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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 3425409, member: 289"] Yankee Stadium The history of New York City baseball is inextricably bound with the city of Baltimore and the Orioles. The Mets won their famous series against the Orioles. The Brooklyn Dodgers imported the top players from the Baltimore Orioles of the 1890’s and won a couple of pennants with them. Ex-Orioles John McGraw and Wilbert Robinson became the long-time managers of the Giants and Dodgers, respectively. Of course, Babe Ruth was a native of Baltimore. And the team he played for was once known as the Baltimore Orioles. When the American league was formed in 1901, its President, Ban Johnson, wanted to put teams in all the major cities. When the National league had abandoned the city or had changed the name of their team there, the new league named their team after the old one to try to draw away its fans. The Chicago Cubs were originally the Chicago White Stockings. So Johnson put a team in Chicago called the White Sox, (in the new parlance). The team that became the Boston Braves was originally the Boston Red Stockings. So the American League created the Boston Red Sox. The St. Louis Cardinals were the St. Louis Browns before they changed their colors. So the new league created a new St. Louis Browns. The owner of the New York Giants, Andrew Freedman, however was politically connected, (Tammany Hall), and prevented Johnson from establishing a team in New York. In Baltimore, the Orioles had gone out of business when Ned Hanlon transferred their best players to his new team in Brooklyn. So Johnson created a new Baltimore Orioles team for the American league. It wasn’t very good so it didn’t draw much and in 1903 Johnson decided to find a way to move the team to New York. He sold the team to some front men who were actually working for “Big Bill” Devery, one of Manhattan’s biggest gamblers and Frank Farrell, owner of 250 pool halls. These men were as well connected politically as the Giant’s new owner, John T. Brush. They found a lot on the banks of the Hudson River, northwest of the Polo Grounds between 165th and 168th street and Broadway and Fort Washington Avenue. (looking at the photocopy of the picture of Yankee Stadium and the Polo Grounds I have included, Hilltop Park, if it had not been torn down, would have been directly in line with the two ballparks at the river’s edge at the top of the picture). They rented this land from the New York Institute for the Blind, (which should have given them an unlimited supply of umpires). This was the highest spot on Manhattan Island, with a fine view of the Hudson River and the New Jersey Palisades. It was decided to call the place Hilltop Park and the team the New York Highlanders. In the dead ball era, when nobody thought in terms of home runs, the distances didn’t matter much. Hilltop Park had a centerfield fence that was 542 feet away, (the Red Sox at that time played in the Huntington Avenue Grounds where center field was a astonishing 635 feet away!). It was 365 down the left field line and 400 down the right field line. There was also a swampy area in right field that had not been properly drained. At first they simply roped it off and it was ground rule double if the ball was hit beyond the rope. Then they tried constructing a wooden platform over it. Finally they just indented the fence around it. This, however was often obscured as the management, for big games, allowed fans to sit in the outfield, where they could watch the game behind ropes. The normal capacity of the park was 16,000 but in some games, 30,000 fans were in attendance. The lease ran out after 10 seasons. The Yankees had rented Hilltop to the Giants when the Polo Grounds burned down in 1911 and the Giants returned the favor by allowing the Yankees to co-habit their park, a cozy arrangement that lasted another ten years. Hilltop Park was torn down and replaced, for a time by a Tabernacle put up by ex-major leaguer Billy Sunday, the leading evangelist of the day. Eventually the Columbia Presbyterian Hospital was constructed on the site. It was decided that since the team was no longer in Hilltop Park, the name “Highlanders” was outmoded. A contest was run to find a new team nickname. The winner was “The Yankees”. But the Yankees were just as mediocre as the Highlanders had been and the Giants consistently outdrew them. The team was sold by Devery and Farrell to “Colonels” Tillinghast L’Hommedeau Huston and Jacob Ruppert in 1915. Ruppert bought Huston out in 1923 to become the sole owner. Before that he had spent a big chunk of their money to obtain the services of Mr. George Herman Ruth, originally, as the Yankees were, a native of Baltimore. He promptly started shattering home run records while the Yankees won their first three pennants in his second, third and fourth years. Meanwhile