Ultimate Baseball Road Trip (13 page)

Josh:
And this fruity rum drink is hitting the spot.

Kevin:
What have I told you about the fruity drinks?

Securing the financing for the new Yankee Stadium and building it were no small undertakings. In the early 2000s the Yankees struck a deal with then-mayor of New York City Rudolph Giuliani that would have seen taxpayers foot even more of the freight for the new park than they eventually did. At that early stage, the Yankees were talking about building a retractable roof stadium. Subsequent mayor Michael Bloomberg scaled back the public investment and the Yankees scrapped the plan to put a lid on their digs. Still, taxpayers forked over about $800 million toward the stadium’s construction. Then it took nearly three years for the stadium to
be built. After an official groundbreaking in August 2006, the grand opening took place on April 16, 2009. The Cleveland Indians took some of the joy out of the day by handing the Yankees a 10-2 defeat, as Cliff Lee bested former Indian C.C. Sabathia. But the Yankees had the last laugh. The Pinstripes rebounded from a sluggish April to post the best record in baseball—103-59—on their way to finishing the inaugural season at new Yankee Stadium with a champagne bath. The Yankees clinched their twenty-seventh World Championship on their home lawn, beating the Phillies 7-3 in Game 6 of the October Classic behind the pitching of Andy Pettitte and a home run by World Series MVP Hideki Matsui.

The next great memory the Yankees penned on their new field occurred on July 9, 2011, when an aging Jeter, who’d only a few games earlier come off the disabled list, went five-for-five against the Tampa Bay Rays while collecting his three thousandth hit on a home run. In an admirable gesture, the Yankee fan who caught the milestone hit—a gent named Christian Lopez, who was sitting on a bleacher bench in Section 236—gave the ball to Jeter without seeking to profit personally in the exchange.

Kevin:
That guy’s a hero.

Josh:
He’s crazy. I would have cashed in.

Kevin:
The Yankees gave him Club Seats as compensation.

Josh:
Well, that sounds a little better.

Kevin:
Until you figure he still had to pay some hefty taxes on them.

Another early highlight for the Yankees at their new yard occurred on August 25, 2011, when they became the first team ever to hit three grand slams in one game during a 22-9 rout of the Oakland A’s. The Pinstripes actually trailed 7-1 after three innings, before mounting a furious comeback fueled by bases-loaded homers from Robinson Cano, Russell Martin, and Curtis Granderson, who, true to his name, hit the record-breaking clout in the eighth inning. The twenty-two runs also went into the history books as the most by a Yankees team in a home game since 1931 when the Pinstripes of Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth crossed the plate twenty-two times in a game against the White Sox.

As for Yankee highlights at the previous incarnation of Yankee Stadium, the home team’s remarkable history of success makes it impossible for us to recount all of them in a book of this nature. We will, however, touch upon some of the most memorable moments. So, here goes: It all began inauspiciously enough for the team that would become the Bronx Bombers, with the fledgling American League franchise failing to win a pennant during its first twenty seasons. But once the Yankees got rolling, they dominated the Major Leagues like no team before. They appeared in twenty-nine World Series between 1921 and 1962 and claimed twenty World Championships during that time. During the Steinbrenner reign, they won back-to-back World Series in 1977 and 1978, and then won five more between 1996 and 2009, including three in a row from 1998 through 2000.

The Yanks began as the American League Baltimore Orioles in 1901 before moving to the north side of Manhattan in 1903. Known as the “Highlanders,” they took the field at New York American League Ballpark—aka Hilltop Park—despite protests from the New York Giants, who were afraid the Junior Circuit upstarts would erode their fan base. For a long time New York was a big enough town for both teams—as well as the Brooklyn Dodgers—but in the end those fears proved justifiable.

