(courtesy of wikipedia.org)
Upon its opening, Yankee Stadium soon came to be known as "The House that Ruth Built", a play on the nursery rhyme "The House that Jack Built", and in reference to the Yankees' star player, Babe Ruth. Ruth's power as a drawing card had enabled the Yankees to build their own stadium in the Bronx after their rivals across the Harlem River in Manhattan, the New York Giants, were threatening to evict them from The Polo Grounds. In the first game at Yankee Stadium, April 18, 1923, Ruth hit the first home run at the Stadium, a three-run shot to help defeat his former team, the Boston Red Sox, 4-1. Boston Red Sox first baseman George Burns got the first hit ever in Yankee Stadium. The Yankees also won their first World Series during the Stadium's inaugural season, a rare coincidence that would not occur again until the St. Louis Cardinals did it in 2006.
When Tillinghast L'Hommedieu Huston and Jacob Ruppert, the team's owners since January 1915, footed the bill for construction of a $2.5 million stadium, they did so at considerable financial risk and speculation. Baseball teams typically played in 30,000-seat facilities. Huston and Ruppert invoked Ruth's name when asked how the Yankees could justify a ballpark with 60,000 seats. Many people felt three baseball teams could not prosper in New York City, but Huston and Ruppert were confident the Yankees could outlast the more established Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants of the National League (which proved true, as both would eventually relocate to California in the 1950s). The doubt over the Yankees' lasting power was amplified by baseball's sagging popularity after the 1919 Black Sox Scandal, in which eight Chicago White Sox players were expelled for conspiring with gamblers to fix that year's World Series.
Huston and Ruppert were undeterred, and they also had little choice but to relocate. In 1920, Ruth's first with his new team, the Yankees drew 1.3 million fans to the Polo Grounds—outdrawing the Giants. In 1921, the Yankees won their first American League pennant (they lost to the Giants in the World Series). This exacerbated Giants owner Charles Stoneham's resentment of the Yankees and precipitated his insistence that the Yankees find another place to play their home games. The Giants derisively suggested that the Yankees relocate "to Queens or some other out-of-the-way place."
Aerial view of Yankee Stadium, as it looked from 1928-1936Huston and Ruppert explored many areas for Yankee Stadium. Of the other sites being considered, the Hebrew Orphan Asylum, at Amsterdam Avenue between 136th and 138th streets in Manhattan, nearly became reality. Consideration was also given to building atop railroad tracks on the West Side of Manhattan (an idea revived in 1998) and to Long Island City, in Queens.
The area Huston and Ruppert settled on was a 10 acre lumberyard within walking distance from, and in sight of, Coogan's Bluff. The Polo Grounds was located on the Manhattan side of the Harlem River, at 155th Street and Eighth Avenue. Huston and Ruppert purchased the site from William Waldorf Astor for $600,000. Construction began May 5, 1922, and Yankee Stadium opened to the public less than 11 months later. When it did, Fred Lieb of the New York Evening Telegram dubbed it "The House That Ruth Built". (Critics of its cozy right field dimensions would sometimes call it "The House They Built for Ruth", although Ruth also lost many homers to the cavernous left and center field area.) The Stadium was also, in part, "The House That Edison Built", as the walls were built of "an extremely hard and durable concrete that was developed by Thomas Edison" (Sports Illustrated, September 22, 2008, p.54). Edison had begun a Portland cement company in 1899. A total of 20,000 cubic yards of concrete was used in the original structure. New York Governor Alfred E. Smith (who would become the Democratic Party's candidate for president in 1928) threw out the first pitch. John Philip Sousa led one of his famed marching bands.
As originally built, the stadium seated 58,000. For the stadium's first game, the announced attendance was 74,217 (with another 25,000 turned away); however, Yankees business manager Ed Barrow later admitted that this number was likely heavily overestimated. Regardless of what the figure was, it was undoubtedly more than the 42,000 fans who attended game five of the 1916 World Series at Braves Field, baseball's previous attendance record. However, during the 1920s and 1930s, the Yankees' popularity was such that crowds in excess of 80,000 were not uncommon. It was referred to as "The Yankee Stadium" (with the "s" in "stadium" sometimes lowercase) until the 1950s.
