Yankee Stadium: The Giants’ Greatest Mistake
This article was written by John Bauer
This article was published in Yankee Stadium 1923-2008: America’s First Modern Ballpark
Wednesday, April 18, 1923, represents an important milestone in the history of the New York Yankees. When the Yankees opened the doors to their eponymous colosseum in the Bronx, the club achieved a level of permanence and stability previously lacking. From this ground of their own, the Yankees embarked on an unrivaled half-century of dominance over the American League and excellence in the World Series.
Original co-owners Frank J. Farrell and William S. Devery – a gambler/pool-hall owner and a former police superintendent – lacked the resources to equip the then-Highlanders for a sustainable pennant challenge. They managed to parlay political connections to secure a property lease in Upper Manhattan from the Institute for the Blind on Broadway between 165th and 168th Streets, but could do no better than build a no-frills wooden facility known as Hilltop Park for the team’s arrival in 1903. The club was left homeless when its lease expired at the end of the 1912 season, and the newly christened Yankees became tenants of the National League’s New York Giants at the Polo Grounds starting in 1913.
Farrell and Devery lacked the finances to convert the Yankees into challengers to the Giants for the affections of fans in Manhattan. Farrell examined potential sites in the Bronx before and after accepting tenancy with the Giants, but never consummated a deal. The deeper-pocketed partnership of Jacob Ruppert and Tillinghast L’Hommedieu Huston acquired the Yankees in 1915. Ruppert had taken over the family business from his father, and Jacob Ruppert Brewery was one of the most successful beer makers in the pre-Prohibition era. Huston was an engineer by training and a successful businessman.
A ballpark of the Yankees’ own was intrinsic to turning around their fortunes. With his background, Huston took a particular interest in the ballpark project and even visited several potential sites before he and his partner assumed formal control.1 They inspected several more sites in Manhattan, Queens, and the Bronx in the coming years. One site under consideration was near 42nd Street in Midtown Manhattan, and another was located at 145th Street and Lenox Avenue in Upper Manhattan. Next, Huston scouted a site in Queens easily accessible by railway, but Ruppert nixed the idea in favor of remaining in Manhattan.2 Ruppert’s brewery was located on the Upper East Side, and there was some thought to acquiring nearby land.
World War I paused efforts to build a new ballpark. In the meantime, Ruppert and Huston initiated building a team capable of challenging for the club’s first pennant. With AL President Ban Johnson’s support, Miller Huggins was hired from the St. Louis Cardinals as manager for the 1918 season. The acquisition of Babe Ruth before the 1920 season proved to be just one in a series of transactions with the Red Sox that provided the foundation for eventual pennant and World Series winners. The improvement of the Yankees began to grate on the Giants, in particular their pugnacious manager, John McGraw. During the 1920 season, the Giants served notice that the Yankees would be evicted after the campaign. Eventually, the Giants and Yankees agreed on a lease for the 1921 season, with an option for 1922. The Giants hiked the rent from $65,000 to $100,000, adding to the urgency to find a new home.
Ruppert and Huston, sometimes known collectively as “the Colonels” given their prior military experience, focused on a 10-acre plot of land just a short walk from the Polo Grounds across the Macombs Dam Bridge that linked Manhattan and the Bronx across the Harlem River near the Polo Grounds. Bounded by 157th and 161st Streets north to south, and Doughty Street and River Avenue west to east, the former lumberyard site was owned by the estate of William Waldorf Astor, who died in 1919.
