One address in the Bronx has held two ballparks and nearly all of baseball's memory. The original Yankee Stadium stood for 85 years and 6,581 regular-season games, from Babe Ruth's first swing in it to Mariano Rivera's last. Then the Yankees packed up the monuments, crossed 161st Street, and started over. This is the story of both buildings, and of the one thing that never moved: what it means to play there.
DID YOU KNOW? The announced attendance for the original stadium's first game in 1923 was 74,217, with another 25,000 fans turned away at the gates. Years later, Yankees business manager Ed Barrow admitted the real crowd was closer to 60,000. Even the exaggeration was the largest crowd ever to watch a baseball game at the time.
The House That Ruth Built
The Yankees spent their first decade as tenants of the New York Giants at the Polo Grounds, and the arrangement curdled the moment Babe Ruth arrived in 1920 and promptly outdrew the landlords. The Giants told the Yankees to find their own home. Owner Jacob Ruppert answered by buying ten acres of the old Astor estate in the Bronx - pointedly right across the Harlem River from the Polo Grounds - and paying the entire $2.4 million construction cost out of his own pocket.
On April 18, 1923, John Philip Sousa led the Seventh Regiment Band in the national anthem, Governor Al Smith threw out the first pitch, and Ruth hit a three-run homer in a 4-1 win over his old team, the Boston Red Sox. Asked what he thought of the new park, Ruth said, "Some ball yard." The Yankees won their first World Series that fall, and the building got its name: the House That Ruth Built.
What followed was most of the sport's scripture. Ruth's 60th home run in 1927. Lou Gehrig calling himself the luckiest man on the face of the earth in 1939. Don Larsen's perfect game in the 1956 World Series. Roger Maris hitting number 61 on the final day of the 1961 season. Mickey Mantle's 500th in 1967. And it was never only baseball: Joe Louis fought there, three popes said Mass there, and the football Giants called it home, including the 1958 NFL Championship, the game that made pro football a television religion.
Shea, the Renovation and the Zoo
By the late 1960s the grand old park was literally crumbling - fans reported chunks of concrete falling from the upper deck - and New York City bought the stadium in 1971 with plans to rebuild it. The old place closed on September 30, 1973, the same year CBS sold the Yankees to George Steinbrenner's group for $10 million. The Yankees spent 1974 and 1975 as guests of the Mets at Shea Stadium while their home was gutted to its steel and rebuilt at a cost that swelled to $160 million.
The renovated stadium reopened on April 15, 1976, and picked up the drama without missing a beat. That October, Chris Chambliss sent the Yankees to the World Series and thousands of fans stormed the field before he could finish his home-run trot. A year later, Reggie Jackson hit three home runs on three swings to win the 1977 World Series. The Bronx Zoo years raged in that building, and so did the redemption that followed: the 1996 championship that ended an 18-year drought, four titles in five years, and Aaron Boone's walk-off in 2003.
The Last Night, and the Walk Across the Street
On September 21, 2008, with a new stadium rising across 161st Street, the Yankees played the final game in the old one. Johnny Damon hit a three-run homer, Jose Molina - a backup catcher with 18 career home runs - hit the last home run in the stadium's history, and the Yankees beat Baltimore 7-3. Mariano Rivera got Brian Roberts to ground out to first baseman Cody Ransom for the final out, and Ransom handed the ball to Rivera. Then Derek Jeter gathered his teammates on the infield grass and spoke for them: "We just want to take this moment to salute you, the greatest fans in the world." Players from both teams bent down and scooped up dirt to take with them.
Watch: Mariano Rivera records the final three outs at the old Yankee Stadium (MLB).
The new Yankee Stadium opened on April 16, 2009, built on the old Macombs Dam Park site at a cost of $1.3 billion. Before the first at-bat, the Yankees laid the bat Ruth used for the stadium's first home run in 1923 at home plate. The opener itself was a 10-2 loss to Cleveland, but Jorge Posada hit the ballpark's first home run, deep into Monument Park, and the season ended the only way a new Yankees home should: with a World Series title, number 27, in the building's first year - exactly as it had in 1923.
Two stadiums, one address, one standard. The ghosts didn't need directions across the street.
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Sources: Baseball Almanac and MLB.com (Yankee Stadium history, 1923 opener and 2008 finale) · New York Times, "A Long Goodbye to an 85-Year Run" (September 22, 2008) · CBC/AP game reports (September 21, 2008; April 16, 2009) · Baseball-Reference
Photo: Severin St. Martin via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0