Over at Baseball Prospectus, Jay Jaffe has a scathing piece about how the Yankee Stadium experience has changed in recent years. Check it out.

By Maury Allen

This was in 1972 in the old Yankee Stadium, the one where Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio and Mantle had played, long before the 1974-75 refurbishing and a dream location across from The House That Steinbrenner is building for 2009.

I walked on that green grass again as I had for a dozen years or so as a sportswriter, looked out at those monuments, examined that façade above the third deck and waited for my pitching pal.

Fritz Peterson, the left-handed anchor of the bad Yankee pitching staff of the late 1960s and early 1970s, was on the field now, a smile on his face as always, his baseball cap tipped back, his eyes wide with glee and amusement.

“I got another Tugboat post card,” he said, with that wry smile. “I put it in his locker.”

Peterson had a habit of collecting post cards of big boats or even bigger women and dropping them off in the locker of Thurman Munson, the best Bronx Bomber catcher since Yogi. It irritated the surly Munson no end.

Sparky Lyle, another laughing teammate, had once described Munson as not really moody.

“Moody is when you can smile some of the time,” Lyle once said of his unfortunate batterymate, later to lose his life in a 1979 plane crash.

We chatted a while about Peterson’s next start in another strong season (17-15 in 1972 after 20 wins in 1970) and then I asked him if he was available on the next Yankees off day for a barbecue at my suburban home.

“Sure,” he said. “Can I bring Kekich?”

He had become pals with another Yankee lefty, Mike Kekich and the two couples, Fritz and Marilyn Peterson, Mike and Suzanne Kekich had spent a lot of time together.

The four of them arrived at my home on a beautiful summer night. My wife Janet had gone all out with her best cooking, our best dishes and a beer-filled refrigerator. A good time was had by all.

Soon, the information was out. Peterson and Kekich had arranged that night to swap wives, kids, cars, dogs, houses and hearts.

Marilyn and Mike never lasted as a couple. Fritz and Suzanne are going on some 35 years together.

Some people will always remember the giant home runs at the Stadium hit by Mickey Mantle or the clutch World Series shots by Yogi Berra or the brilliance of Whitey Ford on the mound and Elston Howard behind the plate.

Me? I just remember standing on that famous green grass and simply asking Fritz Peterson to join us for a barbecue. Who knew what evil lurked behind that question.

Maury Allen, a veteran newspaperman and author, writes for The Columnists.com.

Seven Layer Chocolate Cake

By Jane Leavy

May 18, 1962 was a raw spring night in the Bronx. A mean chill filled Yankee Stadium suppressing attendance at the Friday night game between the Yanks and the Minnesota Twins. A forgotten tributary of the Harlem River, on whose banks the stadium was built, runs on a diagonal from left field toward the hole between third and short—like a cut off throw. The ancient waterway, Cromwell’s Creek, buried deep beneath the sedimentary rock of urbanization, asserted itself in the dew and chill of that otherwise fine Friday evening. Mist enveloped the scalloped copper frieze that ringed the upper deck of the Stadium. I remember thinking: if Mick hits one tonight nobody will ever see it again.

That was the thing about Mantle: you never knew what might happen when he stepped to the plate or what might happen to him.

My father, who grew up on the other side of the Harlem River cheering for the Giants from a rocky perch on Coogan’s Bluff, had gotten box seats behind the dugout along the third base line. It was the best seat I would ever have in a ballpark until I went to work as a sportswriter fifteen years later.

I was ten years old that sweet evening. What could be better-a visit to see The Mick and a sleepover at my grandmother’s? Her apartment was just up the street in a building called The Yankee Arms, a long, loud foul ball from home plate.

Mickey was my guy but I was grandma’s girl, her favorite, I thought (as did all her grandchildren). I knew this because although she loved frilly things and rose sachet, because canasta not baseball was her game, because in the 20 years she lived in the shadow of the ballpark she was never once tempted to step inside, despite all this she put on her mink stole and open-toed shoes and took me to Saks Fifth Avenue to buy my first baseball glove. It was an odd place to go in search of a mitt but she only wanted the best for me.

