By Bob Klapisch

Everyone’s got a farewell memory of Yankee Stadium, maybe a personal shrine. I’m no different: as I left the great ballpark for the last time on September 21, I said goodbye to an abstract soft spot in my heart that won’t make it across the street.

I consider it a shrine without shape or form; it’s just a place. Actually, it’s just air-space, the spot right outside the Yankee clubhouse where David Wells was waiting to launch the most bizarre showdown of my career.

I’ve had my share of shoot-outs (see: Bobby Bonilla, 1993), but none that could’ve been reviewed by journalism ethics class. Ok, a little background. In the summer of 1997, when I was still a beat reporter for the Bergen Record and one of the few writers who actually liked Boomer – I always considered him slightly larger than life, if not larger than his uniform – I caught wind of a explosive confrontation between the lefthander and George Steinbrenner.

It occurred in the ninth inning of a game the Yankees were losing to the lowly-Expos, during which Wells had been knocked out. Steinbrenner, embarrassed that the defending world champs were getting punished by one of the National League’s worst teams, was pacing the clubhouse. He was in a terrible mood.

Wells wasn’t happy, either. He started a conversation with the Boss that would soon make headlines.

“Hey, George, you need to get some security out there in right field. Build a wall or something,” Wells said.

He was referring to a fan who’d leaned over the railing and prevented Paul O’Neill from catching Darrin Fletcher’s second inning fly ball. The fan caught the ball and it was ruled a home run.

That was all The Boss Steinbrenner needed to hear. The engine of his rage was now fully ignited.

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By Jon Weisman

Mostly, I remember white.

To celebrate my graduation from college in 1989, I went on a mini-ballpark tour with some members of my family. I flew from California to New York to meet my sister, who was living there at the time. A few days later, the two of us would meet up in Boston with my brother and father, and we’d go on to see games at Fenway Park, Skydome and Wrigley Field. But first, it would be New York, New York: Shea and Yankee Stadiums.

At least, that’s what I recalled when I started to write this. But after looking back at Baseball-Reference.com, I realized that I must not have seen the Mets on this trip. It must have been another day in another year that I took the subway out for a hot, sticky day game at Shea and had a lousy hot dog but a good time.

My memory, in some respects, has become just awful. When it comes to my first visits to Yankee and Shea Stadiums, I remember next to nothing about what happened during the games themselves. (By comparison, I distinctly remember that in my first trip to Fenway Park, in 1982, the one-and-only Derek Botelho flirted with a no-hitter in his first major-league game.)

But for my only trip to Yankee Stadium, I couldn’t even tell you who played or who won, without the aid of the Internet. I would have guessed the Yankees won, based on some good vibes I recall feeling among the crowd as we were leaving. I also recall that the game was on the afternoon of Independence Day, and that there was a postgame concert by the Beach Boys that we didn’t end up sticking around for. But I’m not sure you can trust me on any of that.

What I can testify to, two decades later, is the experience of the visit.

We sat high, high behind home plate – it almost felt like a blimp’s-eye view of the action – but I enjoyed the vantage point. I sort of marveled at how much I enjoyed it.

And most of all, I remember white, the dominant color in my mind when picturing Yankee Stadium. Inside the royal blue of the seats stuck out but the outer shell was all white. I had never seen a ballpark that looked like this, and it struck me as so fittingly majestic. I’m a Dodger fan, but I knew I was in hallowed ground. Yankee Stadium had an immediate feel, and that feel was more important to me than anything that was happening on the field. I could be wrong, but I have to think that feel will color the memories of many people as the years go by.

Jon Weisman blogs about the Dodgers over at Dodger Thoughts.

By Will Weiss

Part Two of Two: The Personalities

I’m lucky to have my own batch of special memories from my five years covering the team. But the thing I’ll miss most is interacting with the many people who gave the stadium life.

There were a few regular occurrences: the mad rush for positioning in the dugout when Joe Torre would prepare for his pre-game conference with the media; Jim Kaat making a beeline through Brian Cashman’s office to get coffee right before the seventh inning stretch; Bob Sheppard’s sprint to the elevator right after the game (you wouldn’t believe how spry he was) and the way he’d disappear when the elevator reached the lobby. There was also the inimitable way in which official scorer Bill Shannon announced a scoring decision. The first time I heard, “Single, runner takes second on the throw,” or, “E-Five. Error on the third baseman,” I thought it was the ghost of Harry Caray, or at the very least, Will Ferrell’s impersonation of the late broadcaster.

