|
|
A Farewell to Charms
Yankee Stadium has a date with a wrecking ball, but thanks to Tony Morante, the memories are indestructible. By Larry Dobrow. Photographs by Beth Perkins.
It is world-renowned as the House That Ruth Built. It has sheltered 26 championship baseball teams. It has opened its gates to three popes, Nelson Mandela, Johnny Unitas, Muhammad Ali, Pelé, and Bono.
But for all the rhapsodizing about glory and tradition, for all the talk about ghosts and aura and mystique, the reality is this: On a cold but sunny winter morning, the soon-to-be-demolished Yankee Stadium feels like something out of I Am Legend.
Though a handful of staffers shuffle around its subterranean corridors, the 85- year-old Bronx stadium remains in a state of winter slumber, the scoreboard unlit and the mound accessorized with an unadorned Christmas tree. The real action is taking place roughly 400 yards beyond the leftfield flagpole, where the new Yankee Stadium, set to open its doors in April 2009, pulses with the rhythm of jackhammers and whirring cranes.
If there’s a person on the planet who has a right to get weepy and sentimental about the imminent demise of the old building, it’s Tony Morante. While he officially holds the title of director of stadium tours, a member of the team’s media staff refers to him as “kind of the Yankees and Yankee Stadium historian. He knows everything about everything and everybody.”
Yet, while wandering from clubhouse to bullpen to executive suite with the familiarity of a longtime homeowner, Morante doesn’t seem the least bit upset about his upcoming move across the street. Born and bred in the Bronx, Morante started coming to Yankee Stadium with his father, who worked as an usher, in 1949. He was six. Nine seasons later, he began working part-time as an usher himself. “My dad said to me, ‘It’s about time you started earning your keep,’ ” he recalls. In between his stints on Wall Street and in the Navy, Morante kept popping in on the stadium, finally becoming a full-timer (as a group- and season-ticket sales rep) in 1973. He started leading tours in 1986.
Friendly and unassuming, devoid of the “bow before my superior knowledge” attitude often associated with people in his type of position, Morante wears an engraved 1999 World Series ring that’s about the size of a newborn’s head on his left hand. He casually rips off any number of stats about the building: Its original capacity was 58,764, and its current capacity is 56,886; it has 800,000 square feet of space, which will soon be dwarfed by the new park’s 1.35 million; and $675,000 was the price tag for its 11.6 acres of land -- 10 acres for the stadium and 1.6 more for surrounding property -- purchased in 1921 from the William Waldorf Astor estate. He very clearly loves his job, especially when it comes to righting some of the misconceptions about the park.
Like the notion of a sporting venue being “hallowed ground,” a phrase often bandied about by metaphor-happy broadcasters. Morante notes that Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II celebrated Mass at the stadium in 1965 and 1979, respectively, and that Pope Benedict XVI did the same this past April. Too, the stadium has hosted Billy Graham, faith healings, and Jehovah’s Witness convocations. “The idea of hallowed ground -- that has nothing to do with Joe DiMaggio or Mickey Mantle. The ground literally has been blessed,” Morante says.
 He even takes pains to correct some of the misconceptions perpetuated by the stadium itself. Prominent in the downstairs lobby of the team’s offices is a plaque stating that Tiffany & Co. designed the interlocked NY insignia to honor the first New York City police officer shot in the line of duty, way back in 1877, and that the Yankees adopted it in 1909. Not exactly so, says Morante with an arched eyebrow: “You’re telling me that with all the Five Points riots, the draft riots in 1863, not a single cop got shot?”
And don’t get him started on the famed Yankee Stadium facade -- which, he points out with the slightest hint of annoyance in his voice, is not, in fact, a facade. “A facade is the face of a building. A frieze is an ornamental band. What’s up there,” Morante says, gesturing toward the iconic white replica of the original copper beams that line the top of the stadium, “is a frieze.” The frieze’s initial role, he adds, was to serve as a spectacular curtain rod for the team’s early-era 15-by-31-foot championship banners, a few of which Morante recently unearthed from storage in the Yankee Stadium basement.
