Author: Sonia Lessuck
Imagine springtime in the Bronx, New York. It’s sunny but still cool enough to wear a jacket. The Yankees host the Boston Red Sox. 74,200 fans fill the seats to watch Babe Ruth hit a three-run home run in the third inning, leading the Yankees to a 4-1 victory. It was April 18, 1923, and it was the first game at Yankee Stadium.
Now, 85 years later, on Sept. 21, devoted fans closed the door to the House That Ruth Built. The Yankee’s official website issued an appropriate description of what the stadium meant to supporters of the pinstripes: “Yankee Stadium has been the place where fans worshiped sports heroes . . . and experienced nail-biting drama, World Series celebrations, and even moments of healing. Yankee Stadium has been home to it all—the memories lodged in every seat. And now, it is time for fans to reminisce, one last time, before Yankee Stadium says goodbye.”
Raised in New York, with a father raised in New York, by grandparents who were born and raised in the Bronx, it seemed only right to ask my father of his first memory at Yankee Stadium. He shared with me, “The first time I went to Yankee Stadium, I was nine years old and it was to watch the football Giants play the Philadelphia Eagles. I mainly remember the steel columns that blocked your views and Fran Tarkington, the Giants quarterback, scrambling around on the infield dirt. I was overwhelmed. My first game at the remodeled Stadium was Bat Day the year it reopened. It’s been a great place to go when the Yankees are winning, and even when they weren’t, though I’ve always hated the blue plastic seats.” Plastic seats and all, however, I was taught that New Yorkers loved the Yankees. When they won and when they lost—they were our team.
Perhaps it’s the plastic seats, the chipping paint and the beer-smelling bathrooms that prompted Yankee Co. to renovate. The new stadium is expected to have martini bars, a steak house and seats that will go for $2,500 a game. Have the men up top forgotten what the ballgame is all about? Buy me some peanuts and crackerjacks, not a scotch and a t-bone. As hard as we Yankee fans try to remove ourselves from the title of wealthiest team, or that team that just buys our players, there is no denying that the remodeled stadium is the culmination of all we try to distance ourselves from.
There is also no denying however that, money and amenities aside, this is our team. These are our players. And in that old, plastic and concrete stadium live our memories. In his farewell to the Stadium, Yankee captain Derek Jeter paid respect to those that give life to a stadium of seats: “There’s a lot of tradition, a lot of history and a lot of memories. The great thing about those memories, you’re able to pass them along from generation to generation . . . We want to have you take the memories of this field, add them to the new memories that will come at the new Yankee Stadium and continue to pass them on from generation to generation. We just want to take this moment to salute you, the greatest fans in the world.”
What makes a corporation a team, a clubhouse or part of a city are the fans that support it. The Yankees aren’t where they play, but who comes to watch them play. As long as bleacher seats remain $10 and Michael Kay narrates play after play, the Yankees will remain iconic, no matter what side of the street they play on.
Sonia Lessuck is a sophomore Art History/Visual Arts major. She can be reached at slessuck@oxy.edu.
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