Ruppert and Huston confirmed on February 5, 1921, that they planned to build their new arena at the Bronx location. They Colonels retained Osborn Engineering Company to design their stadium for a fee of $223,000.3 The Cleveland-based firm had experience in stadium design as major-league clubs transitioned to steel and concrete structures with Navin Field and the Polo Grounds among their handiwork. Braves Field, which opened in 1916 and remained the most recent ballpark, was also an Osborn product. Artists’ renderings depicted a fully enclosed stadium that included three levels with a middle mezzanine.4 The mezzanine became a feature when the city’s refusal to sanction a stadium taller than 108 feet required a more modest middle tier.5 Another striking feature was the arched frieze that extended downward approximately 16 feet across the top of the grandstand. Originally planned to be made of a copper-iron alloy, the actual frieze was pure copper supplied by the U.T. Hungerford Brass and Copper Company.6 The stadium was intended to seat 75,000, which would make it the largest ballpark in the country by tens of thousands.
Preparatory work hastened after the February announcement, although it took several months to close the real estate deal. Engineers arrived to begin filling and grading the land, and also studying drainage, the latter an important feature given the site’s proximity to the Harlem River. Osborn engineers were “sinking test pits” in order to determine the type of foundation that could be supported by the soil.7 Workers also cleared the land of boulders and the remnants of Astor’s lumberyard. The Colonels handed over an initial deposit of $100,000 in March while attorneys conducted research to ensure a free and clear title. On May 16 Ruppert and Huston took formal possession when they paid an additional $500,000 in Liberty Bonds to Farmers’ Loan and Trust Company, the Astor estate trustee.8
Some issues had to be resolved before actual construction could begin. First, clearing and preparation of the site needed to be completed. The process involved excavating 25,000 cubic yards of soil for the foundation and using 45,000 cubic yards of soil to fill and level the site.9 Second, postwar supply shortages had created price inflation, and the Yankees opted to wait for costs to decline before awarding contracts for structural steel, concrete, and lumber. Finally, city authorities had to approve the closing of 158th Street and Cromwell Avenue, both of which ran through the proposed stadium footprint. The process had been expected to be a formality given Ruppert’s connections with Tammany Hall. The powerful Board of Estimate took an initial favorable view of the proposal at a December public hearing. Osborn submitted plans to the Bronx Bureau of Buildings on January 15, 1922, and Huston was optimistic about breaking ground by March 1.10 That date slipped, and the Board of Estimate deferred final approval of the application when Mayor John Francis Hylan unexpectedly requested additional information to ensure compliance with the terms of the street closure agreement. On March 31 Hylan provided his assent and the Board of Estimate’s Sinking Fund Committee issued its formal approval.
While waiting for official word of the street closings, the Yankees began actively soliciting construction bids. Bids for steelwork were received in December 1921; reflecting inflated costs, they were higher than hoped.11 On January 3, 1922, the Yankees issued a broader call for bids on all or part of the construction. The club’s press statement read, “Tenders will be received on the following subdivision of work, but any one can bid on the work as a whole.”12 Through advertising in New York area newspapers and engineering publications, firms were invited to bid on a range of projects, including excavation, grading, reinforced concrete, tile work, painting, wooden bleachers, and toilets. The Yankees placed a priority on fan comfort, especially for female patrons. Designed with “potty parity” in mind years before sports venues considered such things in earnest, plans called for 16 “toilet rooms” with eight each for men and women.13
White Construction Company was selected on April 18, 1922, as the general contractor under Osborn’s oversight. The parties executed the contracts on May 5 with an initial cost of $1.25 million, although the total price tag seemed likely to approach $3 million when the land, legal fees, and other work were factored in. White employed dozens of subcontractors, and its president, Charles Escher, committed to completing the job by November.14 It was initially anticipated that enough construction could be complete to allow the Yankees to host the World Series at the new ballpark if they won the AL pennant. Lead engineer Bernard Green stated that “[T]he contractors will do their best to see that the park is ready for the big series. That’s a fair enough proposition.”15 Such plans seem particularly aggressive given that twenty-first-century stadium construction often takes years rather than months, but White planned to utilize double shifts and as many as 500 workers on a daily basis to meet the deadline. Huston maintained a regular presence at the building site and also deputized his friend, Col. Thomas H. Birmingham, to work with Green in overseeing the construction. Huston and Birmingham’s close involvement even extended to the selection of chairs to be used in the grandstand, a process that took two weeks before Huston found a seat to his satisfaction.16
