Monday - September 22, 2008

Yankee Stadium hosts last baseball game.  (strictly speaking, this isn’t exactly the same house)

Okay guys.  Correct me here, and oh boy I’m sure someone will.

Back in the early 1970’s I attended (with our station’s sports guy) what was the last game played at Yankee Stadium before the renovation.
There were these posts, I guess that’s what they were, that dated from the original and if your seat was behind one, you were always on the mover left,right,left,right, trying to see around the thing.  (fortunately, we were in a media section) Anyway, in a strict sense this isn’t the same house Ruth built because that one was ripped apart to make possible the stadium they are now taking down.
Yeah .... pick,picky,picky.

I don’t generally post stuff from the USA because I always assume you ppl already know even before I do here.
But ... gee.  What the heck.  I haven’t followed baseball in so many years I can no longer count em.
I recall the days at KFI in LA, which was a Dodger station.  But I also remember the old Bums in Brooklyn and the move west. Now you wanna talk about sad.
Hey .. is anyone playing today that has the flash of Pete Rose of yor?  I really don’t know.

Something nasty happened to baseball over the years. Don’t mean to start any arguments among friends but ... both owners and players somehow lost somethin’ called loyalty.  I don’t know exactly how to put it. Maybe you do.  Hey, does anyone else remember The Boston Braves?  Don’t know what suddenly made me think of them.
Warren Spahn ......  He once showed a small group of us kids how to throw a baseball.

Ah, wait.  I think this was supposed to be about Yankee Stadium.  Did you know that the word ‘stadium’ originally was a unit of measure. Yeah, it was.
But I can’t remember if it was Roman or Greek. ??  No, I think it was a Roman measure of distance. 
Just an old goat’s musings ..... ignore me.

I think I was very lucky in the ppl I met, even if I only met em once in passing.
For example ... at that last Yankee game I told you about, after the game there was a small reception and I met and shook hands with this guy.

Phil Rizzuto.  He was already an older guy and retired from playing when I met him.  But I remembered his grip after we shook hands for a very long time.
Man was that guy strong.  A grip like steel. And a nice guy too I do remember. No airs and no ego role playing. Just a hell of a nice man. 

Yankee Stadium hosts last baseball game
The Yankee Stadium has hosted its last baseball game, closing an illustrious chapter in American sporting history with all the razmataz of a Broadway show.
By Tom Leonard in New York
Last Updated: 7:31AM BST 22 Sep 2008

America’s most famous sports venue, the so-called House That Ruth Built in the Bronx, New York, was graced on Sunday night with a pre-game parade of veteran players and actors in replica costumes portraying such famous Yankees as Joe DiMaggio and Lou Gehrig.

The 57,545-seat stadium has been the home to the New York Yankees since it opened in 1923, but it is to be demolished and replaced with a new $1.3 billion ballpark across the road.

“I’m sorry to see it over, I’ll tell you that,” the Yankee veteran Yogi Berra told the capacity crowd as the 83-year-old joined the celebrations wearing a vintage baseball outfit.

The venue has also hosted Masses celebrated by three Popes, various landmark boxing matches and a rally for Nelson Mandela after he was released from prison.

“This place has been part of our history. Not just baseball but our country,” said Joe Girardi, the Yankees manager.

Derek Jeter, the team’s captain, said playing at the stadium was “kind of like performing on Broadway — the lights are a little brighter.” The Yankees won their final match at the stadium 7-3 against the Baltimore Orioles but both teams are languishing in the league so it was really a night to celebrate past glories instead.

An extra 2,000 security staff were drafted in for the final game to prevent fans tearing up the stadium and make off with souvenirs such chairs and cupholders. Guards had to repeatedly warn fans not to rip up handfuls of grass.

Fans began pouring into the stadium seven hours before the game, some of them welcoming the move to a more comfortable ground but others bemoaning the new ballpark’s emphasis on luxury treatment for high paying ticketholders.

The stadium earned its nickname after Babe Ruth, the baseball superstar who inaugurated the stadium.

On Sunday, Julia Ruth Stevens, his 92-year-old daughter, threw out the ceremonial first pitch.

“I’m very, very sad to think that the Yankee Stadium is not going to be in existence any longer,” she said.

“I wish it could have remained as a New York landmark, but I guess like all things it has come to its final days as we all do.”

Her bittersweet emotions were shared by the players and fans. “I am going to miss Yankee Stadium. I’d be lying to you if I said I wasn’t,” said Derek Jeter, the team’s captain.

Lou Giordano, a fan from Brooklyn, said he had been going to watch games there since he was a child and recently took his grandfather, another Yankees fan, back there.

“It’s not distinctive in size or architecture and the amenities are terrible,” he said. “There’s nothing great about it other than the aura and history that surrounds it.”

“The Yankees have been an integral part of New York. Just as the city is larger than life, so are they in baseball.”

Jim Garthwaite, a 15-year-old Yankee fan, was one of the first people to get into the stadium on Sunday.

“I’m sure there will be tears for everybody,” he said. “But I’ve been to a lot of ballparks and I understand why they’re doing it. It’s motivated by money. It’s just a little sad to see it go.”

Next April, the Yankees will open the new stadium. Envisioned as a luxury hotel with a ball field in the middle, it will include luxury corporate boxes, a martini bar and art gallery.

The stadium was not only used for baseball — three Popes have appeared there, including Pope John Paul II in 1979 and, in April this year, Pope Benedict XVI.

Muhammad Ali famous beat Ken Norton at the stadium in 1976 over a 15 gruelling round boxing fight. In 1938, another black boxer, Joe Louis, famously defeated the German Max Schmeling in a fight that attracted the attentions of Hitler and was hailed as a blow against Nazism.

(uh huh but ... Max Schmeling won the first fight. This was the second fight.)

Nelson Mandela made his first international stop there for a celebration rally in 1990 after being released from prison.

(Yeah well I wouldn’t brag about that.  He belonged in prison. He was a freedom fighter like OBL is a peacenik)

In September 2001, thousands of New Yorkers gathered there for Prayer for America, a post 9/11 prayer service.

Ruth memorably returned to the stadium in 1947 to say farewell to fans.

Stricken with throat cancer, the Yankee player told sobbing fans: “The only real game, I think, in the world is baseball.” Just over a year later, he died and 100,000 fans paid their respects as his body was laid out at the stadium’s entrance.

http://tinyurl.com/3hndj6

Posted by Drew458     on 09/22/2008 at 08:20 AM   
Filed Under: • History • Miscellaneous •  
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