Daily Archives: September 19, 2008

The just-completed series against the White Sox had some interest beyond the impending closing of Yankee Stadium thanks to Chicago’s fight for the AL Central, Mike Mussina’s still-active quest for 20 wins, the return of Phil Hughes to the Yankee rotation, and the major league debuts of three Yankee prospects last night. This weekend’s series against the Orioles has none of that. These last three games will be about Yankee Stadium and nothing else. With that in mind, here are the three other opening and closing dates in the Stadium’s 86-year history:

April 18, 1923 – the first game at Yankee Stadium, Yankees beat the Red Sox 4-1 behind Bob Shawkey, who scored the first run at the new park on a single by third baseman Joe Dugan in the fourth inning. Ruth followed Dugan with a three-run homer, the Stadium’s first. Second baseman Aaron Ward had picked up the park’s first hit in the previous inning.

Sept. 30, 1973 – the final game at the original Stadium, Yankees lost to the Tigers 8-5 as Fritz Peterson and Lindy McDaniel combined to allow six runs in the eighth inning. Backup catcher Duke Sims, in his only start of the year, hits the last home run at the old park in the seventh. Winning pitcher John Hiller gets first baseman Mike Hegan to fly out to center fielder Mickey Stanley to end the game.

April 15, 1976 – the first game at the renovated Stadium, Yankees beat the Twins 11-4 with Dick Tidrow picking up the win with five shoutout innings in relief of Rudy May and Sparky Lyle getting the save. May gave up the first hit and home run in the remodeled Stadium to Disco Dan Ford in the top of the first. Twins second baseman Jerry Terrell, who led of the game with a walk, scored the first run ahead of Ford. The first Yankee hit was delivered by Mickey Rivers in the bottom of the first. The first Yankee home run at the redone park would come off the bat of Thurman Munson two days later.

The relocated St. Louis Browns first played at the Stadium as the Baltimore Orioles on May 5 and 6 of 1954, losing to Eddie Lopat and Allie Reynolds by scores of 4-2 and 9-0. The O’s first visit to the renovated stadium came in a three-game weekend series starting on May 14, 1976. The O’s took two of three in that series, beating Catfish Hunter in the opener. The first batter in that game was Ken Singleton, who struck out looking, but the next six Orioles delivered hits off Hunter, among them a two-run homer by O’s center fielder Reggie Jackson (!) as the O’s cruised to a 6-2 win behind Ross Grimsley.

For the curious, the action depicted in the Merv Rettenmund card pictured here occurred on August 9, 1970 in the seventh inning of the first game of a Sunday doubleheader. With the O’s leading 1-0 behind Jim Palmer, Rettenmund led off the seventh with a double off Fritz Peterson. Andy Etchebarren then hit a hot shot to third base that Jerry Kenney either booted or bobbled, allowing Etchebarren to reach and Rettenmund to advance. The photo on the card freezes the action as Kenney, ball in hand, checks Rettenmund at third base. The O’s would go on to score three unearned runs in that inning, but the Yanks got two in the eighth and two in the ninth to tie it, the latter two on a single by Roy White after Earl Weaver had replaced Palmer with Pete Richert. White would later end the game in the 11th with one out and Horace Clarke on first base by homering off Dick Hall to give the Yankees a 6-4 win.

Finally, here’s an account of the last game at the original Stadium from Glenn Stout’s outstanding Yankees Century:

The Yankees ended the season on September 30, closing down old Yankee Stadium to accommodate the scheduled renovation. In the final week of the season, the Hall of Fame hauled away a ticket booth, a turnstile, and other memorabilia. Anticipating souvenir takers, the club had already removed the center-field monuments and a hoard of equipment scheduled to follow the Yankees to Queens.

The club hired extra security to head off bad behavior, but the crowd of 32,328 arrived at the Stadium in an ugly mood and packing wrecking tools. Disappointed at the late season collapse, banners urging the Yankees to fire [manager Ralph] Houk ringed the park.

The game was only a few innings old when it became clear that souvenir hunters weren’t going to wait. In the outfield and the bleachers fans turned their backs on the game and started demolishing the park. The Yankees took the lead over Detroit but lost it in the fifth [sic]. When Houk came to the mound to change pitchers, exuberant fans waived parts of seats over their heads like the angry they had become.