I learned a lot about the press culture and how to act – mainly to shut up and stay out of the way – from Phil Pepe. He covered the team from the early 1960s through the early ’80s, and observed the many internal changes that took place. We would frequently eat dinner together in the press dining room before games, particularly in 2003 and ’04, when he rotated with Bill Shannon, Howie Karpin, and Jordan Sprechman as official scorers.

The press dining room was an interesting place to mingle, network, and get information from “sources close to the situation.” It was routine to see writers chatting up advance scouts from teams both the Yankees and their opponents would be playing within the next week to 10 days. I had some good conversations with members of the A’s staff prior to an Aaron Small start back in 2005, as well as chats with the Twins in 2004 before the playoffs.
It was also a great place to observe the cliquey nature of the New York baseball writers. I found it amazing how they could socialize and be cordial to one another in one setting, but would gouge each other’s eyes out if it came to getting a scoop. You always knew where John Sterling was, based on the level of harrumphing.

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By Cecilia Tan

I have so many memories of Yankee Stadium that it is hard to narrow it down to just one to write about today. My earliest memory of the Stadium is of a Bobby Murcer grand slam, which thanks to Retrosheet I now know was August 2, 1974, when I was five years old. I learned to keep a scorecard there. I learned what the word “sucks” refers to there. My 13th birthday party was at the Stadium. I was there for Dave Righetti’s no-hitter in 1983. I’ve been there for half a dozen opening days, about as many Old Timers Days, and for a pile of playoff games (though still no World Series). I’ve been there on the forgettable “Liza” days and for walk-off wins. I was there for the Home Run Derby and All-Star game this past season.

Pick one, he says. Pick one.

Then there are all the times I’ve been there professionally. A photoshoot in Monument Park. Sitting in the press box for my first game. My first time in Joe Torre’s office. Sitting in the dugout during batting practice. Listening to Mike Mussina tell a story during team stretch about getting his wisdom teeth out.

Pick just one to write about?

I can’t. I’m going to remember so many things about the Stadium that are only going to mean something to me. Like how my little brother Julian and I were somehow convinced that Eddie Layton, the organist, had a booth out beyond center field to watch the game from. We used to take binoculars and try to locate him. I have no idea why we thought the organ was behind the black batters eye. Maybe because the lone sound tower at the Stadium was out there? I wasn’t really convinced otherwise until I was in my 30s and took a tour of the Stadium that included the press box and scoreboard operations.

There’s that gap between the bleachers and the grandstand in right field, where you can see the train go by. The elevated track is at just the right height and in the 1970s, we used to see the cars go past festooned with graffiti. When the games got boring (which they did sometimes), Julian and I would play a game where if the next train went right to left I would win, and if it went left to right, he would win. And we’d stare at that grand white limestone edifice, the courthouse, which always looked like a long home run might be able to hit it.

I’ll never forget the thrill of coming out of the dank, dark concrete tunnel into the upper deck, into the wide open brightly lit field of green and blue, and having my breath taken away.

The ladies rooms in Yankee Stadium are pink. The layers of latex paint are so thick that the walls practically feel like rubber. And the way the ones in the upper deck are shaped, there are always two stalls to the right of the door that a lot of people don’t see are there. That’s always where I headed. The ladies rooms have attendants, too, like they do in Broadway theaters. Will we have them in the new Stadium, I wonder?

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By Perry Barber

Mr. Baseball

Until he suffered a debilitating heart attack two years ago at age eighty, Arthur Richman was probably the oldest active man in baseball. He spent more than sixty years total as an award-winning sportswriter and columnist for the Daily Mirror and other New York newspapers, traveling secretary for the Mets, then senior advisor and vice-president of media relations for the Yankees, starting in 1990. I was introduced to him in 1983 by Dennis D’Agostino, the Mets’ assistant P.R. director at the time, now a respected author and sports statistician.

Arthur’s sixteen-year tenure with the Yankees was marked by both elation and turmoil. His showdowns with Steinbrenner were legendary, and he used to regale me with tales of how they would yell and scream at each other over some mishegos, then George would “fire” him and Arthur would just show up at work the next day, both of them acting as if nothing had happened, best friends forever.