From the outset, Ruppert insisted that the stadium would be named after the team rather than bear his moniker. “Yankee Field” had been one suggestion, but the grandness of the structure led the club to gravitate toward “stadium” in the name. For years, “the Yankee Stadium” (or even “the Yankees’ stadium”) was the convention before the article was later dropped in favor of simply “Yankee Stadium.” Further, Ruppert and Huston had no intention of using the Stadium strictly for baseball. A colosseum so grandiose as to be named a “stadium” would be a playground for sports like boxing, football, track and field, and ice skating. For boxing, the ring would be placed over second base, under which a vault was constructed to store electronic communications equipment. Boxing promoter Tex Rickard, who later built the third Madison Square Garden and founded the New York Rangers, sought control of the venue’s nonbaseball events.17 For athletics, a running track was installed that ran through center and right fields approximately 30 feet from the bleachers and curved in such a way as to become an antecedent warning track in left field. The track included a feature by which it could be raised to add a curb for running and cycling events and then lowered to field level during ballgames. The track was the standard 400 yards in circumference and 24 feet in width, but the layout of the field led to an oblong shape with a 120-yard straightaway down the left-field foul line.
The ambition of the plans to have a functioning venue by fall 1922 came up against certain realities. Work commenced within weeks of contracts being signed, but strikes and supply shortages led to delays in the shipment and delivery of materials. White hired the American Bridge Company and Taylor-Fischer Steel Construction to erect the steel skeleton, and Edison Portland Cement Company (owned by Thomas Edison) to handle the concrete work. However, a railroad strike delayed arrival of the steel until July. In total, 2,500 tons of structural steel and 1,000 tons of reinforced steel created the skeleton with 30,000 cubic yards (or 140,000 bags) of concrete18 forming the body.
The bleachers were the first part of the Stadium to be built, and were also the subject of one of the major changes to the original design. Various work orders and change orders contributed to increased costs and scheduling delays, and the bleachers were a significant contributor to that. Out of concern that the planned movable wooden bleachers would contrast negatively with the concrete grandstand, Ruppert and Huston invested another $136,000 to establish concrete footings and ensure that the exterior walls matched the rest of the stadium.19 The left-field and right-field bleachers were built at right angles to each other, but they were positioned differently in relation to the playing field. The right-field bleachers rested at the top of an upward slope from the running track. Right-field bleacher patrons would enjoy a closer view of the field, as the left-field bleachers were about 100 feet farther from home.
By mid-September the stadium was 30 percent complete. The bleachers and concrete lower deck were in place and cranes were onsite to begin building the mezzanine and upper tier. Hosting the World Series was out of the question, and the Yankees and Giants squared off for the second straight postseason at the Polo Grounds. After the Giants took the Series in five games (with four wins and a draw), one commentator suggested that the Yankees had given the “most stupid exhibition ever furnished in a World’s Series,” potentially dampening fan enthusiasm.20 “[S]ince New York will always be with a winner and never endure a loser, it seems that there will be a great many vacant seats in the new stadium next season.”21 The Colonels focused on completion in time for the 1923 season and received some help from the schedulers. With the Giants planning to expand the Polo Grounds to 55,000 seats, the AL and NL announced that the 1923 season would start one week later than would have been expected. The NL would open on Tuesday, April 17, and after some wrangling to appease Boston Red Sox owner Harry Frazee’s desire to share in a weekend gate at the monstrous stadium, the AL would start on Wednesday, April 18, with Yankees-Red Sox headlining the day.
