For Fans Who Think they \u201cKnow it All\u201d<\/p>\n
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SECRETS OF YANKEE STADIUM<\/p>\n
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By Marty Appel<\/p>\n
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In the old third base dugout of Yankee Stadium, which the Yankees occupied from 1923-1945, Babe Ruth would keep a fresh head of cabbage in the water cooler. Every two or three innings he would tear off a leaf and tuck it under his cap to keep him cool.<\/p>\n
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Yankee fans love their stadium and know its history, but there\u2019s a good chance they don\u2019t know that one! And there are a lot more secrets of this legendary ballpark, (which until the late \u201850s was often called THE Yankee Stadium in newspaper accounts).<\/p>\n
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The best kept secret in \u201cold\u2019 Yankee Stadium was a safe in the home clubhouse, where the players could put their valuables into individual draws.<\/p>\n
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The small draws were painted with names like \u201cFultz\u201d, \u201cConroy\u201d, and \u201cTannehill\u201d, which meant nothing to the players who were tossing in their wallets and jewelry. Even the names \u201cKeeler,\u201d \u201cChesbro\u201d and \u201cGriffith\u201d went unnoticed, although the gold paint was still visible against the black background. Wee Willie Keeler, Jack Chesbro and Clark Griffith were Hall of Famers, and like Dave Fultz, Wid Conroy and Jesse Tannehill, members of the 1903 New York Highlanders \u2013 the original Yankees.<\/p>\n
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The safe had been in the locker room at Hilltop Park in upper Manhattan, and had traveled with the team when they shifted a mile down Broadway to the Polo Grounds in 1913. Then it moved across the Harlem River to the new Yankee Stadium in 1923. It moved again in 1946 when the new Yankee clubhouse was built, and there it stood in the waning days of 1973, prior to the team moving to Shea Stadium for two seasons before returning to the revamped Yankee Stadium.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI\u2019ll keep my eye on it,\u201d said Pete Sheehy, who had worked in the Yankee clubhouse since 1927. \u201cDon\u2019t worry.\u201d<\/p>\n
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But it didn\u2019t make it to Shea, and it didn\u2019t return to the new ballpark. It disappeared. All 400 pounds of it. It has never shown up at an auction, and never been heard from again. The safe had held the wallets of Ruth and Gehrig and DiMaggio and Mantle and Berra and Murcer and Munson, but it vanished in that final season of the old stadium, the last surviving memory of the franchise\u2019s first year.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe saved a vault from the ticket office,\u201d says demolition chief Jay Schwall, \u201cbut I never saw the clubhouse safe at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Speaking of Hilltop Park and the Polo Grounds, if you stand at the top of the escalator at Gate 4, you can see a remarkable sight. You can see where both ballparks used to be! Hilltop is now the site of New York-Presbyterian Hospital, and easily spotted off to the right, a large flag flying atop the prestigious medical center. The Polo Grounds, where Babe Ruth first wore his Yankee uniform, is now a cluster of apartment buildings, a long foul tip from \u201cThe House that Ruth Built.\u201d There is, in the current ballpark, a large red advertising sign in left field for New York-Presbyterian Hospital. Not too many fans would know to make the connection.<\/p>\n
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The common theory is that the 1923 Yankee Stadium was a hit. That\u2019s a myth. The opening day crowd of a reported major league record 74,200 was not indicative of things to come. If you eliminate that day, the team averaged about 12,000 a game for the rest of the year, despite winning its first world championship. The total attendance was actually less than they had drawn at the Polo Grounds in 1920 and 1921, Ruth\u2019s first two seasons in New York. But The Yankee Stadium would catch on!<\/p>\n
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While it was not the first baseball park to be called a \u201cstadium\u201d (National Park in Washington became Griffith Stadium in 1920), its awe-inspiring majesty made it the first to feel like the name belonged.<\/p>\n
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Conventional wisdom holds that no man has ever hit a fair ball out of Yankee Stadium, Mickey Mantle coming the closest by twice hitting the fa\u00e7ade in upper right field, although rumor had it that the Negro Leagues\u2019 Josh Gibson may have done it on the left field side. Some historians felt the conventional wisdom couldn\u2019t be true. Babe Ruth\u2019s entire career was spent without a mezzanine and upper deck in the fair territory of right field. The bleachers extended to the foul pole until 1937, three years after Ruth\u2019s last Yankee game, when the grandstand was extended into fair territory in right. But research by author Bill Jenkinson indicates that the \u201cno fair ball\u201d theory may in fact be true. He tracked Babe\u2019s longest Stadium home run as reaching the 70th row of the bleachers in 1930.<\/p>\n
