New York Yankees tickets

THE NEW YORK YANKEES didn't always play in the most famous stadium in the world. In fact, they weren't always called the Yankees. In 1903, a team called the Baltimore Orioles moved to New York and changed their name to the Highlanders, after their new home field, Hilltop Park, situated on elevated land at West 165th Street at the northern end of Manhattan, now the site of Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital. Legend has it that a few years later the New York sportswriters grew tired of trying to squeeze this lengthy name into headlines and began calling the team the Yankees.

Hilltop was a small, deteriorating field. So the Yankees happily accepted the 1913 offer by the New York Giants of the National League to share their home park, Polo Grounds, only a short distance away at West 155th Street. The Yankees were welcome there until 1921 when, with the help of an exciting young slugger named Babe Ruth, the team outdrew their hosts by 350,000 fans. This prompted Giants owner Charles Stoneham to evict the Yankees, effective at the end of the 1922 season. The owners of the Yankees then pur¬chased a ten-acre parcel of land in the Bronx, across the Harlem River and just south of Polo Grounds. It was there that they erected the House That Ruth Built-at that time the grandest ballpark ever built. And it remains so.

Prior to Yankee Stadium, baseball parks were mostly pastoral sites, with small wooden grandstands. Though these fields were built in the midst of cities, the game wasn't as popular as it would become, and large stadiums weren't needed. The Babe, with his ability to hit prodigious home runs and his larger-than-life image, changed all that. As he became one of the great American heroes, Ruth brought attention to the sport. Fans responded, turning a mostly rural game into America's pastime and ushering in the era of large stadiums.

Since the Babe, the Yankees have stood for a winning tradition. From 1921 to 1964, the Yankees played in twenty-nine World Series. More seasons than not, the Yanks were vying for the Championship. They expected to win, and so did their fans.

The dynasty ended in 1965, a result of poor management. With the advent of the amateur draft, the Yanks could no longer merely sign any young, talented player at will, and the organization lacked quality replacements for their aging roster. In 1973, George Steinbrenner bought the team and endeavored to restore the Yankees' luster. They've since won six World Cham¬pionships-not a bad record in the free-agency era. All this success, however, has not always translated to ticket sales, which have been hampered by the lack of parking, highway traffic jams, and the allegedly unsafe neighborhood. Once inside, though, there is nothing else like it in baseball-or in all of sports, for that matter.

The Yankee Stadium of today is not the same ballpark as it was before the renovation of 1974-1975, a thorough reconstruction that removed much of its unique look. The monuments to Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Miller Huggins that stood in play in center field were placed behind the left-center-field wall in a lovely enclosed space called Monument Park. The concrete roof that over-hung and encircled the stadium was removed, as were the two auxiliary score-boards located at the base of the outfield walls. Still, the place enthralls. When you emerge from the tunnel, you cannot help but be awed by the majestic expanse, echoing greatness from decades past. No matter how often you walk through those gates, no matter where you sit, the feeling is there, * thrilling yet humbling.

BOB COSTAS (BROADCASTER) "First time I remember: September 1959, Baltimore at New York. I'm seven. My dad takes me to Yankee Stadium. Ori¬oles beat Yanks, 7-2. Mantle doesn't play. After watching baseball on black-and-white TV, the field, base paths, stands-everything looks so vivid that it's almost breathtaking for a little kid. After the game, they let you leave by way of the warning track. We got to the monuments in center field and I was pretty sure they were tombstones-the burial places of Hug-gins, Ruth, and Gehrig. Would Mantle and Joe D. someday rest there, too? It was a bit much for a kid to contemplate."

DEREK JETER "Yankee Stadium-it was gigantic. Everything looked so, so big. I mean, that's pretty much what I remember. It seemed larger than life."

RAY ROBINSON (AUTHOR) "I was taken to my first major-league game at Yankee Stadium by my next-door neighbor, who I'm sure was a Prohibition-era bootlegger. I was about eight years old at the time, and my elderly companion kept telling me to keep my eyes on Babe Ruth. Instead, I kept watching Lou Gehrig, who had played at Columbia, which was across the street from my apartment house. Sure enough, Lou hit a line-drive homer that day. The other fellow I couldn't take my eyes off was Herb Pennock, for whom the term 'stylish southpaw' had to be invented. I haven't the slightest notion who won that day-the Yankees were playing the great Philadelphia Athletics-but the enormity of the sta¬dium, the constant roar and growling of the large crowd, and the smoke that descended over the field late in the afternoon is something I'll never forget."

TINO MARTINEZ "Yankee Stadium, in the 1981 World Series. My dad brought me and my brother to the game here, and it's the first time I really walked into a major-league stadium. I was fourteen years old."
JASON DICKSON "First big-league stadium .. . was when I first got called up to the big leagues: Yan¬kee Stadium. I was a Yankees fan my whole life grow¬ing up, so I was in Yankee Stadium pitching against the Yankees . . . It was pretty amazing."

ROLLIE SHELDON "This sure beats Auburn, New York, and Woodstock Academy, Connecticut. After I signed, the Yankees invited me to the stadium to work with Ed Lopat before going to Class D ball. As I sat in the stands watching a game later, Moose Skowron hit a low liner to right field that got to the 407-foot auxiliary scoreboard so quick it seemed unreal. I had a feeling I was overmatched, and these players were in a league of their own. Luckily, I made the jump from Class D to the stadium the very next year, 1961."

MARK MCGWIRE "My first real game in the big leagues was Yankee Stadium. So I was pretty proud of that. But you can't psychologically go, 'Oh, my God, this is historically one of the greatest stadiums in the world . . . I understand that 'Hey, this is dust a stadium. I can't get caught up in the history; I've got to play the game of baseball."

BUCK SHOWALTER "First time I was in Yankee Stadium . . . it was breathtaking. I think baseball sepa¬rates itself from all other sports, where I think it's one of the few sports where fans go to a game to see the venue, to see the stadium, as opposed to, sometimes, to see the game ... It's a place where you can have a conversation with your son or daughter, and you can spend the time well."

PETE VAN WIEREN (BROADCASTER) "The first Major League Baseball stadium I saw was the old Yankee Stadium when I was a kid. I think I was about eleven or twelve years old, and most of the baseball I was familiar with was baseball games I'd heard on the radio, or I occasionally saw a World Series game or a Game of the Week on television. So when you walk into that major-league ballpark for the first time, and it's that particular ballpark, with all those great Yan¬kees teams back in the fifties, it was like heaven to me, that was the greatest thing I had ever seen. I grew up in Rochester, New York. It was during a family vacation in New York City. We went to a Yankee-Tigers doubleheader. I even know Whitey Ford pitched the first game of that doubleheader. I'll never forget that."

REX HUDLER "When I got to the big leagues, playing in Yankee Stadium, being a Yankee, growing up there and walking through the tunnels to get to the clubhouse, it was dark in the clubhouse, I could feel the spirits of Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, all the great players. As I walked to the clubhouse, opened up the door to Yankee Stadium and all the white pin-striped jerseys were hanging, it was like a ray of light come beaming out of that locker room."