Providence intervened–a mannequin in the front window had a Sammy Esposito glove on her hand. “We’ll have that one,” my grandmother told the flummoxed salesman, who pointed out it was not for sale. He was no match for a Jewish grandmother, mine anyway. I took Sammy home; I took Sammy everywhere, including the stadium on May 18, 1962.

My grandfather, a manic-depressive immigrant tailor, had made me two identical wool, plaid skirts, one in tones of beige, brown and gold, the other in red and green, Christmas-tree green, perfect for Hanukah. They were reversible and indestructible. A whole wardrobe, these skirts. They went with everything and nothing. He was in a manic mode when he sewed them; their oscillating hems reflected his ups and downs.

In an act of filial devotion (and parental betrayal), my mother had made it a condition of attendance that I wear one of these atrocities. I chose the more muted tones and an overly generous straw-colored Irish cable knit sweater over a white turtleneck. I looked like a pre-pubescent haystack.
In an act of solidarity for which I remain grateful five years after his death, my father went to the concession stand and bought me an adult-size Yankee cap, large enough to hide most of my embarrassment.

I knew it was going to be Mick’s year. It had to be after the disappointment of 1961. God owed him after allowing Roger Maris to claim Babe Ruth’s title as home run king. Being second fiddle made him more loveable to the masses, but not to me–I couldn’t love him anymore than I did already.

“In 1961 I became an American hero because he beat me,” he would say later. “He was an ass and I was a nice guy. He beat Babe Ruth and he beat me so they hated him. Everywhere we’d go I got a standing ovation. All I had to do was walk out of the dugout.”

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By Ed Alstrom

I’ve been to a lot of great and wacky games at the Stadium, like everyone else: the Chambliss home run, several other playoff and World Series games, some crazed comebacks, and some of those insane asylum games from the early 90s with people running onto the field at random (one game against the Red Sox, there were seven of them at different intervals, in the rain).

And, of course, auditioning for the organist position at the Stadium (with Eddie Layton himself standing in the doorway requesting song snippets!) was priceless, and fulfilling my childhood dream of playing the organ there is very special, every single time I do it.

But for my part, I’d have to say that my lasting memory of the Stadium after it’s gone will be a little different from most, and that is having gotten to hang out with Bob Sheppard.

Mr. Sheppard (that’s what all of us in the Press Box call him) has his public address booth right next to mine at the organ. Only a pane of Plexiglas separates us. Sometimes I’ll knock on his door, sometimes he’ll tap on my window and motion me in, and we chat, sometimes during the game. He’ll be talking, and then point his index finger in the air mid-sentence, to say ‘wait a minute,’ step on a pedal to activate the mike, announce the next player (in the same exact tone of voice he’s speaking to me in), and then continue where he left off. When a Yankee makes an error or a bad play, he’ll look at me and very slowly point his palms skyward and shrug his shoulders.

His end of game routine is really beautiful: with 2 out in the ninth and Mariano on the hill, he’ll slowly don his cap and coat, salute me, lock his door, and wait in the runway. If the game ends then and there, he is off like a shot, walking so briskly I can barely keep up with him (and I’ve tried it!). If that batter reaches base, though, he’ll unlock the door, come back in, give me that same shrug, step on the pedal, announce the next batter, and repeat the procedure. His determination to beat that traffic (and his success rate, I’m sure) is admirable indeed.

Several times, I’ve gone down to the press lunch room and broken bread with him at ‘his table,’ which is the one in the corner of the room with a cardboard handwritten sign with his name on it. He surely deserves a gold plaque or something more dignified (well, he does have a Monument in the Park), but everyone knows anyway that that’s his domain.

You’ve probably heard what a class act he is, and he exceeds all expectations on that count. I’ve spoken to him many, many times, but oddly it’s almost never about baseball: usually music and theater. In fact, he usually changes the subject to music when I try to engage him about baseball.

