So, I went to my last game at Yankee Stadium last night. What a time and what a gorgeous night. My wife and I have had tickets in pretty nice seats for the last 10 years. As much as these games have ever meant to her and us, they’ve always been restorative for me. Baseball was and is amongst my greatest passions – music and media are the other two, with abutments to wine and food.
I was decent player as a kid, and didn’t stick with it long enough to make anything of myself. File it under ‘Another Case of What Could Have Been.’
But in 1997, when we moved here, baseball had been revived in my heart and soul. I’d not watched much more than an inning or two over the seven years since I’d been out of high school. Somehow, coming back to New York as an adult made a huge difference for me in reconnecting me with a childhood passion. I am so thankful for that.
I think New York and baseball are synonymous. It has little to do with the years of glorious and victorious teams with the Dodgers, Giants and the nearly always superlative Yankees, but it helps. It has little to do with the fact that baseball’s American origins are just over the river in Hoboken, it also helps. I think it had more to do with the pace of my city and the contrast between that pace and the pastoral nature of baseball. You can get anything in a New York Minute…except a complete baseball game. That takes about 3 hours.
That contrast allows for people in the busiest city in the world to relax, calmly enjoy a game that can still make their blood boil, and take in the atmosphere of ‘The Stadium.’ And what an atmosphere it was. I was privileged to work in Yankee Stadium for 18 months. I managed one of the three private clubs in Yankee Stadium. My absolute favorite part of the day or night was leaving. Not because I was headed home from a long day, but because as I’d exit the empty stadium from all the way under the left-field bleachers, I could still hear the din, the cacophony from the recently abandoned stadium. I could still hear the echoes of the game in the stands, on the field and whirling around in the breezes from all the refuse that was yet to get picked up. As dirty as the place was, it was all the more glorious. Magical.
So, last night, as I was exiting, I only got mildly choked up. I was a little sad, and a little upset, but mostly OK. I said to my wife, ‘They won tonight…and they won the first night we went. (Ironically, Ken Griffey started in Centerfield both nights for two very different teams – spanning 2 different eras.). They only broke my heart once in this place – in 2003 when they lost to Marlins. Not a bad record…’ Even that came after Aaron Boone hit that tremendous home run against the Red Sox, nearly mitigating the loss to the Marlins.
When I got into the office today, I noticed my ticket from last night’s game sitting in my wallet. I keep about 40 books on baseball history at my office. As I turned to them, the stunning biography by Bob Creamer about Babe Ruth jumped out at me. Without pause or hesitation, I slipped the ticket from my final game into the center of the book – about the man who built the place.
I am now anxious for the new place to open up. It looks beautiful already and far better-appointed than the current incarnation. But it will never be the same Yankee Stadium. But I know that the game will always restore me to what I used to be no matter where I watch from.
Img00032