John McGraw’s Giants were winning pennants in all those years as well, (they won 4 in a row from 1921-24). Those first two years, the entire World Series was played in the Polo Grounds and the Giants won both series, the second a sweep. But McGraw wasn’t happy. With Ruth hitting all those home runs, an abomination of the “inside baseball” game McGraw had always advocated, the Yankees for the first time began outdrawing their landlords. McGraw wanted them out. “If we kick them out, they won’t be able to find another location on Manhattan Island. They’ll have to move to the Bronx or Long Island. The fans will forget about them and they’ll be through.” A mildly inaccurate assessment. The two colonels first looked at a lot in Long Island City, Queens, then made a deal for the Hebrew Orphan Asylum Grounds in Upper Manhattan which fell through when the shocked trustees found out that alcohol would be sold and consumed on the grounds. “Colonel Huston, who was an engineer and architect then devised a plan to build a stadium over the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks at Eighth Avenue and 32ed Street The Pennsy was willing but…just as the deal was about to be closed, the War Department stepped in and killed it. The space was to be reserved indefinitely for anti-aircraft gun emplacements.” (This is from “Diamonds”.) One has to wonder why the War Department was concerned about anti-aircraft guns in 1923 when they were telling Billy Mitchell that aircraft weren’t much of a weapon. Finally they found a ten acre plot deliciously just across the Harlem River from the Polo Grounds in a corner of the William Waldorf Astor estate. That sounds grand but actually the site was a lumberyard surrounded by a huge rock field. The virtues of the site were the excellent bedrock and the many roads that ran by the place. The Colonels wanted to build the largest stadium in America, topping the Polo Grounds, and, indeed, Yankee Stadium was the first edifice in this country to be called a “stadium”. The White Construction Company excavated 25,000 cubic yards of earth to lay the foundation, then used 45,000 cubic yards of dirt to grade the site. They put up 2,200 tons of structural steel and 3,000,000 board feet of lumber to form 28,000 cubic yards of concrete reinforced by 8000 tons of steel. 116,000 square feet of sod was used to top the playing field. 950,000 board feet of fir brought in via the Panama Canal were used to construct the bleachers. 400,000 pieces of maple and 135,000 individual steel casings and more than a million brass screws were used to construct 58,000 seats. The job was done in only 284 working days to be ready for the opening of the 1923 season. There was a plan for completely enclosing the park, much in the style of stadiums created decades later but this was dropped in favor of having the three concrete decks, (this was the first three decker stadium in America as well), which extended down to the right and left field corners, (as can be seen in the photograph of the two ballparks I have included with this write-up- it was taken four days after Yankee Stadium opened). In the winter of 1927-28, the three decks were extended around the right field corner, increasing the capacity to 67,000. A unique cooper façade was built around the roof of the three decks, which added to the stadium’s grandeur and became a trademark. The original dimensions of the park were 280 feet down the left field line, 460 feet to left center, 490 feet to deepest center, 429 feet to right center and 295 feet down the right field line. When the 1928 alterations were made, the distance down the left field line was increased to 301 feet, still rather small compared to modern parks. There were no monuments in center field but there was a flagpole. It was 25 feet in front of a trapezoid that went back to 490 feet. Originally, there was a cinder track around the stadium, put there for the bicycle races that were all the rage at the time. This was hedge against the considerable investment- to give the Colonels and additional source of revenue. It wasn’t needed and disappeared after a few years. The foul area was extensive behind home plate but narrow down the lines. In 1937, the outfield fence was redone, with the centerfield wall being brought in to 461 feet and the flagpole moved to 10 feet inside of that. That year Joe DiMaggio caught a Hank Greenberg drive on the other side of the flagpole. Willie Mays was not the only centerfielder who knew how to go and get the ball. The first monument was constructed in 1932 to honor Miller Huggins, the Yankee’s manager through most of the 20’s, under the flagpole. It was later joined by monuments to Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth in 1941. According to “Green Cathedrals”, “Casey Stengel once watched a long drive to center go past his center fielder and rattle around behind the monuments