His office looked out over the field behind the press area where the writers and announcers are stationed during games. Decking its walls were hundreds of signed photos of him and his deceased brother Milton, who is in the writers’ wing of the Hall of Fame, with practically every famous person who ever lived. Arthur liked to joke that he was the only Jew who could get you an audience with the Pope! Books, media guides, Yankee give-aways, hats, baseballs, bobblehead dolls, and more lay stacked up in piles everywhere. His desk was always cluttered with notes of thanks from people for whom he had done something wonderful, or requests for help getting tickets or an audience with a player, all of which he did his best to facilitate. He was always so busy checking in with the beat writers and columnists that he could never sit still and watch a game for long.

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By Jay Jaffe

The first time Alex asked me to jot down a few thoughts regarding my favorite Yankee Stadium memory for the purposes of this space several months back, a veritable flood of recollections washed over me, things I’d witnessed firsthand at the majestic ballpark over the past 13 years, from the historic to the mundane. Having spent the past eight seasons documenting my time at the ballpark via my Futility Infielder website, I scarcely needed to review my notes except to pluck a few dates for a quick laundry list of memories to share.

But a funny thing happened on the way to delivering this piece, namely the most disheartening season the Yankees have had in a decade and a half. Not only have the cracks in the facade of the team’s roster and player development system been exposed — inevitabilities in the life cycle of even the most championship-laden franchises — but we fans have been struck with reminders of the current stadium’s gradual devolution into a less-than-hospitable venue. The ridiculous sunscreen flap atop the long-settled, none-too-accommodating umbrella and backpack bans, the heavy-handed security forces and the odious and completely un-American "God Bless America" fiasco all serve as reminders of the Steinbrenner family’s overzealous, misguided strategy to maintain the stadium in a post-September 11 world. Furthermore, with a cry of "wait ’til next year" the inevitable outcome of this season of discontent, we’re left to an uncomfortable reckoning with the new ballpark, the ugly back story of its fuzzy math and the gross inflation that will price many of us longtime fans out of the cherished ritual of regular attendance.

Suffice it to say that — for this fan at least — there’s been a mounting pile of baggage blocking the entrance to what the great writer Roger Angell termed "The Interior Stadium", the grand ballpark where each fan has a season ticket to relive the indelible, treasured memories of what we’ve witnessed. A mounting pile, but weighed against the some 130 games I’ve attended at the House That Ruth Built, not an insurmountable one. So having scaled Mount Samsonite, I’m ready to hand over my ticket and commence playing ball.

In the course of attending all of those games at Yankee Stadium II, I’ve come to appreciate the park’s spartan pleasures. I love the way contains the famous reminders of its old history — Monument Park, the white frieze, the flagpole in what used to be the center field patrolled by DiMaggio and Mantle, with the park’s original dimensions preserved by the wall behind it, the black batter’s eye where only the chosen few have reached with their towering blasts — and the portents of its own obsolescence, the narrow concourses, meager amenities, and fatal lack of luxury boxes. As limiting as that latter set is, it’s also been part of the park’s charm, at least to me. If you go to Yankee Stadium, you’re there to see a ballgame, nothing more and nothing less. No fountains, waterfalls, kiddie pools, mascots, slides, or other diversions. Compared to the modern mallparks, the center field public address system is much less intrusive, even when the hated "Cotton-Eyed Joe" blares. What follows here is not one favorite memory of Yankee Stadium, but a subjective top 10 whose glaring omissions might have me rethinking this list the moment after it’s published:

10. My first trip to the ballpark back in 1996, an epic August afternoon where the Yankees and Mariners squared off in a slugfest that went 12 innings and lasted nearly five hours, finishing long after my brother, Bryan, and I had gone home. It was just my second trip to a big-league ballpark (Fenway had been my first back in 1989), and though there were "only" some 44,000 in attendance, the raucous crowd and grand scale of Yankee Stadium made for a sensory overload that overwhelmed me in the summer heat. This marked the beginning of a ritual Bryan and I developed of attending Yankees-Mariners games, one that lasted eight or years before he moved across the country… to Seattle.

