get more exciting when George bought the team and then when Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich swapped wives and families. My mother had a very tough time explaining that one to me.
Today some very famous people have written about their memories about the famous cathedral/ synangouge in the Bronx.
From Billy Crystal:
If stadiums are the cathedrals of baseball, or in my case synagogues, then I have been worshiping at the same place for over half a century. The Stadium has been the safe room of my house of memories.
From Henry Kissinger:
Yankee Stadium was an important stage in my discovery of America. I came here as an immigrant in 1938. In the summer of 1939, I started working in a shaving brush factory. Some of my co-workers turned out to be of Italian origin, and they took me to a baseball game at Yankee Stadium. A seat in the bleachers in those days cost 55 cents.
From Paul Simon :
I was sitting on my father's lap listening to a Yankee game on our old Philco radio. It was 1948 and I suddenly realized I was a Yankee fan. The team was headed for a dismal third-place finish. I was 7, and there was nothing to do but wait for 1949 and the new Yankee manager, Casey Stengel.
From Penny Marshall:
I was born and raised in the Bronx and my grandfather and my brother Garry were huge Yankees fans. One of my first memories is of them listening to a game on the radio and screaming at the radio. My brother would cry when they lost, and when I was really little, I didn't know why he was crying.
From Keith Olbermann:
"We're sitting behind first base," my father said, "so you can see Mickey Mantle."
I still didn't understand.
"He plays first base" my father said. "That's him, right there." I was 8 years old and only intermittently quick on the uptake.