By Bill Madden
New York Daily News
Updated Wednesday, March 26th 2008, 11:22 AM
Harris/AP
Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio at Yankee Stadium before an Old Timers game in 1972.
AP
Yogi Berra leaps into the arms of Don Larsen after Larsen's memorable perfect game at Yankee Stadium in the 1956 World Series.
Simmons/News
The Yankees and visiting Devil Rays watch a video tribute to Thurman Munson in 2004. Munson, a beloved Yankee, died during the 1979 season.
I feel as if I've spent half my life in Yankee Stadium, bearing witness to thousands of games as a fan and reporter in the grand old ballpark's two incarnations.
George Steinbrenner and his emissaries of progress will have to understand if I'm taking this coming of the wrecking ball a little personally.
I saw almost all of Mickey Mantle's career played out there while never quite comprehending the disproportionate amount of booing accorded such an otherwise beloved Yankee in all his pregame introductions. I was there, second row, upper deck in left, for Don Larsen's perfect game, and again, in the press box, for David Wells' and David Cone's perfectos more than four decades later.
The memory of an empty home plate as eight Yankees stood somberly at their positions, heaving with emotion, in a moment of silence for their fallen captain, Thurman Munson, remains frozen in my mind, just as surely as those of Wade Boggs on the police horse, the - prematurely - returning Billy Martin running out on the field, doffing his cap to an adoring packed-house Old-timers Day crowd; and Reggie Jackson, then with the Angels, basking in the satisfaction of his monster 1982 homecoming home run off Ron Guidry as another raucous crowd chanted "Steinbrenner sucks! Steinbrenner sucks! Steinbrenner sucks!"
Still, for all those memories, none is more vivid than the first.
Until my dad informed me that we were going to my first major league baseball game that morning of June 27, 1953, my only image of Yankee Stadium was off the grainy, black-and-white Dumont TV in which the picture hardly varied from the pitcher throwing to the batter. I had assumed the stadium was not much different from the wooden grandstand structures our local high school teams played in - just a little larger.
Imagine my surprise then when we parked the car in a lot on 161st St. and began approaching the foreboding concrete and limestone edifice.
"Where's Yankee Stadium?" I asked.
"This is it," my dad answered.
Once inside, my father led me through a portal on the third-base side and back out into the sunshine to about the most awe-inspiring sight I had ever seen - this sweeping expanse of emerald green where the Yankees, in their bright, pinstriped home whites, were taking batting practice while the Cleveland Indians, in their visiting grays, looked on from the third-base dugout. When the game began, I was transfixed on the opposing pitchers - Eddie Lopat for the Yankees, who looked far bigger than his 5-10, 180-pound frame, and Mike Garcia, whose glowering countenance and dark, swarthy complexion made him look every bit the enemy my father had depicted him to be.
Three years later, my father felt I had grown enough as a fan to warrant experiencing my first World Series game. On Oct. 8, 1956, he got me excused from my fifth-grade class to take in Game 5 of the Yankees-Dodgers battle. It would only turn out to be the greatest game in World Series history, as Larsen - the free-spirited righthander who had been KO'd by the Dodgers in the second inning of Game 2 - retired all 27 Brooklyn hitters while out-dueling Sal Maglie, 2-0. Afterward, as we walked across the MaCombs Dam Bridge to our car, which was parked on the street in Harlem, my dad said to me: "Just so you know, not all World Series games are like this, but we're all going to be famous now, everyone who was there today."
Nearly 42 years later, a surreal feeling came over me, along with the echo of my father's words, as I sat transfixed in the press box on the afternoon of May 17, 1998 watching David Wells - who had attended the same high school in San Diego as Larsen - pitch the second perfect game in Yankee Stadium history. As I recorded Wells' masterpiece against the Minnesota Twins in my scorecard, I couldn't help thinking to myself: "Dad, are you here somewhere?"
When a year later, Cone pitched his perfect game - on a day the Yankees honored Larsen's 1956 batterymate Yogi Berra, with Larsen also in attendance - Yankee Stadium, for me, took on an almost haunted quality.
It was even more so on those back-to-back nights in 2001 under a full harvest moon, when Tino Martinez and Scott Brosius each hit two-out, two-run, game-tying, ninth-inning homers off Diamondbacks closer Byung-Hyun Kim, sending the Yankees on to wins in Games 4 and 5 of the World Series. Sitting next to Philadelphia Daily News columnist Sam Donnellon in the press box after the Brosius homer, I said: "Are we really here or merely in some sort of time warp?"
Another serendipitous moment that will always have a lasting place in my Yankee Stadium memory bank occurred on April 26, 1990. The Yankees were playing the Mariners, whose main attractions were Randy Johnson, the pitcher that day, and their budding star center fielder Ken Griffey Jr. I was at the game as a fan, sitting in the Yankees' family section in the first-base reserve seats when I suddenly spotted Ken Griffey Sr., the former Yankee who was now playing for the Reds, two seats down from me. The Reds had an off-day in Philadelphia and Senior had taken the opportunity to watch Junior play at Yankee Stadium.
In the fourth inning, the Yankees' Jesse Barfield hit a drive to left center that sent Junior into overdrive pursuit. As the ball disappeared over the wall, so too did Junior for an instant before pulling himself back onto the field, waving his glove triumphantly. The momentarily stunned crowd suddenly began applauding - an extraordinary gesture, I thought, for an opposing player who had just robbed a Yankee of a home run - as the smiling Junior trotted in from center field and as I glanced over at Ken Sr. I could see him wiping his eyes.
"That," I said to him, "was the greatest catch I have ever seen." Before he could answer, a woman in front of us turned and replied: "I didn't think it was such a great catch." We gave her a confused look, before she thrust out her hand to Ken Sr. and said, smiling: "I'm Marla Barfield, Jesse's wife."
It remains the greatest catch I've ever seen, if only because of the circumstances surrounding it.
Besides the great games and great plays, there was a lot of great humor, too. The "Reggie's Revenge" homer off Guidry, topped only by the homer Jackson hit on Opening Day 1978 when 50,000 "Reggie" bars rained down on the field. Perhaps the funniest moment, though, was Jimmy Piersall of the Indians, in a 1961 game, taking a seat behind the monuments in center field when weak-hitting Yankee pitcher Ryne Duren was coming to bat. I was a fan that day, too, wondering like everyone else what was going on as Indians manager Jimmie Dykes came out of the dugout, waving frantically to the umpires to order Piersall to come out from hiding. The next day, Piersall was quoted as saying he just wanted to have a private talk with the Babe.
Yes, it's been a wonderfully memorable ride these last 55 years. While I'm sure the new Stadium will have vastly superior working conditions along with plenty of other amenities never dreamed of by old Jacob Ruppert, so much of what baseball has meant to me will be forever embedded in the empty green expanse across the street.
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