9. The time my roommate, Issa, almost caught a foul ball at the Stadium in a game against the Mariners in 1999. Along with Bryan, he and I were sitting in the front row of the Tier Box on the third base side when switch-hitting David Segui came to bat. Batting left-handed, Segui fouled one off, and as I looked at the baseball spinning against the overcast sky, I judged a fly ball correctly for possibly the first time in my life. "That’s yours," I told Issa, who was on the aisle seat. He is a soccer player, with no baseball experience whatsoever. The ball indeed came right into his hands, but rather than cradling it, he lunged at it, knocking it over the railing. With a grimace and a shrug, he slumped back into his seat as what felt like the entire crowd of 41,000 fans showered him with boos.

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By Will Weiss

Lasting Yankee Stadium Memories (Part One of Two): The Games

It is safe to say that most, if not all, of us who enter professions in sports media do so because at the very core, we’re fans. For those of us who grew up Yankee fans, covering the team and seeing games from the Yankee Stadium Press Area was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream.

In Part I of my portion of the Lasting Yankee Stadium Memory series here at Bronx Banter, I’d like to focus on the games that I was a part of during my five years at YES, both as an on-site reporter and an editor.

There are some honorable mention games, like July 7, 2003, when Pedro and Moose dueled and Curtis Pride won the game in the ninth. There was a September day-night doubleheader in which Mike Mussina pitched the first game in front of what seemed like 17 people. But after being asked to make a list of my favorite Yankee Stadium games in my tenure at YES, the games described below were the most memorable.

April 5, 2002: Yankees 4, Devil Rays 0

It was the Yankees’ 2002 home opener, complete with all the usual pageantry, pomp and circumstance. There was an air of anticipation and a sense of purpose among the fans, given the way the team had lost the World Series to the Diamondbacks a few short months before. But this was a different Yankee team. Jason Giambi had been signed in the offseason, as had Robin Ventura and David Wells. Gone was Paul O’Neill; Shane Spencer and John Vander Wal were platooning in right field, while Rondell White was patrolling left.

I was having my own issues. I didn’t have a seat or a phone line in the press box, but somehow finagled my way into the YES booth and sat right behind Michael Kay and Jim Kaat. Suzyn Waldman sat to my immediate left, fidgeting with everything from the phone to her makeup bag. Ten minutes of observing her nerves on display went a long way towards calming my own.

I’ll never forget the view, the relief of having a seat, and the feeling of being able to walk on the field at Yankee Stadium before the game. From that point on, YESNetwork.com writers sat in the booth.

As for the game, it was about 50 degrees and windy. The Yankees made two errors and left 11 men on base. The star was Andy Pettitte, who threw six shutout innings to pave the way for the first of 52 home wins that season.

May 17: 2002: Yankees 13, Twins 12 (14 innings)

After six weeks of struggling in front of the Stadium crowd, this was the game in which Jason Giambi "earned his pinstripes."

The Yankees and Twins combined for 25 runs, 40 hits, 3 errors, 10 walks, 27 strikeouts, and the Yankees hit 6 home runs. Bernie Williams’ shot into the upper deck in left off Eddie Guardado tied the game at 9-9 and sent the game into extras. Both teams had chances but no one converted until the 14th, when the Twins posted three against Sterling Hitchcock.

In the middle of the 14th, as the Twins summoned Mike Trombley to the mound, Jim Kaat looked at the Yankees’ upcoming lineup – Shane Spencer, Alfonso Soriano, and Derek Jeter — and said to broadcast partner Ken Singleton, "Trombley’s on the mound. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the first three guys get on base and Bernie end it with a grand slam." Spencer singled, Soriano flied out, Jeter singled and Bernie walked. The grand slam came one spot in the order behind Bernie. It was a classic finish, with his towering fly ball landing in the right-center field bleachers, and the rain pouring down as Giambi’s teammates mauled him at home plate.

This game would not have made my list had Kaat not predicted the ending. Before I headed down to the clubhouse, I asked him if he was clairvoyant. He just smiled at me and said, "I knew they’d get to Trombley – I was just one batter off."

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By Pete Caldera

We’ve talked and talked, and asked and asked about Yankee Stadium memories for months. What will you recall most? What will you take? And then Derek Jeter reminded us of an underrated – and unforgettable – treasure.

It’s the view.