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The original Stadium\u2019s seats were painted a light green \u2013 except for the first two rows of box seats, which were actually unbolted chairs! You only had a box for four and a friend from another box was visiting? Pull up a chair and join us!<\/p>\n
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There are five remaining legacies of the period when CBS owned the Yankees, 1965-1973. First was the painting of the Stadium \u2013 white on the outside, dark blue for the seats (covering the original green). Second is the theme music, \u201cHere Come the Yankees,\u201d still used on the radio broadcasts, and recorded by a house orchestra for Columbia Records (owned by CBS). Third is the presence of an organ to provide in-game music. CBS soap opera organist Eddie Layton was recruited for the task. Fourth is the presence of all the Yankee offices in the ballpark, they having previously existed on 42nd Street, and then at 745 Fifth Avenue, from where the employees would jump on the subway for games just like the fans.<\/p>\n
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(The phone number for Yankee Stadium, CYpress 3-4300, hasn\u2019t changed since 1952, the Topping-Webb ownership era, except for the area code).<\/p>\n
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The fifth and final CBS legacy was the end of the practice of fans departing after games by walking across the field and towards the bleacher and bullpen exits. To see fans exiting in such an orderly manner \u2013 no one stopping to pick up a souvenir piece of sod \u2013 is an amazing sight to witness on old newsreels.<\/p>\n
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It wasn\u2019t until 1967 that an enclosed parking lot was built for the players and staff. Prior to that, the players parked perpendicular to each other along E. 157th Street, (now the pedestrian plaza), facing the stadium. Fans could walk by and see a Cadillac with an Oklahoma license plate, \u201cMM 77\u201d, belonging to Mickey Mantle, and wait there for an autograph after the game.<\/p>\n
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The biggest changes to the ballpark came after Larry MacPhail, along with Dan Topping and Del Webb, bought the team from Col. Jacob Ruppert\u2019s estate in 1945. MacPhail, renowned as a master marketer, installed lights for night baseball, CHARTERED A DC 4 \u2013 YANKEE MAINLINER \u2013 FOR FLIGHTS, built a new clubhouse (necessitating the 1946 move to the first base dugout for the Yanks), built the Stadium Club restaurant and press dining room, renumbered the sections to make everyone feel their tickets were closer to the infield, created an annual Old Timers Day, and commissioned the famous \u201ctop hat\u201d Yankee logo. Within two years, MacPhail was bought out by his partners, but his impact was, like him, fast and furious.<\/p>\n
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The original Yankee clubhouse, on the third base side, was up a flight of wooden stairs. Inside were real metal \u201clockers\u201d \u2013 they had doors that locked! \u2013 not the stalls that simply borrow the word \u201clocker\u201d today. And the uniforms of Babe Ruth (#3) and Lou Gehrig (#4) remained in their lockers after their retirements, with clubhouse man Pete Sheehy an early proponent of all things ceremonial and honorary. (In 1976, the clubhouse was named after Pete). Thurman Munson\u2019s empty locker in the current Stadium is not the first \u201challowed ground;\u201d the Ruth and Gehrig lockers predated that. But the decision to honor Thurman with an empty locker was made the very night he died, August 2, 1979, as George Steinbrenner began to plan every step of what would be a four-day series of events to mourn the fallen captain.<\/p>\n
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Munson would sometimes trek up to Steinbrenner\u2019s office to talk real estate or business after batting practice. With good timing, fans might get on the elevator headed for the luxury seat level, and find Munson, in uniform, on his way up to the office level. He didn\u2019t even bother to remove his spikes.<\/p>\n
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Many secret storage areas existed in the hidden storage areas of the Stadium. Some were never paved and had dirt floors. One would find the pennants folded and stored, assorted trophies presented to the team by civic associations, early versions of the Mayor\u2019s Trophy (from beating the Dodgers or the Giants in exhibition games), damaged oversize photos that had hung in the concession areas, unsold concession items, broken seats, and a variety of material used by the building\u2019s ground crew, painters, electricians, masons and plumbers. You might even find a carton of unused 1959 schedules.<\/p>\n
