The House that
Ruth Built
Lloyd Ultan, Bronx Borough Historian
At the end of the
baseball season in 1922, Col. Jacob Ruppert and his fellow owner of the
New York Yankees American League baseball team, Col. Tillinghast
L'Hommedieu Huston, were faced with a major problem. For years, the team
played in the Polo Grounds in northern Manhattan as the guests of the
New York Giants of the National League. For decades, the Giants were the
premier team in the city and consistently outdrew the hapless Yankees.
That is, until Ruppert acquired the services of Babe Ruth. Ruth's record
for producing home runs was a magnet to the baseball public. His
presence was chiefly responsible for the Yankees winning the American
League pennant for the first time in 1921, and again in 1922.
Both times, the team met
the Giants in the World Series and were beaten. Nevertheless, the
Giants' manager, John McGraw, considered the upstart team a threat to
the continued dominance of his team in the city, and he ordered the
Yankees to play somewhere else in the 1923 season.
The partners acquired
land between 161st Street and 157th Street west of River Avenue in The
Bronx. It was a perfect location. The site, just across the Harlem River
from the Polo Grounds, was serviced by two rapid transit lines and two
nearby bridges. Since Col. Huston was an owner of the Osborn Engineering
Company of Cleveland, Ohio, that corporation got the contract to design
the Yankees' new ball park. When it opened in 1923, Yankee Stadium
attracted a crowd of over 80,000. Here was the first ball park ever
built that had more than two tiers of seats. It was also the first ball
park to call itself a stadium. Its walls were made with Thomas Edison’s
super-hard Portland cement, and a decorative scalloped copper facade
decorated the roof above the grandstand.
As years went on, the
team and its stars attracted the crowds. In Yankee Stadium’s first 75
years, the Yankees won a total of 23 world championships, the most for
any team in any sport played anywhere on the globe. Yankee Stadium
acquired an unparalleled history and the Yankees became the first team
to use their ball park to commemorate people. In 1932, the team unveiled
a plaque on a granite stone in front of the center field flagpole to
memorialize Miller Huggins, the first great Yankee manager. In 1941, a
second was added to honor the recently-deceased Lou Gehrig. In 1949, a
third honored Babe Ruth. Meanwhile, other plaques were affixed to the
concrete wall of the bleachers behind the flagpole. The first was for
Jacob Ruppert. His great general ma- nager, Ed Barrow, joined him in
1954. In 1965, another plaque honored the Mass Pope Paul VI celebrated
at Yankee Stadium on the first visit by a pope to the United States.
Four years later, another plaque honored Joe DiMaggio.
In the middle of the
1970s, Yankee Stadium was renovated and the monuments and the flagpole
were relocated behind a fence in what would soon be called Monument
Park. The plaques on the wall multiplied rapidly in the succeeding
years. Two great managers, Joe McCarthy and Casey Stengel, were honored
in 1976. Pope John Paul II was commemorated in 1979 for the Mass he
celebrated at the Stadium. In the 1980s, plaques for Thurmon Munson,
Roger Maris, Elston Howard, Phil Rizzuto, Billy Martin, Lefty Gomez,
Whitey Ford, Bill Dickey and Yogi Berra were added. Don Mattingly's
joined them in 1997. A year earlier, a plaque for Mickey Mantle was
placed on a granite stone in front of the flagpole to join the previous
three.
Monument Park itself has
added to the distinct aura of Yankee Stadium. Unlike other venerable
ball parks with rich histories, Monument Park has helped make Yankee
Stadium a shrine, a place of pilgrimage, or as one fan called it, the
Cathedral of Baseball.
This article
was reprinted with permission from The Bronx Historian On-Line. The
pictures are property of The New York Yankees.
Answers
from Children's page 3
1. Breath
2. A cold
3. An envelope
4. A stamp
5. Below
November Calendar of
Events
If you are looking for
something fun to do, you should check out the Family Art Projects at
Wavehill every Saturday and Sunday.
Nov. 6&7 -
Papermaking Party
It’s fun to recycle
used paper and other stuff into new, colorful, textured sheets you can
actually use to craft and create. Basics for beginners and some new
twists for old hands with a mold and deckle.
Nov. 13&14 -
Creature Comforts of Home
See what Wave Hill’s
birds and animals do for housing. Fashion a clay critter and make it a
home to bring home with you.
Nov. 27&28 -
Garden to Garland
Make a unique, fragrant,
and ornamental decoration. Gather and combine vines, dried herbs, and
flowers from Wave Hill to brighten your walls through the winter
holidays and beyond.
All activities will be
held at the Kerlin Learning Center, 1:00 to 4:00p.m.
Wave Hill • (718)
549-3200 • www.wavehill.org
West 249th Street and
Independence Avenue
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