From the batter’s box, for a thousand games, Jeter tapped home plate and stared straight toward the black batter’s eye – a perfect hitter’s backdrop. And from the front row of the press box, I was lucky to take in the whole panorama from behind home plate.

You couldn’t always see what was going on in the corners, but any member of the BBWAA was granted one of the best seats in the old house. The dugouts, the mound, the infield, the on-deck circle were all right in front of you. The battles in the stands – for foul balls, or for disputes – were in clear view. Occasionally, some daredevil drunk would even drop out of his box seat and land on the netting in front of us (happened twice).

The Bronx County Courthouse on a clear day. The moon rising from left field on a clear night. It was all right there. And then, of course, there was that grand, green field – and I’ll count myself forever fortunate to have witnessed some precious moments on that celebrated turf.

I was there for David Wells perfect game, on a cloudy May afternoon. Remember that backhand stab by Chuck Knoblauch, of all people?

Saw an unassisted triple play by Randy Velarde.

Saw David Cone’s perfect game, and remember telling a friend during a rain delay (33 minutes) that it was too bad – Cone’s slider was unhittable. He could no-hit the Expos.

Saw Mussina save the day in Game 7, the night Pedro was left to battle through the 8th inning, and couldn’t. Then, Aaron Boone. And bedlam.

Saw Pedro come within a Chili Davis homer of perfection, still the greatest pitched game I ever witnessed.

Saw the Red Sox win the pennant. Saw plenty of brawls – like the night Strawberry seemed to take on the entire Orioles team in the visiting dugout. Saw Jeter in the hole, whirling and throwing. And saw hundreds of his 2,000-plus hits. And saw go for that pop up, in fair territory, against Boston, knowing that his only landing area was full-speed into the stands.

Saw A-Rod make the Stadium small with those colossal home runs, and wished I could’ve seen Joe D. swing for the deeper fences – the original dimensions.

Saw the first Subway Series game, and the first Mets-Yankees World Series game. Saw Joe Torre do that slow walk to the mound. Saw DiMaggio wave from a convertible. Saw the Florida Marlins celebrate, and heard them too, in the silence. Saw the All-Star Game that never ended.

I witnessed all that from the press box, mostly from Seat 12, behind a red plate with ‘The Record’ in white lettering.

The Yankees are giving the writers those plates. And from where that plate once stood, I’ll never forget the view.

Pete Caldera covers baseball for The Bergan Record.

By Ben Kabak

I bounded up the stairs of the Yankee dugout on a sunny August afternoon to acknowledge the roaring crowd. I landed on the top step, turned around and saw an ocean of empty seas. Row upon row upon row of those familiar blue seats were staring back at me, waiting for the next home game.

For a minute, I almost knew what Derek Jeter feels like when he turns to wave at the crowd. From the top of the steps, I could see just the box seats just behind the dugout, and even that view sent shimmers down my spine.

But I’m not on the Yankees, never was and never will be. My Yankee curtain call was, instead, just a part of the tour at Yankee Stadium. In mid-August, with the Yanks out of town, my dad and I went on the tour at Yankee Stadium. This excursion wouldn’t be our final visit to the House that Ruth Built, but it was our gesture of saying good bye on our time. We weren’t deluged with constant scoreboard distractions, yet another playing of the Y.M.C.A. or some guy in a hat dancing to that seminal New York song Cotton-Eye Joe. Instead, we walked on the field, sat in the dugout and soaked in the aura and mystique of the stadium in Monument Park.

While I’ve been on the tour twice before, I didn’t truly appreciate it in 1994 as an 11-year-old and couldn’t enjoy it in 2000 as a camp counselor overseeing a bunch of rowdy 10-12-year-olds. This time, though, I experienced the tour as it was meant to be. When 11 a.m. in the Bronx rolls around, Yankee Stadium truly feels like a Cathedral. The stadium is populated only by the grounds crew tending to the field, a few security guards and other tour groups. The grounds echo with the spray of water on the field and the history of eighty five years. The empty stadium bare witness to thousands of games and players long lost to the annals of baseball history.

