Saturday, September 20, 2008

Historic Weekend: Farewell Yankee Stadium



Thanks For The Memories: There Will Never Be Another Field of Dreams Like Yankee Stadium
It's all for the memories as the game itself will be of little consequence. The news for the Yankees is that their dynasty is over. By tomorrow night, they will be almost certainly mathematically eliminated from pennant contention. The dynasty of Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Jorge Possada and a host of added talenet appears to be finished. The Yankees are a better team than the Orioles but probably have just as many questions about what needs to be done to secure the team's future. The Orioles leave fans more sad than mad as their final record will be only slighter better than last year. In sheer numbers its hard to see what the team has accomplished. On the field, the game features two teams playing out the string, awaiting an off season where much work needs to be done.


Tomorrow will be a game for history as the last game played on the most legendary field in any sport, the field on which Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Bill Dickey, Joe Dimagio, Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, Billy Martin, Phil Rizzuto, Mickey Mantle, Thurmon Munson, Reggie Jackson, Ron Guidry, Don Mattingly, Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Alex Rodriguez, and so many other famous players performed on the world's biggest stage many of them announced to the fans by the voice of Bob Sheppard.


Love 'em or hate 'em, no sports fan can ignore them. No team has generated more stars or champions than the New York Yankees. Have they had an unfair advantage? Well, the power of money the nation's largest city can generate might have something to do with it, but what about the other Major League teams that called New York home. The Dodgers played on the south end of town in Brooklyn. They're been in LA now for fifty years. The same year, the Giants split for San Francisco. Just a few years later, in 1962, the Mets came to town as a lowly and embarassing expansion team only to become World Champs in 1969. Their home, Shea Stadium closes up shop some time next month after the Mets' post season stand ends. Oh does that hurt, Yankees fans? The Mets move on unless an unthinkable collapse kills their dreams.


From 1923 to 2008, this field in the Bronx is where legends were made and are so honored by the monuments just beyond the outfield fence. Two stadiums were erected around that field, the first from 1923-1973; the second from 1976 to the present. When Yankee Stadium reopenned in 1976, fans stood in awe. This was the ultimate baseball stadium. All the big multipurpose "cookie cutter" stadia had been built. Those facillities that seemed so futuristic in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and San Diego apparently the wave of the future back then. Not a single one of them still stands spare San Diego which still hosts football. In their dust have risen more modern "old time" ballparks. In 1976, Yankee Stadium was for baseball only. The Giants had moved across the river to the Meadowlands. What a novel idea, that baseball and football should have their own dedicated playing facillities. Of course, what's the big deal in a city the size of New York?


1976 ushered in the next era of championship baseball in the Bronx. The Yanks marched on to the World Series where they'd be slaughtered by Sparky Anderson's "Big Red Machine." Then came Reggie-ball, the Yankees won the next two championships against their former cross-town rivals, the Dodgers. The Yankees stumbled through most of the 1980's into the 1990's, but after baseball was shaken to its soul with a labor strike that cancelled the World Series and rendered the 1994 season meaningless, the Yankees were back in full force in 1995 and have dominated the American League's regular season until just last year. For a time, baseball looked like the Yankees and everybody else just like what was the case for so many years of the original "House that Ruth Built" during the dynasty that lead from Ruth to DiMaggio to Mantle.


Yankee Stadium was also home to the "Greatest Game Ever Played" when the Baltimore Colts beat the New York Giants in overtime to win the NFL Championship in 1958, a game which many cite as the real beginning of modern professional football as the huge television specticle it has since become. Popes, boxers, and rockers have all played center stage on this field of legends.
As fate would have it, this year's All-Star game in July, could prove to be Yankee Stadium's last hoorah. Fans have to wonder how many of the young all-stars engaged in that game might be future New York Yankees. So many of them wind up in pinstripes by hook or crook. Something almost haunting seemed to bewitch that game as the game that refused to end carrying on for fifteen innings before the Yankees' American League finally prevailed.


How can anyone hear Frank Sinatra's anthem to the "Big Apple" and not think of Yankee Stadium at its finest when hearing "New York, New York."


The new field is taking shape across the street. The monuments will move. The game will go on. The new Yankee Stadium has been designed to painstakingly honor the field of the past but will surely set new standards for elegant luxury where millionaires schmooze billionaires. Surely, the average fans, the originators of the Bronx cheer, those hard-nosed intimidating New York fans who drive the rest of the baseball world into timid submission will be digging deeper in their pockets to enjoy the show.


To think that the New Yankees Stadium or any other sports venue could ever rival what took place at the intersection of East 161st Street and River Avenue is almost impossible to imagine.


Tomorrow belongs to yesterday in the Bronx on Sunday, September 22, 2008. When the game and the ceremonies are over the lights will be turned off, the doors shut. By next April, the grand old palace will be knocked to the ground. The legends will live forever.


For one small moment in history, let us all be Yankees' fans.

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