Last rites for the Cathedral

Aaron Boone's pennant-winning home run in 2003 may have been the Stadium's last truly great moment. Al Tielemans/SI Tom Verducci's Mailbag Submit a comment or question for Tom. Name: Email: Hometown: Question: SEND

Next year the Yankees will play in a ballpark with less history than Nationals Ballpark, that generic mistake in Washington. The new Yankee Stadium will be a stupendous colossus of a revenue generator, which has replaced charm or architectural achievement (why can't we build a Bird's Nest?) as the official measurement of the modern ballpark, with no corners cut. There even will be a female umpires dressing room. But you will not be able to say the Babe, the Mick, Joe D. or even Frank Tepedino played there. Starting Sunday, when the lights go out at Yankee Stadium, the cord will be cut, the lineage interrupted. The ballpark history doesn't cross the street with the Yankees.

Forget for a moment where Babe Ruth played. Now there will be only one ballpark left where the Dodgers' Jackie Robinson played: Wrigley Field. It's not quite building over Civil War battlefields, but you get the idea. Once it's gone, upon the last flick of the last switch Sunday night, it's gone.

I understand the price of progress is to lose a piece of history. I understand Yankee Stadium was never re-built to accommodate four million people. The stadium, in fact, is overrated simply as a place to watch a game. The concourses are frighteningly narrow and without view of the field, the food services are abominable, the bathrooms require haz-mat gear to enter, there is far too much room behind home plate, and you could probably earn an online degree in the time it takes to exit a parking garage if you dare drive and stay for a whole game. But hey, my 1973 Plymouth Satellite was nothing to look at, either. It's the history, which becomes a personal history because we connect its events to moments in our lives, that made the place beautiful. Yankee fans seemed to pride themselves on not being comfortable. They were there to watch some ball, that's all.

Everybody has a list of the greatest moments in Yankee Stadium history. I'll spare you another. I believe it is the smaller moments that matter.

I remember watching Ron Woods make a catch at the wall in rightfield, falling over the four-foot barrier and into the seats. I remember getting an autograph from Tigers coach Dick Traczewski. I remember doubleheaders, when my brothers and I would pack sandwiches, take a bus to the train to the ballpark, and arrive for batting practice and stay until the last of the 108 outs or so. I remember the gigantic scoreboard, which looked as if it would tip over in a stiff breeze, the unsettling thought that dead bodies were buried in centerfield (the monuments, I would later learn, were not gravestones), and how lucky were those kids who attended Bat Day. How great would it have been then to play baseball with a bat that wasn't cracked and held together with a nail and electrical tape?

But the Yankee Stadium of those memories, "The House that Ruth Built" that is being eulogized this week, has been long gone. Bat Day, in fact, helped kill it. All those kids banging their bats on the concrete trying to get a Yankee rally started in the late 1960s (well, it beat Jerry Kenney trying to get one going, anyway) knocked loose so much paint and concrete from the old ballpark that the Yankees held a staff meeting on the Monday morning after one of those events. Yankees officials were so concerned about the falling concrete that they ordered an examination of the structure. The engineers concluded that Yankee Stadium was slowly falling apart. A two-renovation completely changed the character of the ballpark, which reopened in 1976.

"I don't remember any negative comments," said Marty Appel, the former Yankees public relations director about how the new Yankee Stadium was received. "People generally felt they had done a good job of maintaining the old and bringing in modern touches. In 1976 nobody anticipated four million people a year coming to Yankee Stadium. No one thought it would be inadequate. Two million caught us by surprise in 1976. It generally got rave reviews when it re-opened. I don't remember anybody saying, 'Well, it's not like the old stadium.'''