Hilltop Park was located on the west side of Broadway between 165th and 168th Street in the Washington Heights district, which is the most altitudinous portion of Manhattan Island. The ballpark offered bird’s-eye views of the Hudson River and the Palisades in New Jersey. The center-field fence measured 502 feet from home plate. In their second season, the Highlanders, or Hilltoppers as some fans and writers dubbed them, challenged the Boston Pilgrims (who would later become the Red Sox) for the AL crown. In the end New York finished a game and a half behind their neighbors to the north. And thus, a rivalry was born. Who knew then that decades later the Red Sox and Yankees would still perennially jostle for AL bragging rights? Or that a Bambino would bless the Yankees and curse the Red Sox, until the 2004 Bostonians finally ripped the albatross from around their necks to rise from the ashes after trailing the Yankees three games to none in the ALCS? Who could have known that the two teams would stage an epic battle in 1949, punctuated by a Yankee win over the Sox on the last day of the season to clinch the pennant? Or that the two teams would finish tied for first in 1978, setting the stage for Bucky Dent’s dramatic home run in a one-game playoff at Fenway Park?

Baseball certainly was a different game when the Boston/New York rivalry began. Pitcher Jack Chesbro won forty-one games for the Highlanders in 1904, tossing forty-eight complete games and logging 454 innings. Today, most front-of-the-rotation starters don’t win that many games or throw that many innings over two seasons.

After regularly finishing in the AL’s second division while the Red Sox racked up five World Championships in the 1900s and 1910s, the Yankees seized control of their own destiny in 1919, purchasing Babe Ruth’s contract from
Boston for $125,000 and a $300,000 loan. Playing regularly in the outfield for the first time in his career after pitching for the Red Sox, Ruth hit fifty-four home runs in 1920, shattering the old record of twenty-nine he had hit the year before. While today we speculate that players are on “the juice” when they exhibit such power surges, Ruth’s breakout had more to do with the advent of the juiced or “lively” ball that was introduced in 1920. By then, the Yankees were playing at the Polo Grounds, which they leased from the Giants, who needed the extra revenue. It was not uncommon for the squatting Yankees to draw more fans to their games than the Giants did to theirs. In 1921, the Yankees made it to their first World Series—losing to their landlords in an All-Polo-Grounds Series. The same two teams met again the next year, with the Giants prevailing over their tenants again.

After moving into their own digs across the Harlem River, the Yankees gained a measure of immediate revenge, by besting their former landlords in the 1923 World Series. The first triple-decked baseball facility to be built and first to be termed a “stadium,” Yankee Stadium opened on April 18, 1923, with the home team defeating Boston 4–1, behind Ruth’s three-run homer. Constructed in just 284 days, the stadium accommodated more than seventy-four thousand fans, more than twice the capacity of most other parks at the time. Prior to the replacement of the original wooden bleachers with seats in the 1930s and the enforcement of new fire laws, the stadium often housed crowds exceeding seventy-five thousand people.

In the post-Ruth era, new stars like Lou Gehrig, Bill Dickey, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Phil Rizzuto, and Berra continued to win championships for the Yankees. From 1936 to 1939, New York won four straight. The Yanks put together another string of five in a row from 1949 to 1953, and combined with the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers to keep the title in New York nine times in a ten-year span (1949–58), with only Milwaukee’s victory over the Yankees in 1957 bucking the trend. Prior to the departure of the Dodgers and Giants for the West Coast, New York truly was the hub of the baseball universe.

After suddenly becoming New York’s lone team, the Yankees reached the October Classic five years running from 1960–1964, including a win over the San Francisco Giants in 1962 and a loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1963. In the 1970s, fiery manager Billy Martin led the Yanks into battle, bolstered by a roster of larger-than-life stars like Reggie Jackson, Thurman Munson, Ron Guidry, Catfish Hunter, and Goose Gossage. The Yanks may not have been a lovable team in the dying days of disco, but they had an aura about them that was second to none. The “Bronx Zoo” became a term that typified the team, as Steinbrenner feuded with Martin—whom he hired and fired five times. Martin and Jackson once came to blows in the dugout. Munson and Red Sox catcher Carlton Fisk brawled at home plate. But through it all the Yankees kept winning, bringing home the World Series hardware in 1977 and 1978.