He loves the music of the 40s, and the big bands. He told me once he was especially fond of the great singer Jo Stafford, so I went home and found a bunch of her recordings and put them on CD for him, and he was delighted and talked about her at length, and about how he was stationed in Aruba during World War II, and they used to get her 78s shipped to them, and play them at their bar in the ‘Quonset hut’ (you can just hear Shep saying ‘Quonset hut,’ right?).

He loves poetry, so he is quite enamored of the lyrics of Hart, Hammerstein, Gershwin, Porter, et al., and we’ve spent quite a bit of precious pre-game time analyzing those. And I’ve spent some time (at his behest) trying to explain the merits of rock and roll, or any music recorded after 1955 (with limited success, I think).

At times, he’ll approach me with some handwritten poetry he’s composed, which is invariably literate, funny, and sometimes biting. He once wrote a concise and venomous little masterpiece about Kevin Brown’s bout with a cinderblock wall, and showed it to me; I am not at liberty to disclose it, but lemme tell you, it’s incredible. I said to him, "You must have a lot of these." He said, "Oh, hundreds." I said, "You should get these published," to which he replied, "Oh, no, Mr. Steinbrenner would fire me!"

One Saturday afternoon, it was Military Day at the Stadium, and the formalities were to begin with the Golden Knights parachuting onto the field. It was about two minutes before the ceremony was to begin, and Mr. Sheppard was nowhere in sight.

I knocked on the control room window, got the director’s attention, and pointed to myself and then to Shep’s booth. He said, "Yeah, go ahead." So, I gave the script a speed read, got the cue, stepped on the pedal to activate the mike, and very deliberately said… "Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen; welcome to Yankee Stadium!"

Now, I didn’t have time to think about it, but my instinct was to not attempt my Shep imitation, because I felt it would be disrespectful somehow, but I did try to phrase it as he might have, veer a course somewhere down the middle vocally, and create the illusion that it was him.

It was a very long script, about two pages, and it was a real roller coaster moment. Toward the end of it, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that Mr. Sheppard was standing behind me! I finished with the read, released the pedal, and looked at him gingerly, feeling somewhat like a child about to be scolded. Instead, he grinned broadly, and said very slowly, "Were you trying to imitate me?" Imagine that thrill!

But the best of all was when he approached me one day, and said, "You know, I wrote a song many years ago." Of course, I wanted to hear it, so he showed me the lyrics and sang it to me. I told him the next day I was coming back with a recorder, and he sang it again for me, acapella, and then I got him to talk into the recorder for about 15 minutes about it. I then went home and created a musical track for his melody, chopped his vocal track into pieces and flew it in over the accompaniment, and presented him with a finished product worthy of Sinatra. He was very touched, and I was touched to be able to do that for him. He wrote a handwritten note of thanks, which is more valuable to me than any piece of memorabilia could be. Believe me, Mr. Sheppard, the pleasure was all mine.

Whatever our collective vignettes are of Yankee Stadium, Bob Sheppard’s narration to that soundtrack is a thread that runs through all of them, and an essential component of it. His humanity, wit, and warmth are every bit as momentous as that voice, and I am honored to have shared some time on this Earth with him. He is Yankee Stadium, in a lot of ways.

Ed Alstrom will be playing the organ from the early afternoon until late tonight at Yankee Stadium.

It’s Hanky Time for Yankee Stadium today.  The tributes just keep a comin.  Yesterday, Paul Simon had a piece about the old place in the New York Times, today, it’s Henry Kissinger’s turn.  Also in the Times, comes memories from Billy Crystal, Robert Creamer, Jane Heller, and B-Girl Penny Marshall.

Here is Maury Brown’s ode to the cathedral, as well as Alan Sepinwall’s memories.   

Read em and weep.

It is sunny and cool and decidedly a fall day.  The last day game at Yankee Stadium.

Enjoy y’all.

As Aaron Gleeman says, Happy Baseball.

By Pete Abraham

There is not one in particular moment I remember.

