This week The Post takes a new look at the “best of” New York’s sporting history – an area that is equally worthy of debate, but it has never been debated endlessly. Madison Square Garden, the Most Famous Arena in the World, is the best sports venue in New York’s sports history. Here are two who just missed the piece:
Original Yankee Stadium
The original Yankee Stadium is The House That Ruth Built.
It was the home of Lou Gehrig on July 4, 1939, giving his farewell speech for centuries: “Today, I consider myself the luckiest person on earth.”
It was the house where Joe DiMaggio gracefully patrolled the central square and said, “I want to thank a good God for making me a Yankee.”
It was the house where the muscle-bound Mickey Mantle left the Yankees fans wide-eyed for his strength, from both sides of the plate.
It was the house where Jackie Robinson stole the house in Game 1 of the 1955 World Series and Yogi Berra always swore he was out.
Here’s an overhead view of the final match at the old Yankee Stadium on September 21, 2008.Aerial perspective
It was the house where Yogi jumped into the arms of Don Larsen after Larsen attacked Dale Mitchell to end Game 5 of the 1956 World Series against the Dodgers for his perfect game.
It was the house where Mantle and Roger Maris gave an unforgettable summer baseball in 1961, the house where Maris broke Ruth’s record with her 61st house running from Tracy Stallard.
This is the most intimate baseball stadium of all, 32,000 fans crammed into a romantic cathedral where they can almost reach out and touch Jackie and Pee Wee and Campy and the Duke and Brooklyn Dodgers they love.
The 80-foot rotunda made of Italian marble welcomes fans who walk in the trolley car to 55 Sullivan Place, and take a walk inside to bring them to a fantasy world where a woman they know as Howlin ‘Hilda Chester sits on the bench with her boom booming . voice and brass cowbell … where the Dodger Sym-Phony Band makes beautiful music for the home team and is not shy about blabbering the opposing team or teasing referees with “Three Blind Mice” … where the sweet organic voice of Gladys Gooding fills the air; underneath the scoreboard in the center-right field is Abe Stark’s clever advertising gimmick, “Hit Sign, Win Suit. Abe Stark. 1514 Pitkin Ave. Brooklyn’s Leading Clothier.”
“On Ebbets Field, you are aware,” the iconic Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully once said. “Because every day you see the same person in a box chair.”
Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier there on April 15, 1947. A decade later, they would play their last game there before owner Walter O’Malley brought Dem Bums to Los Angeles. And after years when Dodgers fans cried, “Wait until next year,” there’s no next year in Brooklyn, and they just cry. Ebbets Field was destroyed in 1960.