Yankee Stadium was the first three-tiered sports facility in the United States and one of the first baseball parks to be given the lasting title of stadium. Baseball teams typically played in a park or a field. The word stadium deliberately evoked ancient Greece, where a stadium was unit of measure--the length of a footrace; the buildings that housed footraces were called stadiums. Yankee Stadium was one of the first to be deliberately designed as a multi-purpose facility. The field was initially surrounded by a (misshapen) quarter-mile running track, which effectively also served as a warning track for outfielders, a feature now standard on all major league fields. The left and right field bleacher sections were laid out at right angles to each other, and to the third base stands, to be properly positioned for both track-and-field events and football. The large electronic scoreboard in right-center field, featuring both teams' lineups and scores of other baseball games, was the first of its kind.
As Yankee Stadium owed its creation largely to Ruth, its design partially accommodated the game's left-handed-hitting slugger. Initially the fence was 295 feet (90 m) from home plate down the right-field line and 350 feet (110 m) to near right field, compared with 490 feet (150 m) to the deepest part of center field, nicknamed Death Valley. The right-field bleachers were appropriately nicknamed Ruthville. Through the 2007 season, Yankee Stadium has hosted 37 World Series, far more than any other baseball stadium. The Stadium also hosted the major-league All-Star Game four times: 1939, 1960, 1977, and as part of its curtain call, the 2008 All-Star Game.
The Stadium's triple deck originally extended only to the left and right field corners. The concrete lower deck extended well into left field, with the obvious intention of extending the upper deck over it, which was accomplished during the 1926-1927 off-season.
Yankee Stadium underwent more extensive renovations from 1936 through 1938. The wooden bleachers were replaced with concrete bleachers, shrinking the "death valley" area of left and center substantially, although the area was still much deeper than in most ballparks; and the second and third decks were extended to short right center. Runways were left between the bleachers and the triple-deck on each end, serving as the respective team's bullpens. By 1938, the Stadium had assumed the "classic" shape that it would retain for the next 35 years.
In 1962 a Rice University Alum John Cox '27 gave Yankee Stadium to Rice University. In 1971 the city of New York forced (via eminent domain) Rice to sell the stadium for a mere $2.5 million. In the 1966–67 offseason, during the period in which Rice owned the stadium, the concrete exterior was painted white, and the interior was repainted blue. The copper frieze circling the upper deck was painted white.
By the late 1960s, Yankee Stadium's condition had badly deteriorated, and the surrounding neighborhood had gone downhill as well. In 1971, CBS, which owned the Yankees at the time, proposed extensive renovations to Yankee Stadium. However, this would require the Yankees to play their home games at Shea Stadium in Queens, the regular home of the New York Mets. The Mets, as Shea's primary tenants, refused to sign off — effectively delaying the renovations. CBS then gave serious thought to building a stadium in the New Jersey Meadowlands before selling the Yankees to George Steinbrenner in 1972, for $10 million.
Finally, in mid-1972, Mayor John Lindsay stepped in and announced the city would buy Yankee Stadium for $24 million (by comparison, it cost $2.4 million to build in 1923 — adjusted for inflation, $6 million in 1972 dollars) and lease it back to the Yankees. Since the city owned Shea Stadium as well, the Mets had little choice but to agree. Yankee Stadium closed on September 30, 1973 for the two-year facelift; the Yankees played the 1974 and 1975 seasons in Shea Stadium.
Since a significant portion of the stadium was demolished and rebuilt, some consider the rebuilt Yankee Stadium a different facility from the pre-renovation stadium. For example, the ESPN Sports Almanac considers the renovated stadium to be "Yankee Stadium II," and the pre-renovated facility to be "Yankee Stadium I". Textbooks on the subject, such as Green Cathedrals, make no such distinction, since much of the original structure was retained and re-used, in contrast to the total demolition of facilities such as Cleveland Stadium or Wembley Stadium, whose in-place replacements were totally new structures. The most noticeable difference resulting from the renovation was the removal of the 118 columns that reinforced each tier of the Stadium's grandstand. The Stadium's roof, including the distinctive, 15-foot (4.6 m) copper frieze that circled its interior, was replaced by the new upper shell; new lights were also added. A white replica of this frieze was built at the top the wall behind the bleachers. The playing field was lowered by about seven feet and moved forward slightly.