I’ve attended roughly 200 games at Yankee Stadium since I started covering the team in 2006 and they all seem to blend in. The best part of the day is walking from the elevator on the loge level, down the concourse, into the press box and sitting down in my seat in the front row.

I always pause a minute to look around and soak it in. When they’re playing a big game, the skies are clear and the fans are buzzing, it’s intoxicating.

I became a sportswriter when I was 17 because I loved the idea of communicating the details of something that matters to people. Baseball always drew me in because it was the one sport people had passion for all year.

Yankee Stadium is the front office of baseball, the best venue in the game. Where else does baseball matter more? I feel tremendously fortunate every time I sit down and look around. At that moment, there is nowhere else in the world I would rather be. That’s my favorite memory, no matter how many times it repeats.

Pete Abraham covers the Yankees for The Journal News.

Last season Tom Verducci worked as an umpire during a spring training game and wrote about the experience for Sports Illustrated. The bit I remember most about the article was how fast the game is on the field, how quickly things move for everyone involved, the umpires, players, the fans in the front row when a foul ball comes their way. But for some players, for the best players, the action slows down and they are, momentarily, able to master time.

Two nights ago, a dapper little man named Emilio Navarro, the oldest living ballplayer, threw out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium. Navarro, 102 years old, was the first Puerto Rican to play in the Negro Leagues. He was escorted to the mound by Pudge Rodriguez and Jorge Posada. When they reached the grass in front of the mound, Posada went to home plate to receive the throw.

Navarro took his time. A squirrel was standing on the first base side of the mound watching as Navarro gave it a little of the ol Ed Norton and he went into a full wind-up. As he released the ball (and delivered a good throw), the squirrel darted across the field behind him and disappeared from the camera’s view. I’m sure Navarro, who was a second baseman in his playing days was quick like that back when. Then Navarro did a little jig and tipped his cap to the crowd before Rodriguez and Posada escorted him back off the field.

Navarro continued to move slowly, but not like a feeble or sick man, just one who knows exactly how fast he should be walking. He soaked in the moment and had no desire to rush anything. Navarro looked like a gnome compared with the two ballplayers next to him, and they looked like parents walking with an infant, you know, when adults have to constantly remind themselves that they are walking too fast for the kid. But Navarro was relaxed and comfortable and at 102, what’s the rush?

I thought about Navarro’s grace and ease last night in the ninth inning. With a man on first and two men out, Mariano Rivera fielded a soft ground ball on the third base side of the diamond. It was not going to roll foul. Rivera darted to the ball, picked it up and threw a bullet to first base. The runner would have been out and the ball game over, but the ball bounced off Cody Ransom’s glove. The replay showed Rivera pick up the ball and firing it to first in one smooth motion. Then he stood, erect when a small, easy smile spread across his face, even before Ransom dropped the ball. When the ball got away, the smile grew ever so slightly before Rivera jostled himself back into reality and moved toward home plate.

We’ve seen this look from Rivera in the past, it is one of simple disbelief. But last night, it wasn’t so incredulous, just a simple smile. Suddenly, the Yankees one-run lead was in jeopardy. Runners on the corners and two out. But Brian Roberts popped up the first pitch he saw, a cutter in on his hands. The ball was not high and inbetween Rivera and Rodriguez. For a brief moment there was some confusion as to who was going to catch it. But Rodriguz caught the ball for the third out and that simple smile returned to Rivera’s face as he shook hands with Rodriguez who was now smiling too as the Yankees beat the Orioles 3-2.

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.

Can Mike Mussina finally get his 18th win?

Vat ho. We sure hope so.

By Phil Pepe

There were times in the 1960s and 1970s when I came to think of Yankee Stadium as my second home. As Yankees beat writer for two newspapers, the New York World Telegram & Sun and the New York Daily News, I spent more time in the big ballpark in the South Bronx in those days than I did in my own home.

