IN MY SHOES: Seeing My Last Ballgame At The Real Yankee Stadium
Los Angeles Times book editor David Ulin writes about the first and last baseball game he and his father went to at Yankee Stadium:
Here's what I'll miss most about going to Yankee Stadium: The little slice of right field you see from the 4 train just after it rises out of the tunnel and onto the elevated tracks. It's like a quick taste, an appetizer - one fast flash of grass and then it's gone. …
I went to my first game at Yankee Stadium on Sept. 20, 1968 - a Friday night, Yankees-Red Sox, Fritz Peterson against Jim Lonborg. I was 7 years old. My father, 32 at the time, took me, and we sat on the first base side, mezzanine level, and saw
Forty years later, I'm visiting the Stadium for the last time, on the first night of the old ballpark's final homestand, which concludes today. Next season, the Yankees will move to an all-new Yankee Stadium across the street, designed to look like the original before it was renovated in the mid-1970s, although every true fan understands this is a sham. …
After an hour and a half, my father turns to me and gently suggests that it is time to go. He's 72 and I am 47, but briefly, it's as if we've been telescoped to that young man and boy we were the first time I ever came here, 40 years ago.
I nod, a bit reluctant, and on our way out of the Stadium, stare hard at everything, as if to fix it in my mind.
But it is only when we are back on the subway, and I see that flash of green for the last time, briefly catching, that it truly hits me that this has been goodbye.
And check out this article by Jon Friedman of MarketWatch, who bluntly explains why Yankee Stadium is being torn down, and offers his “top-10 list of the most famous games that took place in Yankee Stadium since it was renovated in 1976.”
I have so many wonderful memories of the old Yankee stadium. Growing up on Long Island, we loved going to the games.
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