Yankee Stadium installed the first instant-replay display in baseball. All seats in the old stadium were replaced with wider, more modern plastic seats, and the upper deck was expanded upward by approximately nine rows, as modern building techniques allowed them to do so. There appears to be an extra guardrail in the upper seating of the modern stadium where the original runways to the upper level concourse once ran.
A new upper concourse was built above where the old concourse existed and the old exits were closed in by new seating. The old, closed-in upper-deck concourse still exists to this day and is used by stadium employees for transport. A new "loge/middle-tier" section was also built for the new stadium with far fewer seats to create a larger press box and 16 luxury boxes. About half of the bleachers seats were eliminated; the middle portion was converted to what is today called "the black," a dark, unused area that serves as the batter's eye. A wall was built behind the bleachers, preventing strap-hangers from watching the game perched on the elevated subway platform above River Avenue. All told, the Stadium was reduced to a listed capacity of 57,545.
The Stadium's dimensions were narrowed, leaving the monuments and plaques that today comprise Monument Park behind an inner fence (they had been on the field in fair territory). Also, deep center was significantly reduced to a distance more consistent with modern parks.
Several new restrooms were added throughout the stadium, along with three elevators. The southern border of the Stadium, 157th Street, was closed to cars and became part of the Stadium's property. The city also seized property on the southern side of this street for a four-story parking garage (about 2,300 parking spaces) to suit the increasingly suburban crowd whom the Yankees were hoping to attract. No money was spent to help the residents and business owners of the neighborhood, fueling the sometimes uneasy relationship between the Yankees and their neighbors.
The cost of the 1970s renovations, $160 million, was originally borne by New York City and is now being paid off by New York State. At the time, many referred to Yankee Stadium as the House That Lindsay Rebuilt, because the costly renovations were approved by New York City's Board of Estimate, based on the insistence of Mayor John Lindsay. Lindsay had orchestrated the city's purchase of Yankee Stadium from Rice University (the university in Houston, Texas owned the stadium thanks to a bequest from John William Cox '27) and the nine-acre parcel of property the Stadium occupies from the Knights of Columbus, also the recipients of a gift by Cox.
The Stadium reopened on April 15, 1976 . More than 54,000 fans saw the Yankees beat the Minnesota Twins, 11–4, and the "new Stadium" hosted its first playoff and World Series games that October.
In the 1980s, the fence was moved in on the left field side, allowing for the retired numbers row that currently exists as a lead-in to Monument Park.
In April 1998, during the stadium's 75th year anniversary, a concrete beam in the shape of an 'H' collapsed and destroyed one seat along the 3rd base line. The beam weighed 500 pounds and left a gaping hole causing the city of New York and the Yankees to postpone their game against the Angels that night. The city then began an inspection of the entire stadium which kept it closed for 2 weeks before Mayor Giuliani signed off to reopen the park.
Fielding Derek Jeter as their captain and Andy Pettitte as the starting pitcher, the Yankees played their final regular season game, and probably their final game ever in Yankee Stadium (barring a miracle comeback) against the Baltimore Orioles on September 21, 2008, recording the final out at 11:35PM EST. Coincidentally, Baltimore Orioles was the Yankees' original name in the city of Baltimore in 1901 and 1902 before transferring to New York.
The Yankees won the final game 7-3. Jose Molina hit the last Yankees home run and Mariano Rivera made the closing pitch in the Stadium. The final run was scored by the Yankees' Brett Gardner in the seventh and the final hit was recorded by the Yankees' Jason Giambi in the same inning. In the eighth inning, Derek Jeter became the final Yankee at bat in Yankee Stadium.
The game was attended by many former Yankees and/or their families. Julia Ruth Stevens, adopted daughter of Babe Ruth, threw out the first ball. Guest commentators for the game on ESPN included Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra, Reggie Jackson, and Michael Kay.
In November of 2008 an official closing ceremony is scheduled to occur celebrating not only the Yankees but also the football New York Giants, the various boxing matches, Papal visits, concerts and other events that took place at the Stadium over the years.