while his outfielder had trouble picking it up. Finally Casey yelled ‘Ruth! Gehrig! Huggins! SOMEBODY! Throw that darned ball in here now!” Green Cathedrals also says that the 461 foot mark, which was to the right of the flagpole and monuments, was not really in deepest center field, which was not actually measured and may have been as far from home plate as 475 or even 480 feet, which would make it almost as far as the clubhouse in the Polo Grounds. The new park was called “The House That Ruth Built” because his popularity made it possible and even necessary. However, the park was not necessarily favorable to him, even if the right field stands were also known as “Ruthville.” Playing in the Polo Grounds in 1920-22, Ruth hit 75 home runs at home and 73 on the road. In the first three years in Yankee Stadium he hit 54 home runs at home and 58 on the road. This includes the times of his “bellyache” and his suspension for barnstorming. In 1926-28 he hit 80 home runs at home and 81 on the road. All told, in 12 seasons in Yankee stadium the Babe hit 259 homers at home and 252 on the road. The right field stands were also sometimes known as “Gehrigville” but Big Lou hit only 9 more homers at home than on the road in his career, (251-242), all of it as a Yankee in the Yankee Stadium era. Joe DiMaggio, a righthanded batter, was much more affected by the stadium, hitting only 148 of his 361 homers there. Mickey Mantle hit 266 home runs at home and 270 on the road. One player who was clearly helped out by the dimensions of the stadium was Yogi Berra, who had had the opposite of DiMaggio’s numbers almost exactly, 210 at home and 148 on the road. I don’t have Roger Maris’ full numbers but people might be surprised that in his two MVP years, 1960-61, he had 43 home runs at home and 57 on the road, (these numbers courtesy of Bill James’ 1984 Baseball Abstract). In 1965 Charley Finley, claiming that the Yankees won all those pennants because of their short right field fence, constructed a small bleacher area in Kansas City’s Municipal Stadium, which he called the “Pennant Porch”, the front of which was 296 feet from home plate. The A’s didn’t win any pennants with it and the Commissioner ordered it torn down. My theory is that the greatest home run hitters were spray hitters, not pull hitters, with the power to hit it out to all fields and that a short right field fence was more than offset by “Death Valley” in left. If the Yankees wanted to help out their greatest sluggers, they would have been better advised to use more conventional distances. During the 1937 renovation, two auxiliary scoreboards were put on the right and left field fences: you can see the right field score board in the famous shot of Don Larsen throwing the last pitch in his 1956 perfect game. Yankee Stadium was the only one of the three New York City ballparks where an outfielder had a shot at robbing someone of a home run, as Al Gionfriddo did to Joe DiMaggio in the 1947 series, (a play which for some reason does not appear in “Summer in the City”). The uneven fence ranges from 4-13 feet at various locations. The main scoreboard was a large box-like structure in right field with a clock in a vertical extension slightly off-center and a large “Ballantine Beer” sign below it. Passengers on an elevated train running beyond the center field bleachers could get a quick view of the game or, if they got off at the local train station, could climb on the roof and watch the game. The Ballpark Book says “Early Yankee Stadium commanded a reverence that differentiated it from other arenas of its generation. Whereas Ebbets Field, located across the East River in Brooklyn was known for its rollicking fun and zany characters, visitors to Yankee Stadium behaved with a more reserved dignity, a “we’re better than you” arrogance supported by the quiet, businesslike manner in which their team went about winning pennants and championships. Ebbets was a cozy home-style ballpark; Yankee Stadium was a massive corporate-minded stadium.” The team, however, was nice enough to allow the same fans to come on the field after the game and walk to a center field exit to leave so they could get a taste of what it was like to be on the field. (Judging from the pictures, the Giants may have had the same arrangement but I still don’t see where the exit is. However, the Yankees were not above a little chicanery. When Jimmie Foxx complained that the fans in center field made it difficult to see the ball coming out of the pitcher’s hand, the Yankee’s created the first “hitter’s background”, a green curtain that could be raised or lowered as the occasion demanded. The occasion for raising it was when the Yankees were batting. The occasion for lowering it was when the opposition was batting- or if a Yankee hit a long drive that had a chance to go out, (which was exceedingly rare at that distance). It was finally