I’m not complaining. Covering the Yankees in those exciting and turbulent times was my job…and my joy. As a result, I got to know interesting, exciting and legendary personalities: Casey Stengel, Joe DiMaggio (after he had retired), Mickey Mantle, Billy Martin, Yogi Berra, Phil Rizzuto, Pete Sheehy, Reggie Jackson, Mel Allen, Thurman Munson and George Steinbrenner. (My one regret is that I came along a few years too late to have met Babe Ruth.) And I was blessed to have witnessed so many historic moments to feed my lifelong passion for baseball, a coincidental byproduct of my position and my advanced age.

There is a sadness now, and a melancholia because of the imminent demise of this baseball cathedral where I have spent so many hours, witnessed so much history, and chronicled the exploits of so many legends of the game. The mind is cluttered with so many memories, I find it difficult, no, impossible, to catalogue them; to choose one as my greatest Yankee Stadium memory.

In no particular order of importance or historical significance, here is a list of 10 Yankee Stadium memories — events I witnessed — that easily fall under the heading of memorable and unforgettable, deeds that might make anyone’s list:

* Mickey Mantle’s blast off Bill Fischer of Kansas City leading off the bottom of the eleventh inning of a 7-7 tie on the night of May 22, 1963. The shot came within inches of being the first (and only) fair ball ever hit out of Yankee Stadium. Mantle called it, “The hardest ball I ever hit.”

It may have been the hardest ball anybody ever hit.

* Roger Maris’ 61st home run off Tracy Stallard on October 1, 1961, the “year of the asterisk.” The solo home run was the only tally in a 1-0 Yankees victory. It still boggles the mind that a mere 23,124 fans showed up (through the years I have encountered more than that number who claim they were there) to see the coronation of baseball’s new single-season home run champion.

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Guest Post

By Jon DeRosa

Yankee Stadium opened in 1923. In that same year, a young first baseman from Columbia University got his first sniff of the big leagues with the Yanks and collected the first 11 hits of his career. That first baseman was Lou Gehrig and of course he hit like crazy from 1923 thru 1939 (a .340 lifetime average). His 1270 hits at the Stadium established a high standard – but not, one would think, an unattainable standard. Especially since Gehrig himself would have bettered that number by hundreds if not for his tragic disease and rapid demise.

Surely the great DiMaggio would eclipse that mark with relative ease just by staying healthy. World War 2 put an end to those thoughts. But even with the War robbing Joe of 3 prime years and possibly 300 hits in the Stadium, he called it quits at the same age as the Iron Horse – 36.

But then Mantle, of the blazing speed, who began roaming the outfield at the ridiculously young age of 19, for certain would have his 1270 hits in the Stadium by the time he was 30, right? Well ironically, his chances took a nosedive in his 19th summer when he tore his knee apart on a drainage cover in right field, skidding to a stop to defer to Joe D on a pop fly. The injury didn’t rob him of an all time great career, but it certainly took away the infield hits that were the birthright of the Commerce Comet. Mantle also took 4 balls far too often and drank far too much to rack up the requisite hit total. He too retired at 36.

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The Yanks looked like they were sleepwalking through the first portion of the game last night, playing like they had a late movie to catch.  Phil Hughes threw a ton of pitches early and didn’t last long but Phil Coke and the Yankee pen held the White Sox scoreless and the Yankee bats rallied, good enough for a 5-1 win.  Alex Rodriguez whiffed in his first two at bats and was booed.  He truly looked awful.  But he walked and scored the tying run on a two-out RBI single by Xavier Nady and later added a solo homer to right, a chip shot, good enough for his 35th of the year and a little bit of history.

Melky Cabrera started for the first time since early August, grounded into a double play and botched a bunt.  At that pernt, the Yanks were still looking lifeless and all I could think about was the following ham-handed machismo spiel. 

(Warning: a torrent of dirty words to follow.)

Oh, have I got your attention now?

Mornin!

Phil Hughes is back on the hill for the Yanks tonight for the first time in a long time.  Be nice to see him have a solid outing.  And it’d be cool to see the Yanks pad their stats some, huh?  C’mon boys, give us a lil something, something.  We ain’t askin much.

Let’s Go Yank-ees.