The House that Ruth Built

In my last post, I talked about how A-Roid has not really passed Babe Ruth in career RBIs, so the nickname of the old Yankee Stadium seemed like an appropriate title for this post.  Of course, I wasn't blogging when that stadium still existed.  I wanted to go back and retroactively blog about old Yankee Stadium and Shea Stadium (hopefully I'll get to that before the end of the week).  I was looking for pictures of the two stadiums and I realized that I didn't have any albums from either one on Facebook.  So I searched for my old camera and found some pictures from both.  I think all the pictures I found were taken in 2007 or 2008.

I went to a lot more games at Shea Stadium than Yankee Stadium, but I seem to have more vivid memories at Yankee Stadium (perhaps because the Shea Stadium games blend together more easily).  My guess is that I went to something like 13-20 games at the old Yankee Stadium.  I was looking at Baseball-Reference and trying to figure out what my first game at Yankee Stadium was.  Here's what I think I know about it:  it was a day game (almost certainly a weekend), Scott Sanderson pitched, and Stump Merrill was the manager.  Scott Sanderson was a Yankee from 1991-1992.  Stump Merrill managed the Yankees from 1990-1991.  So that would put my first game at Yankee Stadium in 1991.  That sounds about right.  I definitely don't think it was any earlier than that.  It could have been 1992 (Showalter was the manager by then, but maybe I'm wrong about Merrill being the manager), but it definitely wasn't any later than that.  On April 20, 1991, the Yankees lost to the Royals 5-1.  On May 18, the Yankees lost to the Mariners 4-1.  On August 10, the Yankees lost to the Tigers 5-1.  Sanderson pitched all those games.  My guess would be the August 10 game, but the Yankees played a doubleheader that day.  I definitely don't think I saw a doubleheader.  Did they do split doubleheaders back then?  So my official guess is the May 18 game.  Attendance that day was 23,017.  On April 20, it was 17,969.  What does that have to do with anything?  I kind of remember sitting up high down the left field line.  I doubt that we would have been sitting there on a day that was as poorly attended as the April 20 game.  The 1992 season gives two possibilities.  The Yankees lost to the Angels 7-3 on August 23.  And they lost to the Blue Jays 12-2 on September 27.  I don't think it was a huge blowout and by the September game, I was already in third grade.  I definitely think it was before that.  So here are my best guesses for my first game at Yankee Stadium:

1.  May 18, 1991
2.  August 10, 1991
3.  April 20, 1991
4.  August 23, 1992
5.  September 27, 1992

Of course, it's entirely possible that I'm wrong about the Yankees losing and/or Sanderson pitching, but I am pretty confident about it being a day game in 1991 or 1992.  I guess it could have even been 1990, but I don't think it was that early.

In the mid-90s, my friend Andrew's father knew people and he used to get tickets that were the first row behind the visitors' dugout.  If I remember correctly, the face value of those tickets was $25 at the time.  I went with him and sat in those seats for maybe three or four games from about 1993-1996ish.  We would always ask the other team for a ball when they were coming off the field.  I was there for an Orioles game when Rafael Palmeiro looked at me after throwing the ball to somebody else and told me that he would give me a ball the next inning.  He never gave me a ball.  I never liked him.  I do like how the picture of Rafael Palmeiro pointing his finger and lying in Congress is the first picture that comes up when you Google him.  Then I went to a Royals game and Andrew, his other friend, and I all got balls from the Royals.  I think Wally Joyner was the Royals' first baseman who gave me a ball.

Here are some other games I remember going to:

August 13, 1997- Hideki Irabu pitched a weekday afternoon game.  There was a rain delay.  I was able to quickly look up that game because I remember the Rangers had recently signed Joe Sakic to an offer sheet and the Yankees traded for Mike Stanley that day.

August 16, 1999- Roger Clemens was having a rough first season with the Yankees, but he pitched a gem before Mariano Rivera came in for the last out.  At that point, we didn't know that he was a cheater.  It was the year before I started working at camp and my brothers got tickets from somebody at camp.  It might have been the first time I ever had Dippin' Dots, the ice cream of the late 1990s.

July 29, 2005- I think this was my first game at Yankee Stadium since the 1999 game.  The Yankees lost to the Angels.  I don't really remember much about this game, but I think I went with a bunch of people from camp.  Tom and Ethan might have been at this game as well.  Tom was working at camp that summer.  He definitely came to a game with us either in 2005 or 2006.  I might have gone to another game in 2005, though.

July 28, 2006- I remember going to this game and Chien-Ming Wang dominating (complete game, two-hit shutout), but I don't really remember it being John's birthday.  Again, I went with a bunch of people from camp.

August 11, 2006- I don't really remember the details of this game.  I went with John and Vin and I think Tommy as well.  What I do remember is that it was two days after Vin and I were cheated out of our beer pong championship.  There was a camp party that night that we were not expected to attend because of a dispute that Vin got into because of us being cheated out of the beer pong championship.  But we did go to the party after the game for spite.

May 5, 2007- I remember this one well.  It was a Saturday and I had a grad school class in the morning.  John called me while I was in class, but my phone was off.  He drove to my house, but nobody was home.  So he left a message on my phone saying that he had tickets, but he had to leave for the game.  If I wanted to come, I could meet him there.  So I drove myself to the Bronx.  I think Vin and Ronnie tried to come up from Catholic, but they didn't make it.  So it was John, his future wife Liz, and me.  We were in the right field bleachers (the only time I sat in the right field bleachers at the old Stadium).  Chien-Ming Wang dominated the Mariners.  He was pitching a perfect game.  Liz noticed that the crowd was reacting a little bit differently to every out, but she didn't realize it was a perfect game.  When she asked, John and I did the whole superstitious thing and just told her not to worry about it.  Hideki Matsui made a nice running catch on a long fly ball hit by Ichiro leading off the seventh.  I thought he was going to finish it.  But with one out in the eighth, Ben Broussard hit a home run.  The next day, this happened.

May 22, 2007- My friend Jon and his brother came to New York to see Yankee Stadium.  I went to the game with them and John.  I think it was the only Yankee-Red Sox game I went to at the old Stadium.

September 3, 2007- It was Labor Day and two days after Notre Dame played an embarrassing game against Georgia Tech.  It was the last time I saw Roger Clemens.  He did not pitch well.

My view for the game on Labor Day 2007.  I always try to get better seats than this these days, but prices were so high the last few years of the old Yankee Stadium.

May 21, 2008- My last game at the old Stadium.  I was off the following day for Ascension Thursday.  I went with Andy.  A-Roid hit a steroid ball.  One thing from the box score that's interesting is that Robinson Cano was hitting .206 after this game.

The view I had for my last game at old Yankee Stadium.

So that's what I remember of Yankee Stadium.  In 2005, the Yankees had an average attendance of 50,502.  And it just went up from there.  The atmosphere was great, much better than the new Stadium.  I really wish the Yankees would have just renovated the Old Stadium, but Big Stein was not going to allow the Mets to be the only New York team to get a new stadium.  The Yankees once played in a great stadium; now they play in a shopping mall with a baseball game going on inside of it.