removed to create more seats for the World Series. But it was probably the inspiration for Bill Veeck’s later innovation in Cleveland, where he created an outfield fence that could be hydraulically moved in and out depending on who was at bat. The Commissioner didn’t think much of that, either. There has been a historical debate about whether anyone has ever hit fair ball out of Yankee Stadium. The fact that no one has even alleged that Babe Ruth ever did in his dozen years there illustrates how difficult such a feat would be. Mickey Mantle is said to have come the closest, with a shot that bounced off the right field façade at a spot about 360 feet from home plate but 108 feet up, (and still rising). He missed hitting it over the roof by about 6 inches. Negro League fans have claimed for years that their hero, Josh Gibson, hit a ball fair and over the left field pavilion just inside the foul pole at the 301 foot mark. This is supposed to have taken place in 1934, according to Green Cathedrals and three different Negro League veterans at a 1982 convention claimed to have seen it. However, in the book “Josh Gibson: A Life in the Negro Leagues” by William Brashler, the leading source for this story is Jack Marshall of the Chicago American Giants, who said he had played in the first game of a four team doubleheader and was in the stands to watch the second. However published box scores for the only two such events played that year in Yankee Stadium do not show any home runs hit by anybody in the games involving Gibson’s team, much less Josh himself. Judy Johnson, who played third place for the Crawfords, was quoted as saying “Josh hit the only ball I ever read of that went out of Yankee Stadium.” Cool Papa Bell was their center fielder and later said he heard Josh had hit one out of Yankee Stadium after he left the Crawfords. He was with them the entire 1934 season. It’s understandable that Negro Leaguers and their fans would want their answer to Ruth to have achieved something that Ruth could not do. Mantle himself said he saw someone hit a fair ball out of the stadium- and it wasn’t him. It was the later 60’s and the Yankees were playing the Senators, with both teams near the bottom of the standings late in the year, just playing out the string. Frank Howard hit a drive that went out of the park, just inside the left field foul pole. Roy White agreed, saying he didn’t move a muscle when the ball was hit but just looked up to see how far it would go. Both he and Mantle remember hundreds of fans combing the left field third deck looking for the ball and not finding it. It was a foggy day and the umpire ruled the ball foul. The Yankees were not going to argue and the Senators, just wanting the season to end, didn’t either. Green Cathedrals points out that neither Gibson’s alleged drive or Howard’s shot, (both of which supposedly went out at about the same spot), are as impressive as Mantle’s shot, which was father out into fair territory and which some estimate would have gone 620 feet. For the 1976 renovation, the grandstand was rebuilt without all the supports that were necessary in 1923. The fences were moved out to 312 in left and 310 in right and in to 430 in deep left, 417 in center and 385 in deep right, with the monuments now in “monument park”, which also contains tributes to Ruppert, his first GM, Ed Barrow, DiMaggio, Mantle, Stengel, Joe McCarthy, Thurman Munson and two Popes, who had visited the place: Paul VI and John Paul II. The fences were further adjusted in 1988 to 318 in left, 314 in right, 399 in deep left and 408 in centerfield, making Yankee Stadium for the first time similar to the dimensions in most major league parks. The façade was moved from the grandstand to the center field bleachers, although it is not the same facade, being made of plastic, rather than cooper. As The Ballpark Book says: “They are illusions that mask what is really a facsimile of the old Stadium” Mike Lupica wrote: “It is such a sad baseball thing to see Yankee Stadium getting smaller and smaller somehow with each new season…There was a time you could stand at home plate and look out at the monuments and they would be so far out there it seemed like the next stop on the #4 train.” George Vecsey wrote: “The new breed of players feel like tourists visiting a temple in Egypt or an amphitheater in the old Roman Empire or the Chan Dynasty statue in Vietnam, only able to wonder what it was like when the warriors and the high priests and the performers and the people were in their glory years.” We can see that in “Summer in the City” The most interesting views of Yankee Stadium in “Summer in the City” can be seen on the following pages: On the title pages, we see a panorama of the stadium taken from the centerfield bleachers. You can see the narrowness of foul territory down the lines, the lowness of the walls in right and left. But look at