Yankee Stadium Closing, but Memories Cling

Yankee Stadium Closing, but Memories Cling

BY BOBBY METZINGER

I was nine years old the first time my parents drove my sister and I down I-95 from Worcester, Mass. to the Vatican of professional sports in America, Yankee Stadium. I was 25 the last time I exited the turnstiles of the most revered ground found on any country, but I felt almost cheated as I left. Those were my memories of sitting in the stands freezing cold on that April afternoon in 1992 when the Yankees took on the Royals. Those were my memories of a hot July day in 1999 when Scott Brosius sent the home crowd home a winner with a walk-off home run against Baltimore. Those were my memories of two post-9-11 trips to New York, to a place where baseball trumped tragedy for thousands of New Yorkers who sought solace in the days and weeks after the literal ground zero of their worlds moved from the Bronx to lower Manhattan. It’s the memory of sitting next to my Dad and being enveloped in not just my memories, but wondering what it was like for him to grow up watching Mantle, Munson and Billy Martin, players that are just memories on the film reel of my mind, but are projected in his head as icons of a bygone era.

Yankee Stadium is more than baseball and obnoxious New Yorkers and box seats reserved for the Giuliani family. Yankee Stadium has hosted three Papal visits, scores of concerts and rounds of boxing matches that are etched into the fiber of the sporting world. Yankee Stadium has ties to the greatest college football programs in the country, as the likes of Notre Dame, the Naval Academy and West Point squared off in the “House that Ruth Built.” Countless Negro League games drew almost more fans than Yankee games during the 1930s, as the Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige battles were watched as if the Yanks, Giants and Dodgers didn’t matter. It’s the Subway ride in on the 4 train and the jockeying of position for that last sweaty handrail on the way out. It’s overhearing the armchair managers talking about how ineffective our bullpen is this year, and acknowledging them being correct for the first time. It’s the NYPD directing traffic onto the Deegan and I-95 and the Boston fans hurrying to comply with them.

But aside from the epic games, the late-inning heroics, the goal line stands, the knockout blows and the encores, if Yankee Stadium was built with the poorest of materials known to man, it has been reinforced a billion times over with his memories. That is what makes Yankee Stadium so special to the millions of people that it has hosted. It personifies and transcends all things about American culture. It is the 4^th of July and Christmas morning rolled into one. I know it will be tough for me to make memories in New Yankee Stadium, but like moving from your old childhood home to a new house, time will heal and memories will be made and cherished.

My last memory of Yankee Stadium will be a rain-delayed 4^th of July clash with the Boston Red Sox in which the visiting Sox won, but the Yankees managed to come back and split the series, both wins of course coming after my flight had safely touched down in St. Louis. But my lasting memory of Yankee Stadium will be that frigid April in 1992, a day when snow flurries were predicted in the forecast, a day when a young Yankee farmhand named Bernie Williams made his debut in center field, and a day when a young nine year-old boy received a Sacrament that at the time was more sacred than Holy Communion and Reconciliation – it was sitting with his Dad watching the Yankees – at Yankee Stadium.  That was all the confirmation I needed.

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