Yankee Stadium Closes Sunday, A Look Back

This Sunday, the final game ever will be played at Yankee Stadium.  Once it closes, 85 years worth of history will simply become memories and The Stadium a parking lot.  When the team announced it was closing the Yankees’ home back in 2005, I wrote a column for “The Hunterdon Democrat” on what it meant to some former players.  With the Yankees just days away from playing their last game there, I figured there’s no better time to revisit that piece.

Lyle Is Mixed On Reaction To Stadium – Thursday, June 23, 2005

The New York Yankees are synonymous with big-time trades; however, this one might be the biggest of all.

Last week, the Bombers announced they would begin construction on a new, $800 million ballpark that is scheduled to open for the start of the 2009 season.  The stadium — being constructed just a Mickey-Mantle home run from the current stadium – is scheduled to have 6,000 fewer seats, but would contain over 30 additional luxury boxes.

“I just think they definitely need a new stadium; there’s no question about it.” Somerset Patriots manager Sparky Lyle said. “I’d hate to see it go; I’m sure everyone would hate to see it go, but it doesn’t mean that the Yankee tradition isn’t going with it.”

Lyle is one of the most popular players in Yankees history.  Along with pitching coach John “The Count” Montefusco and starting pitcher Brett Jodie, all three have donned pinstripes at one time or another.

“I got goose bumps every time I went out there,” Lyle recalled. “I went out on that field almost every day before everyone got there to take in the feeling.  There is a special feeling about Yankee Stadium.”

The Atlantic League’s player development consultant, Ellie Rodriguez, spent one season with New York after being drafted from the Kansas City Athletics in 1964.  He has fond memories of the ballpark, especially after growing up just minutes away.

“It was an unbelievable feeling walking on that field,” Rodriguez said. “I would look at where I once sat (in the right field bleachers) and be in awe.”

Rodriguez, whose locker was two down from Mickey Mantle’s, was recalled from the minor leagues by the Yankees in 1968 and appeared in nine games.  The following season the Kansas City Royals took him in the expansion draft.  He can remember returning to play the Yankees on their home turf over the next two seasons and how different it was.

“When they were fixing the Stadium, we played in Shea,” Rodriguez said, referring to the Yankees and Mets sharing a ballpark at the time. “A lot of the players hated it.”

Spending seven seasons with the Yankees, Lyle’s locker was fairly famous.  Longtime Yankees equipment manager Pete Sheehy — who worked for the team when Babe Ruth played — assigned him the locker, and eventually was where Patriots third baseman Jeff Nettles’ father, Graig, hung his uniform.

“It was a corner locker; it was very special,” Lyle, who picked up a CY Young award with the team in 1977, recalled.

All four of the above mentioned agree that the Stadium had an aura to it.  As Montefusco put it: “you could feel the ghosts running through you.”

Montefusco’s first trip to Yankee Stadium was a surreal experience for the then 19-year-old.  He was auditioning for the club and it’s a memory he shared with Lyle for the first time just a few weeks ago.

“I went into the locker room and I couldn’t believe that they gave me a uniform to put on,” Montefusco, who pitched for the team from 1983-86, said. “I remember putting on the pants and I couldn’t believe how well they fit.

“You can feel the ghosts walking through the tunnels and things below Yankee Stadium… You get chills when you’re in that place, when you put on that uniform.”

Each one agrees that the monuments behind the outfield wall are very special and need to be preserved in the new ballpark.  It’s a sacred place that even Lyle acknowledges needs to only house those who absolutely deserve it.

Many agree that it’s time for a new stadium.  The team has spent nearly a century – 82 years to be exact — in the same structure; it’s time for someone else to build a new home for a franchise that’s won 26 World Championships in 44 playoff appearances.

“This one was built for (Babe) Ruth and now Ruth has had his time and it’s someone else’s,” Montefusco said. “It’s a new era.”

Over the next few years, be sure to take a trip to Yankee Stadium.  It’s a majestic piece of artwork that even Picasso couldn’t have replicated.

The Stadium and its navy and white structure will never be replicated.  Once you think about the thousands of superstars and almost surreal-like figures that have stepped foot on those few acres of land, you begin to realize that it’s a place of history.  It’s a place as important as any memorialized area throughout this country.

After all, if Yankee Stadium isn’t perfection, then what is?