Yankee Stadium sport’s most iconic ground? No way

 
Spiro Zavos Columnist

By , 29 Sep 2008 Spiro Zavos is a Roar Expert

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A couple of years ago I went to Yankee Stadium with my sons to see a World Series game. We were seated near the home plate and during the pre-game warm-ups you could hear the players chatting as they belted balls high into the inky-velvet darkness of the night sky.

The facilities at the ancient ground were grotty. Nothing much had changed in the eating places and toilets I guess since 1923 when the ground was opened, after only 234 days of construction. Babe Ruth hit a homer to win the first game in the stadium prompting an excited reporter to dub the venue: ‘The House That Ruth Built.’

Despite its run-down appearance there was an atmosphere about the ground, the buzz of the crowd wearing their NY Yankee caps and the red-white-and blue buntings and the sense of history to be made and having been made with the ghosts of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra, Don Larsen, Micky Mantle (who went within an inch or so of hitting a ball out of the park) and Reggie Jackson …

Part of the mystique of the Yankees, and its ancient stadium, is that the greatest players in baseball history have played for the club and have performed brilliantly on the most important occasions. The club has always had enough stars to make up several galaxies.

As well, the club and its fans have been proud, almost obsessed by its traditions. The one suit style, off-white and navy blue pin-stripes, has been maintained over the decades where other clubs have changed their uniforms by the season to rake in more money from the fans.

Because of this reverence for the traditions of the club and its penchant for winning titles – 26 World Series – the players, even the greatest of them, and the creators of the Yankees legend, always felt honoured to be playing for the Yankees.

As the players made their way from the locker room to their dug-out they could read a sign bearing Joe DiMaggio’ prayer: ‘I want to thank the good Lord for making me a Yankee.’

0n the last night of the stadium’s life Babe Ruth’s daughter, now 92 and still sprightly, threw out the first ball. The champions were paraded and the ground announcer declared that the stadium was ‘sport’s most iconic ground.’

This may well be true for baseball fans but not for most of the rest of us. The most iconic ground must have a variety of sports and sporting occasions to be the most iconic I would argue. This rules out Lords, Wimbledon and Twickenham and so on, and the old Yankee Stadium.

My vote goes to the SCG. Don Bradman is the ground’s Babe Ruth and the great players whose home ground it was and memorable occasions are legion: Victor Trumper; Dally Messenger: ‘The Don’ emptying the CBD when he was batting; Walter Hammond hitting a six into the Sheridan Stand to finish off the Bodyline Series; the Empire Games; Bill O’Reilly; the St George run of Rugby League premiership victories; David Brockhoff running around the SCG holding up the Bledisloe Cup to celebrate the first victory in Australia for 48 years; the first ODI under lights between Australia and the West Indies which enabled me to open my report with the words, ‘Under a glittering full moon …” Doug Walters; Shane Warne’s first Test …

I’ve had the privilege to play on the sacred turf. In the early 1970s I captained the press gallery against the politicians in a cricket match played at the SCG. The pitch was like a shining pane of glass with the hard, shiny Bulli soil. A enormous heat came from out of pitch. I had scored 30 or so runs, some of them off the shrewd medium-paced bowling of Ron Mulock, a State Minister and once an opening bowler for Penrith first grade, before I was forced to retire with a fierce migraine.

Whether I had succeeded in scoring some runs or not was immaterial. The SCG has always been the greatest sports arena in the world for me. So when I heard the ground announcer bestow the ‘most iconic’ status on the old Yankee Stadium I almost shouted out to the television screen, ‘Never!

For me, the most iconic sports grounds anywhere is the SCG.

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