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By Tim Marchman

When I was small, I didn’t understand the point of the Yankees. It wasn’t that I disliked them, but that they were irrelevant, the team of suburbs to the north and parts of the city that to me may as well have been. Even in deep Queens there were a few Yankees fans, usually Italians whose families raised them to think of Joe DiMaggio the way Catholics were raised to think of John F. Kennedy.* Those kids would taunt the rest of us odd moments. You’d be playing asses-up, dealing the ball in your best Dwight Gooden motion, when some kid would let on that two rings were nice enough and nothing to be ashamed of, but certainly not as nice as twenty-two, as if he’d been there in the stands when each of them was won. But mostly this didn’t seem to have anything to do with anything. They may as well have been Kansas City Royals fans.

It wasn’t until I was 22 that I understood the Yankees at all. My friend P. and I had upper deck seats for the Stadium, and two Snapple bottles full of liquor. We drank and watched the game and talked, convincing ourselves that we were much above everything that was going on around us: New York would never again be something it had stopped being around the time we were born; baseball had changed, with the money; capital had failed us; the electronic advertisements, greasy brokers on cell phones, cheap plastic, and loud music were an indictment; everything was at second hand and a great remove; the world was infinitely mediated and the city a sad, lonely and disfigured place in which great things were no longer possible; etc.

The score ran up early enough, and it was chilly enough, that the stands began to empty early, so we made out way down to field level, well toasted, and then worked our way from seat to seat until we were a row back of the home dugout. There was the field in total clarity: still and quiet, steam rising off the grass, the lights a half mile high, and Mike Mussina on the mound, curling up into his motion, in total control of events. At that moment it may as well have been 1946, 1977, or whatever moment P. and I had just spent so much time convincing ourselves we wished it was. The game seemed further away than it had seemed in the nosebleeds, but very much more peaceful, and at that exact moment neither Mike Mussina or all the ambitious people in the park seemed at all to inhabit a different city than I did, but just to be different parts of one raging engine—parts with which I may not have had much in common, but parts toward which it was somewhere between absurd and obscene to feel something just past distrust and shading toward resentment.

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By Charles Euchner

I’ve seen a lot of great players at Yankee Stadium — Munson and Jackson, Catfish and Guidry, Jeter and A-Rod — but my most memorable moment came at my first game in the Bronx. The Tigers came to town in 1971, just a few weeks after my family moved to Long Island from Iowa. I was a Mets fan but wanted to see any baseball game. My dad got tickets from his job at Con Ed, one of the team’s sponsors. So off we went.

My most enduring memory is how empty the stadium was. About 12,000 went to the game, a quick check of Retrosheet.org tells me. Foul balls did not set off a mad contest of reaching, grasping hands. Foul balls bounced around empty seats while fans raced to retrieve them from other sections. Since it was a blowout — a 9-1 Yankee victory, which improved their record to 68-71, good for fourth place, 18 1/2 games behind the Baltimore Orioles — most people who came left early. Those who stayed sat around looking bored. I tried to convince myself I was watching something special. I wasn’t. The Yankees had only one superstar, catcher Thurman Munson. Roy White and Bobby Murcer were decent. Not much else.

In the next couple years, I experienced some real Yankees excitement during promotions like Bat Day that filled the stadium. I have always been amazed how great it feels to be in a stadium with 55,000 other people. Even when the team is out of the race, it can still feel like a playoff atmosphere. I also experienced how rowdy things can get during bad games. I never smoked pot, but I inhaled plenty when I went to Yankee games in the 1970s. At every game, fights broke out and fans got high and drunk. Then, in the late 1970s, the Yankees started winning. I guess George decided he could set some standards for fan conduct. Whatever happened, things didn’t get so ugly in the stands.

I have a funny kind of nostalgia for those bad old Yankee teams. I went to the stadium because baseball was fun, not because the team was the best. The Yankee dynasty teams of later years were obviously better “products,” as the number-crunching GM’s say these days. But I miss the bygone days when winning more than you lost was good enough, before failure was defined as not crushing everyone every day. I’d love to get in a way-back machine and watch that 1971 Yanks-Tigers game again. Maybe I missed something.

Charles Euchner is the author of The Last Nine Innings.

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.

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.

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.

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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By Allen Barra

My father took me to Yankee Stadium for the first time in 1961. It was a game scarcely anyone remembers – I do remember Arnold Hano mentioning it in, I think, the Willie Mays book he wrote in the Sport magazine series, or perhaps it was the special Mickey Mantle-Willie Mays issue that Sport magazine did in the spring of 1962.It was a charity game played between the Yankees and the San Francisco Giants, and it was Willie Mays’s return to New York after three seasons.

