By Steven Goldman
I don’t know if this is my warmest memory of Yankee Stadium. Somehow my memories of the ballpark are more vivid than warm. There’s not a lot of romance attached to it. Maybe that’s because in the games I have attended as a fan, in my pre-professional days, I’ve seen a disproportionate number of losses. This is true even of the good years. Resultantly, my inventory of memories stretching back to the 1970s mostly shows visitors like Paul Molitor, Kirby Puckett, and George Brett doing mean things to the Yankees, and mediocre starters like Neil Allen and Joe Niekro doing their desultory best not to lose too badly. Even the things that are vivid involve losses. I was at the 1998 playoff game against the Indians where Chuck Knoblauch failed to pursue a ball that was sitting on the ground right next to him because he was arguing with the umpire, while Enrique Wilson tore around the bases with what proved to be the winning run. It was amazing to hear 40,000 people shouting, "Throw the f**king ball!" in near unison.
Some of my most vivid memories involve personal embarrassment or shame. The 1988 Old Timer’s Day game is fixed in my mind not only because of the grand slam that the great Jose Cruz pinch hit against the White Sox, the last home run of his career and his only as a Yankee, but because at almost that same moment my car was being stolen. I was 17; it was the first time I had driven to the ballpark. PS: despite the grand slam, the Yankees lost.
Going back still further, I can remember one of my first trips to the Stadium, if not the first, when I was about five years old. On our way into the building, I had seen a little toy horn that one of the vendors was selling. It was nothing more than a blue tube of plastic with a trumpet-shaped bell at the end. I was, in my childish way, very excited to have it, but as we entered the Stadium, a security guard saw the horn and started screaming at me. "What is that thing? You can’t bring that in here!" My parents intervened and the guy relented. I was allowed to bring it in, but with a warning: "Don’t make ANY noise with that thing!" For the rest of the game I felt scared, as if I was being watched, as if one wrong move would get us thrown out. I remember nothing about the actual contest, just the powerful feelings of mortification that blotted out all else. I imagine the Yankees lost.
Far more recently, during my professional years, I passed out in the Yankees clubhouse (in front of Tanyon Sturtze’s locker—he brought me a chair) and had to be carried out on a stretcher after Gene Monahan administered smelling salts. Thus I have experienced Stadium-based mortification both as a very young child and as an adult. It only remains for me to reap some kind of extreme embarrassment in old age; perhaps I’ll soil myself while interviewing Derek Jeter, Jr. at Stadium II.
