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Stadium Memories Will Never Leave Us

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By MARTIN FENNELLY | The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 20, 2008

At Yankee Stadium, the tired horseshoe, it's all over but the stealing. Security is beefed up this week at the big ballpark in the Bronx. Yankees fans, those sentimental fluffs, are being caught in the act of unscrewing seats from concrete moorings for souvenirs. Someone even tried to heist a toilet seat.

The House Where Ruth Squatted.

Just across the street, global financial crisis or no, a palace rises. At the new Yankee Stadium, toilet seats might be the only affordable ones. But today is for the memories. Yankee Stadium, the closest thing we have to the Roman Coliseum, is closing after 85 years.

The Yankees and Orioles will finish it off Sunday night. The place that made Octobers famous couldn't make it to one last one.

Back in the 1960s, it seemed more a stadium of the people. The thrill for a kid was the end of games. You'd be able to leave the Stadium by circling the field. It was only the warning track, but it was glorious. The stone and bronze monuments to Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Manager Miller Huggins were in the field of play, near deep center. They sat like tombstones. Every kid I knew thought it was wonderful that they were buried there.

It was more than a baseball place.

10 - Bambino (April 18, 1923): At the grand opening of America's first three-tiered stadium, New York Gov. Al Smith threw out the first pitch. Pregame band conductor: John Philip Sousa. A scalper was arrested for selling a $1.10 grandstand ticket for $1.50. There were 74,217 fans. They got what they came for as the new joint's chief architect hit the first Yankee Stadium homer. Oh, that Babe.

9 - Holy Cow (Oct. 4, 1965; Oct. 2, 1979; April 20, 2008): Ah, the three popes. Billy Graham preached at Yankee Stadium. Negro Leagues star Josh Gibson nearly hit a ball out of the Stadium in a Negro League game. Decades later, Nelson Mandela spoke at the Stadium. More than 60,000 gathered to remember 9/11 victims in a Stadium prayer service. Back to the popes. Pope Paul VI went first at the Stadium in 1965. Pope John Paul II said mass in 1979. He hit it on the screws. Pope Benedict went last, in 2008. Interesting side note: After blessing the infirm, Pope Benedict remarked he "really liked the Rays' pitching."

"8 - ... And Rock, Have Reagan Play Me In The Movie" (Nov. 12, 1928): There were great college football games at the Stadium, most notably the great Notre Dame-Army clashes. The most memorable was 80 years ago - and the biggest play came at halftime. That was the day Notre Dame coach Knute Rockne rallied his boys past Army by repeating what dying Notre Dame All-American George Gipp told him eight years earlier - you know, win one for the Gipper, "and try to cover, too." Something like that. Historians doubt the Gipp-Rockne exchange, but there's no denying the power of Rockne's words. It probably helped that he decided not to use the hand puppets.

7 - Where's eBay when you need it? (Oct. 1, 1961): He lost his hair and very nearly his mind while chasing Babe Ruth's record 60 home runs in a season, but Roger Maris did it, hitting his then-record 61st homer in the same stadium where Ruth had hit his 60th.

6 - Mustard and relish (Oct. 18, 1977): Yankee Stadium has been a stage to many a headline-grabber. It's probably the only place that could have made a star out of pine tar (see Brett, George) and a 12-year-old (see Maier, Jeffery). But no one ever worked the runway like Reginald Martinez Jackson did in Game 6 of the World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers. Jackson stirred the drink three times in three swings, homering himself into legend.

5 - Bucs had a bye week (Dec. 28, 1958): Yeah, the most important game in National Football League history was played there, too. The New York football Giants played at the Stadium for years, and they hosted the Baltimore Colts for the 1958 NFL championship. It was the game that made a league. Johnny Unitas led the Colts downfield in overtime to set up Alan Ameche's short end-zone plunge for the victory. Best of all: No Chris Berman afterward.

4 - Man of the people (Oct. 14, 1976): Nothing says Yankee Stadium like guys needing police protection to make history. That was the night Yankees first baseman Chris Chambliss hit a walk-off home run to win the American League pennant. Berserk fans tore at Chambliss from second base on. In 2003, Yankees hitter Aaron Boone won the pennant at the Stadium with a homer against Boston. Hardly anybody ran onto the field. Wimps.

3 - Down goes Hitler (June 22, 1938): More than two dozen championship fights were held at Yankee Stadium. But there was nothing like the evening Joe Louis pulverized Max Schmeling. Schmeling, a German, had defeated Louis two years earlier. Nazi officials used him as proof of Aryan supremacy. And so, as the world marched toward war, Louis, the grandson of slaves, climbed into the ring and let freedom ring. There were 70,000 at the Stadium and 100 million listening around the globe. It took 2 minutes, 4 seconds. The best part of the story is Schmeling never supported the Nazis. He and Louis became lifelong friends after that fight. And it all started at a baseball park in the Bronx.

2 - Is this thing on? (July 4, 1939): He was a man of few words, but on the day he was honored by his ball team, a dying Lou Gehrig gave in. After being hugged by Babe Ruth (who'd say his own Stadium goodbyes several years later), The Iron Horse stepped to the microphone. What followed is hailed by some as sports' Gettysburg Address. Yankee Stadium was the first stadium with a public-address system, but Gehrig's address echoed beyond through the cavernous stadium. He considered himself the luckiest man on the face of the earth (on the face of the earth). We told you there was an echo.

1 - Perfect (Oct. 8, 1956): One day more than any other speaks to what Yankee Stadium was about: baseball drama in October. As afternoon shadows lengthened, Don Larsen, who won 81 games his whole career, pitched the only perfect game in World Series history. Yankees catcher Yogi Berra jumped into Larsen's arms. It could have only happened in one stadium, the place with those monuments like tombstones. Some places don't die.

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