NEW YORK - The Red Sox last night beat the moribund Yankees in their terminal ballpark, 7-3.
These are sorry times here in Yankee Stadium. It feels like the final days of the Nixon White House. Fifteen games remain at the iconic stadium, and it looks as though the curtain will drop for good Sept. 21 when the Yankees play host to the awful Baltimore Orioles.
No soup for you this year, New York. No October baseball. No famous final scene for the most celebrated sports theater in North America.
No more Red Sox, either. The Sox and Yanks play here tonight and tomorrow afternoon, and there's an outside chance they will meet again in the American League Championship Series, but right now that seems about as likely as Clark Rockefeller passing a polygraph. So this is it for the Boston Red Sox in the House That Ruth Built.
And that matters. Not because of Monument Park, the glorious ancient facade, or the tinhorn sound system. That's not why we care about the final innings of the Red Sox at Yankee Stadium. We care because of all the stuff that happened when the Sox played here.
This is where John Philip Sousa led the pregame procession on April 18, 1923, moments before Babe Ruth hit the stadium's first home run in New York's 4-1 victory. It's where Boston slugger Jimmie Foxx hit a towering home run off Lefty Gomez in 1937.
This is where Theodore Samuel Williams played in his first big league game, striking out in his first two at-bats against Red Ruffing. In his third at-bat, Williams doubled off the wall in right-center. Teddy Ballgame would have ended his career in Yankee Stadium if he had played the final games of the 1960 season, but he did not accompany the Sox to New York after homering in his last time up at Fenway.
This is where Rosalie DiMaggio, mother of Joe and Dominic, was given a car and buckets of ice cream before the pennant-deciding, two-game series at the end of the 1949 season. Naturally, the Yanks won both games. Jerry Coleman hit a shallow three-run double out of the reach of Al Zarilla to beat the Red Sox in the finale. A lot of Sox fans thought Zarilla was playing too deep.
This is where Tracy Stallard surrendered Roger Maris's 61st home run at the end of the 1961 season.
This is where Gene Conley had too many beers after an early hook, then bolted the team bus with Pumpsie Green and wound up buying a plane ticket to Tel Aviv (alas, Conley did not have a passport on his person and was grounded by authorities).