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Opening
Day at Yankee Stadium: 1927
Another spring, another season, another baseball opening day.
One
of the
most memorable of openings days at the “House That Ruth Built” took
place in
1927 when the old Yankee Stadium was just four years old.
Owner
Colonel Jacob Ruppert was very upbeat about prospects for baseball in
1927 but
was muted in his predictions for his team. He did not seem to have a
clue as to
what tremendous accomplishments lay ahead for his Yankees.
“Everything
indicates that 1927 will be one of the most remarkable in baseball
history,”
Ruppert told reporters. Although born in New York, he had never
lost the
German accent inherited from his paternal grandfather. It was an accent
that
became thicker when he became emotional, usually when talking about the
Yankees.
On
April
10th , a New York Times headline proclaimed:
“BIG
LEAGUE SEASON TO OPEN ON TUESDAY: Yanks Will Greet Athletics, Picked by
Many to
Win Flag, at the Stadium”
“Well,
it won't be long now,” James R. Harrison wrote in The Times. “Only a
few days
more and the greatest show on earth will be on. Tired business men will
lock
their desks and go uptown for an important "conference" at 3:30 P.M.
The mortality rate among the grandparents of office boys will take an
alarming
jump . . .”
Everything
was in readiness for the Yankees of New York beginning their fifth
season at
their majestic Yankee Stadium home field in the Bronx.
"The
big parade toward Yankee Stadium started before noon yesterday,” Peter
Vischer
described Opening Day 1927 in the New York World. “Subways
brought
ever-increasing crowds into the Bronx. Taxicabs arrived by the
hundreds. Buses
came jammed to the doors. The parade never stopped.”
"Yankee
Stadium was a mistake, not mine but the Giants’," Ruppert had said. The
site was chosen for among other reasons to irritate the Yankees former
landlords the Giants and because the IRT Jerome Avenue subway line
snaked its
way virtually atop the Stadium's right-field wall.
Built
at a
cost of $2.5 million, "The Yankee Stadium", as it was originally
named, and nick-named "the House that Ruth Built,"when the park first
opened in 1923 by Fred Lieb always one especially handy coming up with
a catch
phrase, had a brick-lined vault storing electronic equipment
under second
base, making it feasible to have a boxing ring and press area on the
infield.
Yankee
Stadium was the first ballpark to be called a stadium. A mammoth
horseshoe
shaped by triple-decked grandstands, the edifice’s huge wooden
bleachers
circled the park. The 10,712 upper-grandstand seats and 14,543 lower
grandstand
seats had been fixed in place by 135,000 individual steel castings upon
which
400,000 pieces of maple lumber were fastened by more than a million
screws. Sod from Long Island, 16,000 square feet of it, was
trucked
in.
The Stadium had eight toilet rooms for men and as many for women
scattered
throughout the stands and bleachers, a nice touch for the time. A
15-foot deep
copper facade adorned the front of the roof, covering much of the
Stadium's
third deck, giving it an elegant almost dignified air. This decorative
and
distinctive element was the ball park’s logo.
Seating
capacity in 1927 was now 62,000, increased from 58,000. The admission
price for
the 22,000 bleacher seats (the most in baseball) was reduced in 1927
from 75
cents to 50 cents. Grandstand admission was $1.10. All wooden seats
were
painted blue. In right center field there was a permanent "Ruthville"
sign. Sometimes , the area was also called "Gehrigville".
The
left-field pole was but a short 281-foot poke from home plate. It was
415 feet
to left, 490 feet to left center, 487 feet to dead center, 429 feet to
right
center, 344 feet to right, and 295 feet down the right field line. The
82 feet
behind home plate made for plenty of room for a catcher to run and
chase wild
pitches, passed balls, foul balls.
Above
the
bleachers in right centerfield was the manual scoreboard. The
Yankee
bullpen looked out on left centerfield. The dark green Yankee dugout
was on the
third base side of the field and remained there until 1946.
"By
game time the vast structure was packed solid," Peter Vicher’s article
continued. "April 12, 1927, Opening Day at Yankee Stadium. Rows
of
men were standing in back of the seats and along the runways. Such a
crowd had
never seen a baseball game or any other kind of game in New
York."
The
crowd
was the largest in all the history of baseball, 73,206, breaking the
previous
attendance record of 63,600 that had been set in Game 2 of the 1926
World
Series. Another 25,000 were turned away.There were 9,000 guests of the
New York
Yankees plus one thousand who were able to get in with passes.
On
the
balmy, almost summery day, the Seventh Regiment Band dressed in gray
outfits
began playing with vim and gusto. Red coated ushers, really into
their
effort of trying to keep the level of behavior orderly, worked the
crowd,
seating people.
At
3:25 the string bean manager Cornelius McGillicuddy (Connie Mack) of
the
Philadelphia Athletics, in dark civilian clothes and high stiff collar
who was
featured on that week’s Time Magazine cover, and the wisp of a Yankee
pilot
Miller Huggins posed for photographs.
