The All-Star Game is being played at Yankee Stadium on Tuesday night, in this final season for the great stadium. Next year, both the Yankees and the Mets move into new facilities.
As a lifelong Yankees fan and a former sportswriter, I have great memories of my hundreds of trips to the Stadium. I remember my uncle 'Bones' took me to my first game. We once went on an IBM-sponsored bus trip to a game and my cousin Donald got stuck in the bus bathroom, which was quite funny to us as kids, not funny for him. There were probably a half-dozen times I ... well I don't want to say 'skipped' classes while attending college at Fordham University to catch the D Train to see a game. So let's just say I postponed them :)
Last year, I took my two boys to their first game at Yankee Stadium, an experience I blogged about earlier.
I don't know how many times I told people, "I'll meet you outside at the bat at (fill in the time."
The memories could fill a whole book.
But my greatest memory happened at Game 1 of the 1996 World Series, which I was covering as a writer. The series, of course, was memorable. The Yanks came from an 0-2 deficit to beat the mighty Atlanta Braves 4-2 for their first Series title since 1978.
Game 1, though, was fairly forgettable -- a 12-1 Yankees loss, unless you'd like to recall that it was the game where a star (Andruw Jones) was born.
Still, that said, I look back at that day and night with great fondness. I got to the game early. Extremely early. If you knew me from my days as a sportswriter, I usually got to every event AT LEAST three hours before game time. I would set up my computer, make sure I had power, go through early notes, etc., etc.
On this particular day, I got to the Stadium early, left my stuff in the pressroom and headed down to the field just to look around and take in the feel of my first World Series game. At one point, I actually went and sat in the Yankees dugout and it was just me and one other person there. At I'm sitting there, closest to where the tunnel leads back up to the Yankee clubhouse, and I hear a faint voice that 's getting stronger and stronger as it comes toward me. The voice is saying, "And then we'll walk this way, stop here for a moment, and then you'll be introduced, and then you do your thing. Same as always."
It was a Yankees public relations person talking to the man who would throw out the first ball later that night -- Joe DiMaggio.
I didn't say anything, didn't try to introduce myself or anything like that. I wasn't star struck, but to say it was a great thrill to just be within a couple of feet of Joe DiMaggio would be an understatement.
And that's my greatest Yankee Stadium memory.
