Yankee Stadium - Hardcover

Robinson, Ray; Jennison, Christopher

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670870935 ISBN 13: 9780670870936

Publisher: Studio, 1998

Synopsis

Featuring 150 color and duotone photographs, some previously unpublished, a splendid survey chronicles the greatest players, events, and games of the stadium's first seventy-five years, complemented by boxed features and reminiscences by baseball greats and observers. 25,000 first printing.

About this title

Review:

Forget the bleak news about Yankee Stadium falling down and the Bombers slipping across state lines to New Jersey. Yankee Stadium was there long before George Steinbrenner took over, and, says the smart money, it will remain there, the most famous of all sporting cathedrals, long after the Boss is gone.

Since its opening in 1923, the stadium has been storied ground. The Yankees became a dynasty there. Tunney, Louis, Marciano, and Ali all fought for the heavyweight title there. Two of the greatest games in football history--the Army-Notre Dame scoreless tie of 1946 and the Sudden Death victory of the Colts over the Giants for the 1958 NFL Championship--chewed up the grass there. Pele scored goals there, two Popes offered mass there, Nelson Mandela was adored there, and Billy Joel, U2, and Pink Floyd all rocked the House that Ruth Built there.

If ever a ballpark deserved to be venerated, it's this particular green patch of the South Bronx, and its 75th anniversary is duly noted and celebrated in this richly illustrated appreciation of the park, the players, the events, and the team that gave the place its hallowed name.

It's an evocative volume. Interspersed throughout its historical text are lovely observations and reminiscences from such luminaries (on and off the field) as poet Marianne Moore, novelist James T. Farrell, violinist Itzhak Perlman, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, comic Billy Crystal, Yogi Berra, Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, and Mickey Mantle. It features stunning archival photos of the stadium's construction, a particularly haunting image of DiMaggio watching its reconstruction in the '70s, hosts of action and publicity shots that span the decades, and a beautiful essay by Pete Hamill on Babe Ruth's farewell.

But it's Mel Allen, whose honeyed voice became synonymous with the Yankees from the late '30s through Casey Stengel's juggernauts and on into the '60s, who seems to capture the ethos of the place most clearly: "Suddenly," he remembers, "here I was, a guy supposed to practice law, broadcasting Yankee home games on radio from this mecca of baseball. This was the place, the number-one place in baseball. The stadium was like the Empire State Building or the Grand Canyon of baseball, and every time I stepped inside of it I had to pinch myself!" In its own way, Yankee Stadium--dazzled as it is by its dazzling subject--manages to pinch itself pretty good as well. --Jeff Silverman

From Library Journal:

This book is about all the great sporting events?including great boxing matches such as Joe Louis's 1938 demolition of Max Schmeling?and some nonsporting events (such as papal visits and religious revivals) that have occurred at Yankee Stadium over its three-quarters of a century. Baseball does predominate, however, in this tale of "The House That Ruth Built." Longtime baseball writer Robinson, biographer of Yankee great Lou Gehrig (Iron Horse: Lou Gehrig in His Time, LJ 7/90) and Jennison have done a superb job in producing an easy-to-read text with a cornucopia of striking photos. Reminiscences by journalist Pete Hamill, broadcaster Bob Costas, and a few Yankee greats add an extra dimension. A solid hit for New York region libraries.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Studio
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0670870935
• ISBN 13: 9780670870936
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 182