First, the polemic:
The game tonight between the Yankees and Orioles will close the second Yankee Stadium. Yankee Stadium I was opened on April 18, 1923, and was closed on Sept. 30, 1973. After a complete gutting of the structure and a thorough reworking of the contours, Yankee Stadium II reopened on April 15, 1976. It is that second Yankee Stadium whose sad closing we commemorate this evening.
To repeat: Derek Jeter never played in Yankee Stadium I. Babe Ruth never played in Yankee Stadium II.
End of polemic.
Now then. This really is a sad, sad occasion for anyone who loves sports. It is sad because the two ballparks occupying this particular land mass in the Bronx have been the site of a significant chunk of American sports history. You start, naturally, with all that Yankee stuff, which includes all but two of their 39 American League pennants - they won the American League in 1921 and 1922 as Polo Grounds tenants of the New York Giants - and every one of their 26 World Series titles.
Then you consider the great football, both college and professional, that was played there. The famed Fordham "Seven Blocks of Granite" played their annual game with NYU there. Army and Notre Dame played there from 1925-46, when that was America's most glamorous collegiate football rivalry, concluding with the 1946 affair, the most noted scoreless tie in college football history. Grambling strutted its stuff there on an annual basis for 18 years, and then, of course, you had both the New York Yankees football team and the New York Giants themselves.
The Giants called Yankee Stadium home from 1956-73, and what student of professional football doesn't know that Yankee Stadium was the site of the historic 1958 Colts overtime triumph over the Giants, the game when, as legend has it, pro football came of age?
Likewise, what boxing aficionado doesn't know that Yankee Stadium was the site of 31 championship fights, including six of Joe Louis's heavyweight championship title defenses and three of Rocky Marciano's?
All this is reason to celebrate the Yankee Stadia.
But this will not be a happy occasion, and not just because it was never supposed to end with a blah regular-season game. It will be a somber moment for the good, honest sports fan, because there is no good reason for it to be closing. The Yankees have drawn more than 4 million fans each of the last two years. The ballpark must have something going for it.
