NEW YORK – The corridors are too narrow. The seating is cramped. The prevailing odors range from pungent to putrid. The rumble of the subway is a persistent price of admission.
Yet in the making of memories and the burnishing of myth, Yankee Stadium is unsurpassed.
The old ballpark in the Bronx was at it again last night, mixing sport, spectacle and suspense in a Ruthian requiem All-Star Game.
Ten minutes short of the five-hour mark, Michael Young's 15th-inning sacrifice fly delivered a 4-3 American League victory in the longest of these interleague extravaganzas. And though the game had plot twists aplenty, and the result extended the National League's futility to 12 years, the most compelling story of this night was the stage itself.
“Yankee Stadium is tough, I'm telling you,” Yankees reliever Mariano Rivera said. “Didn't want it to end.”
“The best game I was ever in,” said Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez.
“It was everything I thought and more,” said Tampa Bay rookie Evan Longoria. “Two hours more.”
Destined to be dismantled at season's end after an 85-year run, the condemned House That Ruth Built was accorded a sendoff befitting its regal stature.
Forty-nine living Hall of Famers, some of them so frail they could barely bow, took part in the elaborate pregame introductions. Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, his infirmity more evident with each of his sporadic public appearances, delivered the ceremonial first balls to the mound from a seat in a golf cart.
Later, as if to remind us that all men outlive their relevance, the Village People appeared along the first-base line to personally lead the traditional playing and pantomime of “Y.M.C.A.”
But in the most meaningful ways, most of it worked. Nobody does nostalgia better than baseball, and no other sport can assemble so many famous faces for its ceremonial functions.
Here were Hank Aaron and Willie Mays, more than 50 years removed from their first World Series, and still instantly recognizable. Here were Yankees icons Yogi Berra and Whitey Ford, the surviving relics of baseball's most enduring dynasty, sharing a last hurrah on the site of so many championship celebrations.
Here was Dave Winfield, demonstrating his divided loyalties by toting caps of both the Yankees and the Padres. Here was the once fearsome Willie McCovey, rising unsteadily in response to cheers, standing with the aid of a cane. Here was a little lump in your throat.
The new ballpark rising across the street will feature most of the modern amenities (and ultramodern prices), but it will be hard-pressed to match the legends, lore and challenging charms that have congregated at the corner of 161st Street and River Avenue.
“The place was always cramped, but it was Yankee Stadium,” baseball Commissioner Bud Selig said yesterday. “The reason this game is so good and the reason this game survives a lot of the things we go through is because we have a history and tradition.”
Last night, some of those traditions were in conflict. Though All-Star Games require rival teams to make common cause for the greater good, Yankees fans were not in much of a nurturing mood where the Boston Red Sox were involved.
Red Sox outfielder J.D. Drew tied the game at 2-2 with a seventh-inning home run, but his popularity proved so fleeting that he was booed while being presented the trophy as the game's Most Valuable Player.
“It was a little weird,” Drew said. “I heard about (the home run) when I got back to right field, for sure. Then, as the game went along, I think they forgot that I hit a home run and (the booing) picked up again.”
Boston closer Jonathan Papelbon was serenaded with chants of “over-rated” even before he allowed the National League to reclaim the lead in the eighth inning.
Some of this, surely, was the residue of a typical New York tabloid controversy. Because Papelbon had dared to express a desire to finish the game, encroaching on territory presumed to belong to Rivera, he was labeled “Papelbum” in one screaming headline and was subjected to ugly invective during a pregame red-carpet parade in Manhattan.
“I feel like I needed to be in a bullet-proof car,” Papelbon told MLB.com. “My wife (Ashley) is pregnant and she's getting her life threatened. It's stupid.”
Papelbon did not enhance his popularity by yielding a leadoff single to Miguel Tejada to open the eighth inning. Tejada subsequently stole second and advanced to third on the wild throw of catcher Dioner Navarro.
With the American League infield playing in for a possible play at the plate, Padres first baseman Adrian Gonzalez lifted a fly ball to medium left field for a go-ahead sacrifice fly.
The American League tied the game a second time when Longoria's ground-rule double scored Grady Sizemore in the bottom of the eighth.
And there the score stayed, all even at 3-3, past midnight, past 1 a.m., past all previous All-Star Games (in terms of time).
Three times in extra innings, the National League was able to make a play at the plate to forestall the winning run. Then, finally, Young lifted a Brad Lidge delivery deep enough to enable Home Run Derby champion Justin Morneau to slide home just ahead of Corey Hart's throw and just beneath Brian McCann's tag.
The crowd thinned as the night wore on, but the memory book thickened. What else would you expect of Yankee Stadium?
Tim Sullivan: (619) 293-1033; tim.sullivan@uniontrib.com