As soon as Mike Hegan flied out to end the 8-5 loss, 20,000 fans swamped security forces and stormed the field. The Yanks had plans for objects like the bases, but the mob had other ideas. First-base coach Elston Howard scooped up the bag for a scheduled presentation to Mrs. Lou Gehrig, but he had to fight his way off the field, clutching the base like a fullback plowing through the line. Cops stood guard at home plate to make sure it went to Claire Ruth, but a fan stole second base, and third was nabbed by Detroit third baseman Ike Brown. Some 10,000 seats ended up being pulled loose.

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This below is a very unscientific comparison of the seating bowls in the new Yankee Stadium (on the left from a photo posted on the WCBS web site) and the current Yankee Stadium (on the right from a photo I took three weeks ago). It’s an imperfect comparsion to be sure (the photo on the left appears to have been taken from in or near the press box, while my photo was taken from a seat in the upper deck behind home plate), but the difference in the upper deck seating is striking nonetheless.

Right from the get-go, I have to admit I’m cheating a bit with this article, the last in my series on the "relics" of Shea Stadium. The previous three articles profiled Yankees of the 1970s who never called Yankee Stadium home, since their careers coincided only with the Shea Stadium seasons of 1974 and ’75. In actuality, Pat Dobson did pitch for the Yankees during the second half of the ’73 season, the final campaign at the "old" Yankee Stadium. But I’m willing to make an exception for "Dobber." He’s worth it.

I never met Dobson, but I always enjoyed reading articles that quoted him, especially from his days as a scout. Known as a funny free spirit during his playing days, Dobson became known for the strange vernacular he invented. He called curve balls "yakkers." He referred to liquor as "oil." And he called a big game a "bogart." Many of his invented terms were adopted by his teammate in Cleveland, Dennis Eckersley, who made such slang famous later in his career.

After his playing days, Dobson became a legendary storyteller and an incisively honest assessor of major league talent, both good and bad. Largely employed as an advance major league scout, Dobson did good work for a number of years with the Rockies and the Giants, who benefited from the opinions he offered based on his years of experience.

Dobson also happened to be a very good pitcher, a legitimate No. 3 starter for some excellent postseason teams of the 1970s. In today’s game, a younger Dobson would have merited a four-year contract worth $40 million, maybe more, on the open market. He was that good.

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By Brian Gunn

I went to my first and only game at Yankee Stadium earlier this year, a Sunday game in April against the Rays. As I took my seat behind home plate I drank in the stadium – the green lawn, the Facade running along the bleacher billboards, the retired numbers out in Monument Park – and I tried to imagine all the greats who made the stadium come alive. I tried to imagine Babe Ruth circling the bases with his little birdlike feet, or Joe DiMaggio gliding in from center to snag a fly ball.

I tried.

And I tried.

And I just couldn’t do it.

I was so goddamn cold I could barely concentrate on anything but the weather. I know, I know – just what you’d expect from a Californian. But I swear I wasn’t the only one. A cold wind whipped in from left field and had the sparse crowd huddled together for warmth. Whenever the Yanks retired the side or scratched out a hit the fans would let out a perfunctory clap or two before sticking their hands back in their pockets. Sometime around the 4th inning a fan sitting behind us accidentally spilled his beer all over my four-year-old nephew. It was about as far as you could get from my first-ever baseball memory – seeing Reggie Jackson, on TV, go deep three times in a row against the Dodgers. I can still remember how the air looked in Yankee Stadium that night (at least as it came across our Zenith television): thick with pitch and moment, steam from 56,000 fevered bodies rising into the October night.

My experience with Yankee Stadium was nothing like that. There was no momentousness, no steam, no October magic, and certainly no Babe or Joe D. It was, instead, a pretty ho-hum experience – a stiff reminder that Yankee Stadium isn’t, after all, a vending machine. Its wonders aren’t available on demand.

Brian Gunn is a screenwriter living in Los Angeles.

Over at CNN, Jim Bouton remembers Yankee Stadium (peace to Gamingboy at Baseball Think Factory for the link). 