The 1970s were also an important decade for Yankee Stadium. In 1974 and 1975 the Pinstripes played their “home” games at the Mets’ Shea Stadium while the “House that Ruth Built” was nearly completely torn down and rebuilt. During the renovation the outfield wall was brought closer to the plate and the center-field monuments were removed from the field of play to create Monument Park. Even so, the field’s most distinctive feature remained the deep gap in left-center, known as Death Valley—where long fly balls went to die. The fence originally measured five hundred feet from home plate, before the plate was moved in 1924 to eliminate the “Bloody Angle” in right, changing the distance to 490 feet. Subsequent renovations brought the fence to its final 399 feet.

Winfield, Rickey Henderson, and Don Mattingly led the Yankees of the 1980s but to no avail as New York failed to capture a World Championship in the Decade of Decadence, marking the team’s first such drought since it started winning titles in the 1920s. By 1990, New York had fallen into the AL basement. Adding insult to injury, Steinbrenner was forced by the commissioner’s office to temporarily relinquish control of the team when it was revealed he had attempted to gain incriminating evidence about Winfield from a reputed gambler. The Big Stein had often derided Winfield for not producing numbers to justify his lofty contract and Winfield had shot more than a few barbs back at the Boss in the
Daily News
, precipitating the incident.

When Steinbrenner returned, he meddled less, and the dynasty righted itself under the field management of Joe Torre and the steady front office hand of Brian Cashman. Gone were the days of the Bronx Zoo’s tough and nasty image. Led by gritty, even likable, players like Bernie Williams, Jorge Posada, Scott Brosius, Tino Martinez, Jeter, and O’Neill, the 1998 Yanks set a new record with their 114 regular season wins and another record with their 125 total wins, counting their three Ws against the Rangers in the Division Series, four against the Indians in the ALCS, and four against the Padres, whom they swept in the World Series.

The next season the Yankees and Red Sox met in the postseason for the first time ever, with the AL East champs downing the Wild Card Sox in the ALCS en route to another
World Championship. The Yankees made it three in a row, beating the Mets in the 2000 Series. With the win, fifth-year Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter collected his fourth World Series ring. He would win yet another, of course, in 2009.

Kevin:
Do you think he wears two on one hand and three on the other?

Josh:
I think I’d just wear all five on the same hand.

Kevin:
It must be tough deciding.

Josh:
Either way, it’s a nice problem to have.

Yankee Stadium is plenty big enough to accommodate even the Yankees’ rabid local fan base. We had no problem getting tickets for below face value on StubHub for a July game against the A’s. Games against more intriguing opponents do sometimes sell out, but tickets to Yankee Stadium are a lot easier to come by than say, tickets to Fenway Park or Wrigley Field. The good news is that even the cheap seats in the upper reaches of the 400 Level offer pretty solid views. Truly, it’s hard to find a bad seat in this house, excepting the “obstructed view” bleacher seats in right- and left-center. One nice service the Yankees offer is a ticket exchange option. If you arrive at the Stadium and don’t like your seat or see a lot of empties down in front, you can head to one of the interior ticket windows—in the Great Hall, or behind Section 221, or behind Section 320—and request an upgrade. If a better seat is available, the attendant will charge you the difference between your seat and the one you’re moving to, and then issue a new ticket. But that’s just one unique ticketing feature we uncovered. Another is the computer that lets fans retrieve their will-call tickets the way travelers get their boarding passes at the airport. Rather than waiting in a long will-call line, fans visit kiosks adjacent to the ticket windows across from Parking Lot 8 and swipe whatever credit card they used to purchase their tickets. Then, their tickets instantly print and pop out of the machine.

Josh:
Or you can just order from StubHub and print your tickets at home.

Kevin:
When did you become a shill for second-hand ticket brokers?