I’ll never forget my first look at Yankee Stadium: it seemed like the inside of New York City. And I’ll never forget the crescendo that built up when Mays stepped out of the dugout and into the on-deck circle. Mantle, batting left-handed, hit a home run that day. (I could follow the arc of the ball perfectly as we were seated in a box seat on the third base line.) But Mays won the game with a single that drove in two runs.

One of the most vivid memories of my life was the afternoon of Monday, September 30, 1963, when my father came home from work – we were living in Old Bridge, New jersey, and my father and al our neighbors commuted effortlessly to Manhattan – and held up two tickets for the opening game of the 1963 World Series. I never though to ask how he got them, though I think he said something years later about it being a business friend he met at Toots Shor’s saloon.

1963 was one of the few years I didn’t root for the Yankees; I was so excited about Sandy Koufax that I was ready to begin studying the Kabbalah. If you don’t remember what the World Series was like back then in the days before prime time then it’s hard to describe. It seemed to be on everywhere you went – TVs blaring out open windows, car radios at full blast, people walking the street and riding buses listening to transistor radios. I was told by my friend Jane Levy that the Koufax Series — 1963, 1965 and 1966 – were the highest rated ever. I’m not surprised.

Our view was perfect, a box seat along the first base line. In the first inning, Whitey Ford struck to the first two Dodgers and took a tapper back to the mound for the third out. I recall my father saying “Well, Koufax is going to have to go some to top that.” He did, of course, striking out the first five Yankees on route to a 5-2 victory.

I have on other strong recollection of Yankee history in the early sixties. My father knew a Westchester cop who was later indicted for taking huge amounts of money in the “Prince of the City” scandal. On New Year’s Eve eve, he asked us if we wanted to join him and his son, a Fordham student, at the 1962 NFL Championship game between the Green Bay Packers and New York Giants. All I can recall is that it was the coldest day I could have imagined, and bundled up inside a hooded parka, I had my first shot of brandy from the cop’s silver flask.

No, actually, as I write this a few other things come back to me: the way Green Bay’s fullback Jim Taylor and Giants linebacker Sam Huff kicked bit and gouged each other and had to be separated after each play, and the way some of the punts would hit a wall of wind and flutter down to the concrete-like turf. The Packers’ punter, Mac McGee, I think it was, had one blocked for the Giants only touchdown.

Oddly, I did not feel that I was in the same stadium I had been in just two months earlier watching the Yankees and Giants play in the World Series. (My only memory of that game was how hyped everyone was about Mantle and Mays playing against each other.) I do not now recollect if I actually heard this or read about it afterwards: someone yelled out when Mantle came out to bay, “Hey Mickey, we came to se who is the best, you or Willie. Now we’re wondering who’s the worst.” Mantle popped up. As he walked back to the dugout, the man yelled, “Hey, Mantle, you win.”

Bob Costas told me that he was also at the game and saw the same play from the same angle; we must have been seated right near each other.

For the life of me, I can’t now recall whether you could see the Polo Grounds from the bleachers at Yankee Stadium or Yankee Stadium from the bleachers at the Polo Grounds.

In 1996, when the Yankees beat the Braves in the World Series, Allen St. John and I were out on the field. How this came about, I do not now recall — perhaps credentialed writers were allowed out on the field after games then. Someone in the dugout popped the first bottle of champagne, and the cork landed near us; Allen scooped it up and handed it to me. It now resides in a glass trophy case in my house.

Allen Barra writes about sports and culture for the Wall Street Journal and the Village Voice. His latest book, “Yogi Berra: Eternal Yankee” will be published by W.W. Norton next spring.

By Scott Raab

I was born and bred in Cleveland, Ohio, and I’ve loathed the New York Yankees and everything they stand for — arrogance, entitlement, and money-worship — for as long as I can recall. Even past the point where I realized that I myself was a smug, spoiled, money-grubbing New York-area-dwelling media hack, I hated the hulking, brutish Yankees.

