Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Remembering the First game at Yankee Stadium April 18, 1923
It was 87 years ago that "The House That Ruth Built" opened for business. It was Red Sox versus
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Remembering the First game at Yankee Stadium April 18, 1923
It was 87 years ago that "The House That Ruth Built" opened for business. It was Red Sox versus Yankees. Boston owner Harry Frazee walked on the field side-by-side with Yankee mogul Jake Ruppert. The teams followed the march beat of the Seventh Regiment Band, directed by John Phillip Sousa, to the centerfield flagpole, where the 1922 pennant and the American flag were hoisted.
Many of those who made up the estimated attendance of 74,217, later changed to 60,000, wore heavy sweaters, coats and hats. Some sported dinner jackets. Game time temperature was a brisk 49 degrees, and wind whipped the Yankee pennants and kicked up dust from the dirt road leading to stadium.
More than 25,000 fans were denied admission; many, however, would stay outside in the cold listening to the roars of the crowd.
The Yankee Stadium, as it was first called, was constructed on virtually the same spot where baseball began in the Bronx, a place where the Unions of Morrisania played the game and close to where the old Melrose Station of the Harlem Railroad was located. The original street address was 800 Ruppert Place.
From 1903 until April 11, 1913, the New York American League baseball team played home games at run down Hilltop Park. Then for a decade the Yankees were tenants of the New York Giants at the Polo Grounds. The relationship between the teams was strained.
After the 1920 season, a season where the gate appeal of Babe Ruth helped pushed Yankee attendance to 100,000 more than that of the Giants, the Yanks were told to find a new place to play ball.
So Yankee owners Colonel Jake Ruppert and Colonel Til Hutson dreamed the dream of a new ballpark, one along the lines of the Roman Coliseum.
The Yankee Stadium was built on ten acres that had been a mess of boulders and garbage on the site of a lumberyard in the west Bronx, City Plot 2106, Lot 100. The cost for the land obtained from William Waldorf Astor’s estate and located directly across the Harlem River from the Polo Grounds, was $675,000.
“They are going up to Goatville,” snapped John J. McGraw, manager of the Giants. “And before long they will be lost sight of. A New York team should be based on Manhattan island.”
Ruppert did not deign to dignify McGraw’s criticism with a public response. However, he asked newspapers to publish the address of Yankee Stadium in all stories about it.
Osborn Engineering Company of Cleveland, Ohio had the design responsibilities. The White Construction Company of New York was given the construction job. Beer baron Ruppert, a demanding taskmaster and one of the wealthiest men in the United States, insisted the ambitious project be completed "at a definite price" $2.5-million, be built in just 185 working days and be up and running by Opening Day 1923. What he wanted, he would get.
Ruppert also bought out Huston's share of the Yankees for $1,500,000 leaving "The Prince of Beer" in total control of all things Yankee including the team’s new home.
Some said the new baseball park should be named “Ruth Field.” Ruppert insisted it be known as “Yankee Stadium.” It would be the first ballpark to be referred to as a stadium.
Original architectural plans envisioned a triple-decked park roofed all the way around. An early press release explained that the new ballpark would be shaped like the Yale Bowl, enclosed with towering embattlements, that all events inside would be "impenetrable to all human eyes, save those of aviators."
However, that initial lofty initial, grand design was quickly scaled back as those plans were deemed too foreboding for a sports facility, making for a place where the sun would hardly ever shine.
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