Ray Negron had an unlikely start to a career in baseball–he was caught spray painting his name on Yankee Stadium by none other than the Boss, George Steinbrenner.  Today at 3:00 pm,  Negron will be on hand as Bobby Murcer’s face is added to the great mural across the street from the Stadium.  If you are in the neighborhood, stop by and check, check it out.

Tom Verducci wrote SI’s cover story on Yankee Stadium this week. He also penned a column about the ballpark up on 161st street:

I understand the price of progress is to lose a piece of history. I understand Yankee Stadium was never re-built to accommodate four million people. The stadium, in fact, is overrated simply as a place to watch a game. The concourses are frighteningly narrow and without view of the field, the food services are abominable, the bathrooms require haz-mat gear to enter, there is far too much room behind home plate, and you could probably earn an online degree in the time it takes to exit a parking garage if you dare drive and stay for a whole game. But hey, my 1973 Plymouth Satellite was nothing to look at, either. It’s the history, which becomes a personal history because we connect its events to moments in our lives, that made the place beautiful. Yankee fans seemed to pride themselves on not being comfortable. They were there to watch some ball, that’s all.

Thrills, no frills.

Your 2008 New York Yankees are, obviously, a major disappointment… but they’re not actually bad, either. Last night’s 9-2 win was their 82nd of the season, which means they’ll finish at .500 even if they lose every single game remaining. And they’ll almost certainly finish with well over 83 wins, which is more than can be said for the 2006 World Champion St. Louis Cardinals. Okay, that’s an extreme example, but still: in the AL Central the Yankees would be two games out of first with this record, and they’d actually be winning in the NL West. Now clearly wins do not translate so exactly across divisions, and you cannot aim for 80-odd wins if you’re playing in the AL East, and yes, the Yankees have lots of very real and significant problems, yes the offense was surprisingly mediocre, yes Sir Sidney Ponson started 14 games. Still, technically, this is not a bad team, not by general MLB standards. They’re just not good enough.

They were last night, though, and they thumped the White Sox. The first pitch was more memorable than much of the actual game; it was thrown out by Emilio Navarro, who at 102 years of age is now the oldest living pro baseball player in the world. Navarro is a tiny man, and came up to about the belly button of Jorge Posada, who caught Navarro’s first pitch (tossed in from halfway to the plate, but with some zip on it). But he looks amazingly good for his age, walked without assistance, and took his time soaking in the applause on the field, grinning and leisurely tipping his cap to the fans and savoring the moment; he looked like he was having a ball.

Mike Mussina then started things off unpromisingly by loading the bases, twice. But he escaped with just one run allowed, and after that he went on cruise control: five more innings, smooth and easy. Old frenemy Javier Vazquez was pitching for the White Sox, and the Yankees came back off of him right away, with a Derek Jeter single and a Bobby Abreu homer in the bottom of the first – Abreu’s first of two consecutive bombs.

The Yankees kept tacking on, one in the third inning and four in the fourth; Ozzie Guillen wisely removed Vazquez before he could face Abreu again, but Horacio Ramirez was not much of an improvement, and the Yankees got a little Conga line going around the bases. They added two more in the fifth, and the New York bullpen trio of Jose Veras, Humberto Sanchez, and Chris Britton finished things off with little incident. In other news, Juan Miranda made his major league debut tonight with two walks, and later in the game Francisco Cervelli stepped in behind the plate, apparently recovered from his controversial broken wrist.

I’d love to see Mike Mussina win 20, but I’ve been pessimistic about it for a while now and I think that’s partly because I still associate Moose with coming excruciatingly close to milestones rather than reaching them: like during that heartbreaking game at Fenway in 2001, where he was just one out away from a perfect game (I think even one strike away, though I may be mentally exaggerating there) when Carl Everett – CARL EVERETT! – ruined it with a single. Anyway, I generally enjoy Mussina’s moments of snarky exasperation (at least when not directed at an umpire or errant infielder during a game), but he has some kinda touching moments of sincerity in this nice Bats post from Tyler Kepner.

Finally, apropos of nothing, Alex has requested that I share the below YouTube clip with all of you. (Actually, he asked if I could “work it in” to my recap…but stunningly enough, the  topic didn’t come up directly in the course of last night’s game). So I’ll give it to you now with no additional editorial comment.

You’re welcome.