Mayor
Jimmy Walker, 45, typified New York City and the 1920s. A svelte,
more
dressed up model of the gregarious Babe Ruth, Walker in 1927 was
happily
involved with Betty Compton, 23, an actress. The two of them, it was
said, had
a gay time of it in their Ritz Hotel suite. Largely ignoring
public
mention of the relationship, the press instead gave lots of attention
to the
way Walker dressed, the parties he attended, the stories he told.
Urbane,
dashing, positioned in Ruppert's private box, the Mayor threw out the
first
ball – twice, taking no chance to miss a photo op, to Eddie Bennett,
referred
to in newspapers of the time as “the hunchback bat boy.”
Bennett
gave players their bats, presented baseballs to umpires. He let his cap
and
hump be rubbed by Yankees before games. He sat on the bench next to
Miller
Huggins, observing and pointing out things out on the field, a kind of
precursor to today’s bench coaches. He would bring bicarbonate of
soda to
Babe Ruth before every game generally during batting practice after the
big man
had downed his massive quota of hot dogs and soda pop.
Ruth
and
Bennett would create laughs for early arrivals at the Stadium by
engaging in a
highly animated game of catch. Starting about ten feet apart, they
would toss
the ball back and forth. Ruth would throw the ball after a while about
a foot
above Bennett’s reach, and he would scamper after it. They would repeat
the
routine and the Yankee mascot would bitch a bit to the Babe who would
feign
total innocence. The game continued until Bennett found himself backed
up
against the screen behind home plate. To some, the whole ritual was
viewed as
cruel behavior on Ruth’s part, a taunting, shaming of a cripple. It
wasn’t –
just two guys playing around.
On
this
day of days, the Yankees had two loud voiced announcers using
megaphones to
inform the crowd of the on-the- field goings on. Previously one
megaphoner had
sufficed, colorful Jack Lentz, longtime announcer, who wore a
derby hat
and sometimes mangled the King's English. He was joined by George Levy,
who had
made a reputation working the Polo Grounds. He wore a soft hat and made
use of
a smallish megaphone. The work of the announcers was simple:
speak the
name of each player as he came to bat; keep silent after that except
when a new
player entered the game.
Knowledgeable
fans noticed a significant change in New York’s white wool flannel home
uniforms for 1927. "Yankees" was now on the front of the jersey
rather than the name of the city. Navy blue vertical pinstripes and
stirrups
accentuated the uniform. Players wore navy blue caps with a white
interlocking
"NY" in script on the front. The v-necked shirts had a brief
tapered extension around the neck. Sleeves extended over the elbows,
and the
knicker pants reached just below the knees. Belts and cleats were
black.
On the road, the team from the Bronx would wear a gray uniform with
"YANKEES" in navy blue block letters across the chest, and two
colored stirrups, navy blue on top and rust on bottom.
By
noon, a
carnival-like atmosphere pervaded the area around Yankee Stadium.
Swarms of
hawkers, vendors, gawkers and fans intermingled in a circus of sounds
and
colors.
By
three
o'clock most unreserved seats had been snatched up. Lines of
police were
at River Avenue in the back of the park and also along the approaches
in front
of the Stadium. New York’s Finest checked carefully allowing only those
with
tickets to pass.
It
was
exactly half past three when the game got underway.
The
Yankees, scoring four runs in the fifth and sixth innings, triumphed,
8-3, They
were in first place where they would remain day in and day out
throughout the
season.
|
About
the Author: One of the most prolific and respected
sports journalists and oral historians in the United States, author of
the autobiographies of legends Nolan Ryan, Tony Dorsett, and Red
Holzman, Dr. Harvey Frommer is an expert on the New York Yankees. He
wrote for Yankees Magazine for 18 years, and has
arguably written more books, articles and reviews on the New York
Yankees than anyone. In 2010, he was
selected by the City of New York as an historical consultant for the
re-imagined old Yankee Stadium site, Heritage Field. A professor in the
MALS program at Dartmouth College, Frommer was dubbed “Dartmouth’s Mr.
Baseball” by their alumni magazine. He lives in Lyme, New Hampshire
with his wife Myrna Katz Frommer. His The Ultimate Yankee Book will be published fall 2017.
Pre-order from
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Yankee-Book-Beginning-Today-Essential/dp/1624144330 “As
a lifelong Yankees fan, I was devouring every last delicious new detail
about my beloved Bronx Bombers in this fabulous new book.” —Ed Henry,
author of 42 Faith: The Rest of the Jackie Robinson Story
Article
is Copyright © 2017 by Harvey Frommer. All rights reserved
worldwide. |
A
link to purchase autographed copies of Frommer Sports
Books is at: http://frommerbooks.com/