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In one of those small rooms, in the post-1976 stadium, a drum kit rested, played by Ron Guidry in the \u201870s and by Paul O\u2019Neill in the \u201890s. In the traveling secretary\u2019s small office, halfway to the bullpen, a prominent Yankee middle relief pitcher of the \u201890s would stop and watch sitcoms from the sofa before heading for the pen around the 4th inning.<\/p>\n
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And when Roger Maris wanted to get away from the media during the pressure-packed 1961 season, he would slip into the trainer\u2019s room, just after leaving a little plaster model of a hand, in a familiar unpleasant gesture, to greet the media when they arrived at his locker.<\/p>\n
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When the remodeled Stadium opened in 1976, there were no left field bleachers, only concrete steps, such as are seen in the center field \u201cbatter\u2019s eye\u201d portion of the expanse. That was because it was thought those bleachers, behind the bullpens, were too far away for seating. The steps were there because they were from the original ballpark, when little care was given to whether fans were in the batter\u2019s line of vision or not.<\/p>\n
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When the Yankees won the pennant in \u201976, Zachery Fisher \u2013 the same man who is credited with creating the Intrepid Museum \u2013 paid for a hasty assembly of left field bleachers to accommodate demand for tickets.<\/p>\n
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A larger room in the \u201cnew\u201d stadium was used for post-season hospitality and named after the Yanks\u2019 top farm club: first it was the Syracuse Room, then the Tacoma Room, then the Columbus Room. Finally, it became indoor batting cages, and it was on a pitching mound in there that President George W. Bush prepared for his memorable first pitch honors at the 2001 World Series \u2013 throwing to bullpen catcher Nick Testa \u2013 before Derek Jeter walked in and told him he better deliver the pitch from the top of the mound or he\u2019d get booed.<\/p>\n
Babe Ruth lay in state at Yankee Stadium, with fans lining up around the block to view his body, inside Gate 4, before the funeral at St. Patrick\u2019s Cathedral. It was one of two \u201cmemorial\u201d events at Yankee Stadium. The team\u2019s legendary public relations director, Bob Fishel, died in 1988 and a memorial service in his honor was held at the Stadium a few weeks later before an invited audience of friends, relatives and baseball officials.<\/p>\n
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The huge \u201cbat\u201d outside the Stadium, so common as a meeting place for fans, is a functioning smokestack and exhaust system for the Stadium. It was the team\u2019s in-house attorney, Joe Garagiola Jr., (now Senior V.P., Baseball Operations for MLB), who suggested asking Louisville Slugger to turn it into a \u201cBabe Ruth Bat.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cI suggested placing a knob at the top to finish it off,\u201d says Garagiola. \u201cNobody really loved idea. I had to go to a meeting of the Bronx Council on the Arts to explain why we were doing this without their permission. But I\u2019m glad it turned out to be such a well-known meeting place.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The Yankee Stadium scoreboard that went up in 1959 had the first electronic message board in the country \u2013 eight letter across, eight lines down. (The board it replaced was recycled to Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia). With the opening of the new Stadium in 1976, the Yankees had the first scoreboard capable of instant replays (Boston installed one that same year).<\/p>\n
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A real Yankee Stadium secret was that Col. Ruppert and his partner Col. Til Huston, installed a vault under second base containing the necessary equipment to stage boxing matches above. The most famous of course, would be the historic Joe Louis-Max Schmelling rematch \u2013 the one Louis won in the first round.<\/p>\n
And no, George Costanza\u2019s \u201coffice\u201d on the Seinfeld show was a Hollywood set \u2013 not the real thing, although it looked absolutely authentic to the current offices.<\/p>\n
And NO!, no one is buried in Monument Park.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the most asked question on our tours,\u201d says Tony Morante, the Yankees resident historian and tour director. \u201cI think people are disappointed to learn that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For Fans Who Think they \u201cKnow it All\u201d SECRETS OF YANKEE STADIUM By Marty Appel In the old third base dugout of Yankee Stadium, which the Yankees occupied from 1923-1945, Babe Ruth would keep a fresh head… Continue Reading