Apr 28 2009
Remembering the House That Ruth Built
This morning I rifled through my old emails and started to delete them when I came across an old one from my aunt after she attended the final game played at Yankee Stadium last September:
Dear Douglas,
Wanted to know your thoughts about the ’stadium’ closing? I went to the final game. It would have been better if this was October and the last game, but it was still a very special night. Unfortunately I was delusional to think that I was going to walk on the field. I got there early, but not early enough. So after three hours, and walking the whole stadium three times from top to bottom, and still on the top level I said ‘uncle’. Settled into my seat and just enjoyed the entire day/evening/night. It was great, talking to different people hearing their memories, and recanting my own. Here’s to the next chapter, and hopefully #27.
I was so involved in other projects at the time that I never had the opportunity to reply. But, in retrospect, I didn’t respond because I never had a chance to sit down and think about what the old Yankee Stadium had meant to me throughout the course of my life. I had been to so many games, spent so much of my life there and even when I moved away, I made the time and effort to take my children to Yankee Stadium annually to see a game.
Yankee Stadium was a special place. Whenever I handed the gate attendant my ticket and cascaded through the turnstiles, I was immediately overcome with an aura of magic and greatness that emanated throughout the skeleton of the building. As I walked through the inner sanctum of the hallways that connected the outside world to the majestic palace that Ruth built, I could feel the history of the stadium rise up and envelope me. It was hallowed ground.