Mon 22 September 2008
After the boys of summer have gone
thirty-nine
So last night was it. The curtain closed on Yankee Stadium, the House that Ruth Built. In this sad, sappy season, the team that's won nearly a quarter of all World Series, and a third of all American League pennants, won't have a postseason to speak of, and the fabled colosseum of America will be bulldozed in favor of the sparkling Steinbrenner Field across 161st Street, a house with fewer seats but more luxury boxes, and so it goes.
Andy Pettitte, back with the Yankees after an unfortunate diversion with the Astros, pitched the last game, got the win. Andy Pettitte, the great hurler of those late '90s teams, in Seinfeld-era, pre-9/11 New York, recorded his 2,000th strikeout on his and the Yankees and our last night at Yankee Stadium.
Derek Jeter went 0-for-5 and recorded the last out for the winning team — the Yankees won their last five games at the Stadium — at one point in the DiMaggio era, they won five World Series in a row at the Stadium. Derek Jeter, who was the wish of many to hit the last home run, Derek Jeter went 0-for-5, then partially redeemed himself with his everyman shortstop skills in the top of the ninth, cleanly fielding a bouncer up the middle and forcing out the batter at first, just as he had done so many times before. Derek Jeter, always a Yankee, who has never had a season without October baseball, will go home to Kalamazoo and watch it on the telly with the rest of us.
George Herman "Babe" Ruth, of course, hit the first home run at Yankee Stadium, that's why they call it the House that Ruth Built. The house another George tore down. In 1922, the Yankees were tenants (as I am a tenant), living under the roof of their landlord, the Giants. The New York Giants, of course, had yet to move to San Francisco, which although a wonderful city, is not giant. They played on the East River in Manhattan's Washington Heights. And the Yankees, that junior circuit startup that had moved up from Baltimore (the hometown of the Babe) 20 years before, and shuffled around different ramshackle sandlots in Harlem, now rented from the Giants. In a ballpark called the Polo Grounds. I assume polo also saw legions of support within its walls and I assume polo was once a tremendous sport, at least in the Northeast, at least in New York. But just like Lou Gehrig, who replaced Wally Pipp in the lineup and went on to play 2,130 straight games at first base — exactly half of his time at Yankee Stadium — Like Gehrig, the Yankees overtook the Giants in popularity and the Giants have never been as popular since. But unlike Pipp, the Giants could kick the Yankees out.
So Col. Ruppert built a park across the river, in the lackluster borough of Mr. Bronck. And he built it bigger and grander and today few people remember the Polo Grounds, but who doesn't know about Yankee Stadium? And Ruth and Gehrig and DiMaggio and Mantle and Jackson and Mattingly and Jeter?
So the last season in the Polo Grounds, as the Giants swept the Yankees out of the World Series in the strangest of subway series — not even a subway, all games in one park — Babe Ruth said, it'd sure be nice to hit the first home run in that new park over there.
And so he did. Opening Day, 1923. Third inning. Over that cozy right field porch built especially for the lefty slugger. Ruth said, "God only knows who will hit the last." But Derek Jeter did not hit the last home run, did not record a hit, in fact, in the last game in the House that Ruth Built. Johnny Damon hit one over the right field porch, and the once-bearded Damon is a memorable player. But he wasn't the last. No, in unceremonious fashion, the backup catcher, Jose Molina, hit his third home run of the season by lifting the ball over the left-center wall, crashing into all those monuments of all those greater players.
I was at Yankee Stadium on the first game of the last homestand at Yankee Stadium. The game rained out. Andrew and I watched the rain fall in torrents -- It was a dark and stormy night. We watched the rain fall for two hours. We ate hot dogs. He bought me some cracker jacks. I didn't care if ever got back — to Queens, where I stayed in the Apple, but — it was root, root for the groundskeepers, please take off the tarp. A rain out. It was a fitting last time for me, and it was a fitting beginning to the end at Yankee Stadium for the Yankees in this swan song of a season, where, five years removed from their last pennant, they literally couldn't buy a break, and the evil Boston and the neophyte Tampa Bay head into October. And the lights go out at Yankee Stadium.
But last night, last night was a good old college try for a lame-duck team against the Orioles, who they swept in the last series at Yankee Stadium. Everyone was there, back for one last night in the blue seats — David Cone and David Wells and Paul O'Neill; Yogi Berra and Whitey Ford; Phil Niekro stole dirt from the pitcher's mound and placed it in a cheap plastic cup.
I hope Paul Simon was there. Our nation turns its lonely eyes to him:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/sports/baseball/21simon.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=paul%20simon&st=cse&oref=slogin
And the injured Jorge Posada, and Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera, who closed a perfect ninth, and Andy Pettite, who pitched, well, five, strong innings, enough for the win. That kind of fab four, that quartet with the pinstripes tattooed under their shirts, winning one last time, just to win.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips, Straining upon the start. The game's afoot. Follow your spirit, and upon this charge Cry, 'God for Gehrig, DiMaggio and Saint George!'
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