Morante is a walking history lesson, flush with tales about nonbaseball events that were held at the stadium, like the 1958 NFL championship/so-called “Greatest Game Ever Played” between the New York Giants and the Baltimore Colts (“Unitas, what a leader”) and a post-9/11 memorial service on September 23, 2001, for the victims of the terrorist attacks of that year (“It just felt like the right place for everybody to be that day”). He commends President Bush for the right-down-the-middle ceremonial first pitch he threw at a World Series game a month later. “I remember thinking, ‘This might be the highlight of his presidency,’ ” Morante quips.
Mostly, though, Morante cherishes his memories of the people who have plied their trade between the first- and third-base lines. Entering the dingy, narrow tunnel that connects the home dugout with the clubhouse, he singles out Catfish Hunter, Lou Piniella, and Yogi Berra as his favorites from yesteryear. “Class acts,” he says, nodding his head.
Berra, for his part, shares a similar sense of awe, even after having called the stadium home for a sizable chunk of his adult life. He first saw Yankee Stadium while stationed in Groton, Connecticut, at the Naval Submarine Base New London during World War II. While on a pass, he visited his future workplace and was rendered “speechless,” he says. “It was huge compared with Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis, where I grew up watching the Cardinals.”
That sense of awe is shared by just about every other player upon his first entry into the building. Longtime Yankee center fielder and broadcaster Bobby Murcer recalls “looking up at those massive tiers and the monuments in center field and the flagpole, and thinking ‘How am I ever going to catch a fly ball in this place?’ ” even as he was “hovering a foot and a half above the ground, because I couldn’t believe I was there.” Current Yankee Phil Hughes, coming off his rookie season, agrees. “It’s not easy to describe. You realize how many people have come before you and played on the same field. The crowd feels so much bigger and louder than anywhere else.”
For Morante, memories of Berra’s dynastic Yankee generation come pouring back every time he enters the clubhouse. Even devoid of players, it feels more alive than any other part of the building, owing perhaps to the still-full lockers. Phil Hughes has a Wiffle ball or two lying around, while Mariano Rivera’s elder-statesmen corner spot teems with what appears to be a season’s worth of aftershave. Morante moves by them briskly, settling in a back corner where Joe DiMaggio used to hold court.
“It was strictly business back then,” Morante recalls. “Joe would sit down, light up a Lucky Strike, and call out to [longtime clubhouse attendant Pete] Sheehy, ‘Hey, Pete, gimme a cup of Joe.’ Nobody got too close.” Things perked up years later with the arrival of Sparky Lyle. “There were shenanigans all over the place, really bad stuff,” Morante continues. When asked for specifics, he simply shakes his head and rolls his eyes.
The 2008 season promises to be a nostalgia fest at Yankee Stadium -- not to mention somewhat of a zoo, courtesy of the expected 4.3 million fans passing through the gates and the arrival of the All-Star Game for the first time since 1977. Morante, however, doesn’t seem inclined to wallow in memories of days gone by.
For one thing, he’s too busy: Even on this desolate December day, he expects 600 fans to show up for a tour of the ole ball yard (for those counting at home, that’s not too far behind the average number in attendance at a Florida Marlins home game). Also, he has already mourned Yankee Stadium once before, when its first iteration was given a major face-lift in the form of lights, new seats, and a lowering of the playing field during 1974 and 1975. “I had to go watch them play at Shea Stadium,” Morante says, his voice dripping with something akin to disgust.
Largely, he agrees with Berra, who says, “I will be sad when the stadium is torn down, but I’m sure the Yankee tradition will be built into the new one as well.” The team is taking several steps to that end, making plans for a museum and for the relocation of the current stadium’s Monument Park.
Morante won’t repeat a mistake he made right before the first renovation. For reasons he can’t recall, he was put in charge of dispensing with 6,000 seats. Even after giving a bunch to season-ticket holders, 2,000 remained -- only to be tossed away. It is not lost on him how much money those chairs would be worth today.
“I never forget, not for one minute, that I’ve been very, very privileged. I mean, I was in one of the ticker-tape parades,” he says, pausing for just an instant. “But, yeah, that still stings a little.” He lets out a big guffaw and then adds, “Come on, there’s still a lot more to see.”
LARRY DOBROW is a writer based in New York City.
|
|
|
|
|
|