I’ve always had a very intimate relationship with the New York Yankees.  It started when I moved to New York from Oakland and my favorite baseball player Ricky Henderson followed me.  That was a good sign.  I could root for the Yankees with all my heart knowing that my favorite player was now down with them too.  I was really into baseball as a kid, as was my older cousin Chris.  We would go to Spring Training every March and check out the team (see my Spring Training post from this past summer), and of course we would go to a handful of games every season at Yankee Stadium.  Because of our family connects to the Yanks, my Dad would get my name up on the scoreboard for my birthday, which wasn’t so easy to do back in the day.  Those were the years for me, when it was Randolph, Mattingly, Winfield, Henderson, and the rest of the crew.  They didn’t win championships but they were a great squad.  Remember bat day?  Check the pic below from my 4th grade birthday party trip to Yankee Stadium…

Now that Yankee Stadium is closed, I would like to pay tribute to the many memories I have of it.  I’ve been to the stadium with my family and friends as both a kid and an adult, I’ve taken groups of kids from White Plains on field trips to games, I’ve worked as an intern for MSG as a high school senior and handed stats to Al Trautwig in the press box (I also got to go on the field, in the dugout, and in the locker room), and I’ve sat in all the sections of the stadium from the bleachers to the mezzanine boxes behind the plate where they give you the fish nets to catch foul balls.  I even sat in the “Billy Crystal” seats right next to the Yankees dugout where you can basically touch the players while they’re in the batters box.  But one game stands out as the best Yankee game I’ve ever been too, and the best seats I’ve ever had at Yankee Stadium.

It was May 27th, 1991, two days after my 13th birthday, and the Yanks were playing the Red Sox, easily the biggest rivalry in sports.  Both my cousin Chris and I brought a crew of friends to the game, and together we all took over a nice section of seats about five rows behind the Red Sox dugout, which was sick because you could see right into the Yankees dugout.  It was an eventful game and a beautiful spring New York day, but what made it so crazy was Mel Hall blasting a three run home run in the bottom of the ninth with two outs to win the game 6-5 (check the pic above).  We all went nuts.  It was probably the happiest I had ever been at that point in my life.  Check it out…

I was searching online for information from that game, and I came across a Red Sox fan blog that had a story about it simply called the MEL HALL GAME.  Even Red Sox fans had a great time that day at Yankee Stadium!  Check it out, it has the lineups and the game summary along with a cute story about being Red Sox fans in New York…

JOY OF SOX: MEL HALL GAME

Well I’m sure we won’t call the new stadium next door The House That Ruth Built, but we will be able to take the Metro North train there from White Plains.  And I’m pretty sure that lunatic fans like the one above will still be in the stands rooting for the Bronx Bombers.  See you next season…oh, and Yankee Stadium, we will never forget you, thanks for the memories…