A Diamond In The Ashes

"Look, we have to live. We've got theater. What's music? Some people say it's a waste of time."

"And they don't buy it. This is city money, people's money, you're being so artsy with."

"The city made a value judgment," said Green. " Yankee Stadium is valuable to the life of this city. C'mon, I'll show you around, I'll make you happy."

I covered my first major league game in 1960 at Yankee Stadium, which was then, and probably still is, the most famous athletic edifice in the country. I was 22 years old, and in reply to a civil question, Mickey Mantle offered an obscenity. I was astounded. The books, magazines and newspapers I was reading then had not prepared me for an American hero, the heir to Joe D's center field, blaspheming in the Temple of Sport.

And make no mistake, the Stadium was that. Even sportswriters were expected to dress and behave with more dignity at Yankee Stadium than at other ball parks. Youthful chatter and high jinks behind the batting cage or in the press box were met by the thunderously raised eyebrow of an older beat man or a Yankee staffer and a soft, chilling, "Where do you think you are?" The implication was clear: an assignment somewhere else, a certain comedown, could easily be arranged. Sportswriters either dressed more neatly at the Stadium (as a New York Timesman, my jacket and tie reflected another, similar dress code) or more sloppily, letting their torn sneakers and raggedy sport shirts make protests for them. My own stories were sometimes self-consciously wry or snide in those days, but my protest was easily snuffed by calling me "irreverent" or "iconoclastic," as if the Stadium was indeed a holy place and its bats and balls were relics. There was no way to beat that "historical aura." Houseman or anti-Yankee, we sat in that iron balcony of a press box behind home plate and saw the monuments to Huggins and Ruth and Gehrig in center field, not the elevated train racketing beyond the wall. We thought of Murderers' Row, when the young men below us were only Pepitone and Tresh and Murcer, enormously talented but spooked by the hype that a man becomes a superman when he pulls on Yankee pinstripes.

The monuments are no longer in center field; they are enclosed in a "memorial park" in left center field between the bullpens, an alfresco crypt that alerts us that Huggins and Ruth and Gehrig are finally being eased out of the lineup. The elevated train is no longer visible from most spots within the park, nor is the ball game visible from the station platform. It is blocked from view by a wall that is decorated with a concrete facsimile of the famous openwork facade that used to hang from the roof of the now-roofless Stadium. A sense of sanctuary, of enclave, finally exists. In fact, it has been quite consciously created through a concept called "Yankeeland" by the builders—and called "ghettophobia" by Jackson, the frustrated jogger.

In fact, the Stadium, which was renovated to enhance the chemistry of the city, will best serve motorists from the suburbs. Suburban drivers will be able to sweep down an expressway ramp that is under construction into a recently completed multilevel garage. After parking their cars, they can cross a multicolored plaza made of those paving stones and enter the park. New escalators and elevators will whisk them to their seats. Color-coded walls lead to the appropriate restrooms—blue walls for men, red for women. There is a public cafeteria; heretofore, the only civilized dining was private. The pleasure of the game will be vastly enhanced by improved sightlines; not only have the pillars been removed, but also the playing field has been lowered and the main deck has been pitched more steeply.

However, there will be fewer home runs in Yankee Stadium. The right-field line designed for Ruth has been lengthened from 296 feet to 310 feet, and the left-field line from 301 feet to 313 feet. The walls are 10 feet higher. But sluggers may be mollified by the tonier accommodations. The dugouts are air-conditioned and each Yankee locker, a generous four feet deep and four feet wide, is furnished with a blue vinyl love seat that opens to store such modern jocquipment as tape decks, dictaphones (for soon-to-be-published diaries) and hair dryers. There are also a mirror and an electric outlet in each locker.

Perhaps the most luxurious new appointments are the 19 private lounges, complete with televisions, wet bars and bathrooms, that open onto 14—and in two cases, 30—reserved seats in the second deck behind home plate. The larger lounges go for $30,000 per season, the others for $19,000. The first was rented by the Yankees' principal owner, George Steinbrenner III, recently returned to active participation after his suspension from baseball following his felony conviction for illegal Presidential campaign contributions.

Ironically, one of Steinbrenner's first public actions since his comeback was the edict last month that in the interest of "order and discipline" players may not wear beards or long hair. "I want to develop pride in the players as Yankees," Steinbrenner explained.