Yankee Stadium? I’d rather pass a gallstone than put a single penny in any Steinbrenner’s pocket. Sure, I’d been there a few times, those memories frosted over by decades of heavy self-medication. My highlight House-That-Blah-Blah-Built memory was watching on TV when last year’s Tribe clinched the LDS at Yankee Stadium. In that storied house. With Bayonne Joe Borowski, no less, on the hill. Sweet almost beyond words, and I cried like a baby to see the dogpile at the end, then went upstairs to wake up my nine-year old son and start spreading the news.

He hates the Yankees, too. But like me, he loves baseball, so last Sunday we went to see a ballgame, and to pay homage. Because you can love baseball and hate the Yankees, but you can’t walk into Yankee Stadium with a hard heart — not if you’re a baseball fan. We weren’t paying homage to the pinstripes or our bile; we were there to honor 85 years of history, eat some hot dogs, and unwind at a beautiful, battered ballyard.

Who knows what a kid remembers? Hell, I seem to remember admiring Mickey Mantle once upon a time. My boy loved every minute. And so did I. It was hot, brutally hot, so we had to suck it up and buy a couple of Yankees caps — $50 that will surely help sign Grady Sizemore one sorry day — and the upper-deck concession stands ran out of ice by the sixth inning, and yeah, the Yankees won. No problem. A-Rod belted a grand slam, Cano got yanked for dogging it, and Jeter tied Lou Gehrig’s record for hits at Yankee Stadium: great ballgame. Great game.

We gave away the caps on the subway home, but I’ll hold on to the day for a long time — and to old, doomed Yankee Stadium. I don’t know about redemption, and like Woody Allen, old Clevelanders don’t mellow — we ripen and rot. I had an epiphany once: In real life, there ain’t no epiphanies. I don’t want miracles, much less expect ’em. I took my son to see the Yankees play at Yankee Stadium. That’s close enough for me.

Scott Raab is a writer for Esquire magazine.

By Repoz

Michael Burke: “That Irish Son of a Bitch” *

Alistair Mundy’s ascot, that’s what it was…Alistair Mundy’s dandy ascot. After all these years I’ve finally been able to pinpoint former Yankee president/owner Michael Burke’s rediculi éclat de mode sense. (Then again it might have been that unfashionable Old Spice/turtlewreck sweater connection of his, so who knows!)

Now, while this discovery might not be as nootropic-poppin’ as finding out that multi-flasking Clu Gulager was in the 60’s kookifried outré folk group Miriam or that Ron Asheton of the Stooges was seriously tight with origi-Stooge, Larry Fine, and traded zany hair-pulling sound effects at the Elisha Cooked Actor’s Home in L.A. with him (Asheton, I believe, was moonlighting at the time for the prestigious National Eye-Goink Monthly)…but it’ll do.

Years before beers started pouring like spit in a schoolyard, before a gangplank of stringy flesh had been constructed between Jonah Hex’s crevisious lips, before the sweet ravages of gutter-twang swept me off my cleats…there was Michael Burke. Punk hero.

Imagine, a Yankee team president hanging with us lowcon lowlifes. His dappy loafers sticking to the same gum globs, that were probably expungiated by a lifetime of Terrence Aloysius Mahoney vs Glimpy McClusky (unknowingly the model for the spiffy George Sherrill Flat Brim Society line of baseball caps yet to come!) chaw wars, as ours. Johnny Ramone was supposedly part of our roving Stadium gang of roar. Isn’t it odd, some sorta mystical pissmit, that with the 1974 closing of Yankee Stadium and their grubby unrestrooms, Johnny’s trained whiffology led him to the aroma shocktherapy of the CBGB’s bathroom by that September? (Hey, let’s just be happy he didn’t end up spoog-a-loo trough riffing at the notorious Zipper Lips Au-Go-Go Lounge in Jersey!).

But Mr. Burke, quite possibly (I haven’t finished researching Paul Krassner’s Realist site or Taylor Meade’s unreal sight, for that matter, yet) was the only former OSS intelligence officer, CIA agent, Hollywood cutting floor movie star, head of Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus, and CBS executive to speak out against the Vietnam War…which he did, when he read the names of war dead from the pulpit at NYC’s Trinity Church. For someone of Burke’s stature to take such a radical stand at the time, happened about as often as a fire in the Everglades, a moonlanding on the sun, or Charlie Chocks and Zestabs having a subhuman tug-o-war over the magical abra-cadaver pitchman services of Ray Oyler.

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