the curve of the wall in left field, to the right of the picture. Instead of curving toward the camera it flies right out of the picture. That’s the “death valley” that Joe DiMaggio faced each time he came to the plate. Page 14 shows the gentle slope of the Yankee Stadium bleachers. In “Diamonds” the author says “The old ballparks had gradual rakes, a nautical term taken from the slant or incline from the vertical, as a ship’s mast. Architects spent much of the 1970’s and 1980’s designing grandstands that had steeper rakes because they were built without supporting posts.” Page 21 shows the peculiar idea of “SRO” at the stadium. This is what happens when 73,000 people show up at a stadium that seats 67,000. On page 29 we see a shot of left field taken from the first base line. Note how rapidly it recedes from the 301 mark in the corner. On page 144 we see this area from a closer perspective, with Sandy Amoros making his famous catch in the 1955 series in front of the foul pole. On page 40 we see the same fence in the background, farther down, next to the bullpen game. Here it is 402 feet away. That gate is where Al Gionfriddo caught DiMaggio’s ball in the ’47 series. On page 42 we see the Steve Bartman’s of the era managing to allow Jack Phillips of the Yankees to catch a foul pop. Compare the height of that fence to the height of the wall of the Polo Grounds as seen on page 71 Page 49 shows the right field auxiliary scoreboard, often shown with Don Larson on the mound, making his last pitch with all those zeros behind him. A shot of Larson pitching that game is on page 160 and also the back cover. This shows the first pitch of that game. It also shows the deepest part of the stadium in back of him, the 457 foot sign, the flagpole and the Huggins, Gehrig and Ruth Monuments. The 461 mark was to the right of the picture but, according to “Green Cathedrals”, the actual deepest part of the stadium was right behind the flag and monuments and may have been as far as 480 feet away. Pages 62-63 have two interesting shots. According to the captions, they appear to be of the same play but the first shot looks like a day game and the second like a night game. The difference is the exposures, obviously. The photographer of the second shot must be just out of the first shot to the left, looking down the third base line. The background of the hulking grandstand affects the shot as well. Notice how close a photographer would get to the action on the field in the days before the zoom lens. In some shots, (pages 101, 122, 125 and 164 are good examples), you see squares or circles next to the baselines that appear to be in the wrong spot for an on deck circle or coach’s box. I suspect they may have been designated areas where photographers were permitted to place themselves to get an action shot. Page 76 shows Mickey Mantle attempting to rob Eddie Robinson of the White Sox of a home run in the right field corner, (Joe DiMaggio was still in center). Again, it shows the shortness of the fence compared to the Polo Grounds, (page 71) and Ebbets Field, (page 165). Page 86 shows the center field bleachers looking from the right field corner. It shows the sharp corner behind the flag pole. That’s where the distance may have been 480 feet. It also shows a small band playing in front of the pole. Presumably this is before the game, not during it! Page 104 has a shot of the main scoreboard behind the centerfield bleachers. My cousin Larry, when he leafed through the book, noticed the beer signs first, (including Ballantine, here). I guess he’s tried most of them in his time. Page 116 is an overhead shot of Yankee Stadium, a sort of companion piece to the shots of Ebbetts Field and the Polo Grounds on pages 78-79, although this was taken two years later. Note that the parking seems better organized. No one is parking on the streets. You can see the wide warning track that still circumnavigates the field. The dimensions of the field are hard to see due to the shadows but note how the left field fence curves out from the foul pole rather than heading straight for center. Note that the stadium has solid walls all the way around and is a building, rather than just a ballpark. You can see extensive foul territory behind the plate that narrows to nothing part of the way down the third base line. Joe DiMaggio, long retired, watches the 1957 World Series from a corner of the grandstand behind and to the left of home plate on page 186. Again note all the foul territory at that spot. See how the outfield fence rises in the background from 4 to 13 feet. Over Joe’s left shoulder we can see where Gibson’s and Howard’s home runs supposedly went out. You can see that the right field grandstand extended farther out into fair territory than the left field grandstand and Mantle’s 1963 homer almost went over that. [/QUOTE]

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