One aspect of the Stadium that was complete in 1922 was the installation of the grass field. Groundskeeper Phil Schenck, who also tended to the field at Hilltop Park, traveled through New England, New York, and Pennsylvania to find sod to his liking. He eventually settled on turf found from a Long Island location he refused to reveal, with 116,000 square feet shipped to the Bronx. Schenck’s attention to detail included sifting the soil and dirt through a silk cloth to remove any rocks or pebbles.22 On November 27, with Huston in attendance, the final piece of turf was placed into the field and snowflakes began falling within minutes. Schenck declared to Huston, “Sir, I have the honor to inform you that the playing field of this here place is absolutely finished and complete. …”23 Beneath the surface existed an extended network of pipes to ensure adequate drainage. A “weblike” arrangement of 16 pipes under the infield and 11 large pipes under the outfield, plus a concrete gutter in the front of the grandstand were employed to keep the field as dry as possible.24
In December, as Huston continued to oversee construction, he also announced his intention to sell out. Huston announced, “I’m old and tired. The Yankees are a good team and the stadium is nearly finished. It looks as if my work is about done.”25 The expectation was that Ruppert would buy out his partner’s interest, but Huston made clear that other offers had been tabled. The new stadium factored into negotiations, both by enhancing the value of the franchise and by incurring debt and other liabilities associated with construction. When a stalemate was reached over such liabilities, and Huston balked at Ruppert’s insistence on a condition that his partner not buy another team, the deal fell through in early January. The two put on brave faces with Huston declaring his plan to remain co-owner “for several years to come,” and Ruppert offering that the two were “just as good friends as ever.”26 The matter was revisited within months.
Progress continued through a cold and snowy winter. On February 14 Ruth visited the stadium that Fred Lieb would credit him with “building.” Wearing a tailored suit with a brisk wind around him, Ruth took some practice swings over a slush-covered home plate. Although the foul lines at Yankee Stadium were roughly the same distance as the Polo Grounds, the right-field bleachers were a more inviting target. The configuration of the bleachers was such that they were 20 feet closer to home plate (about 300 feet at right-center) than the concrete wall that formed the inside of the Polo Grounds horseshoe; fortunately, Ruth was not right-handed, as the distance to left-center was much farther at the new stadium.27
In fact, the playing field was intimate in some ways but expansive in others. Initially, first base and third base were only 36 feet from the lower grandstand box seats, 10 feet closer than the Polo Grounds.28 Home plate was only 60 feet in front of the backstop, a distance considered too close by sportswriter Joe Vila.29 While they would be adjusted after the inaugural season, the foul lines were 257 feet to left and 258 to right. Unlike right field, the left-field grandstand continued into left field with a sweeping curve that made for an expansive outfield in left and center. Dead center field was approximately 500 feet from home plate with a flagpole inside the bleachers that was considered in play. Also, the configuration of the left-field bleachers was such that there was an alley or gap, also considered in play, between the bleachers and grandstand.
The scoreboard erected on top of the right-field bleachers provided fans with more information than they received at most major-league ballparks. Thirty feet high, 66 feet wide, and topped by a large clock, the scoreboard displayed the batting order of the Yankees and their opponents horizontally across the top. Across the bottom, the number of the batter as well as the numbers of balls, strikes, outs, and even the umpires were present. The bulk of the scoreboard was devoted to line scores for all major-league games, with AL games on the left and the NL on the right. The amount of information the Yankees sought to convey required three operators on days with a full slate of big-league games.
For fans attending games, Yankee Stadium could accommodate most preferred modes of transportation. The Yankees promoted the various subway lines from Manhattan to the ground, and the station at 161st Street and River Avenue was enlarged to handle expected large game-day crowds. For those choosing to travel by car, several thousand parking spaces were made out of the remainder of the land around the Stadium. Once fans arrived, there were several access points around the exterior, which was almost a half-mile in circumference. The main entrance was located at the southwest corner of the Stadium, at 157th and Doughty Street, with another major access point at the southeast corner near 157th and River Avenue. Other grandstand entrances dotted 161st Street. Ticket booths, 36 in all, featured at each entrance. To manage crowd flow, the Stadium had a system of scissor ramps behind the center and at the right end of the grandstand. Bleachers could be reached via entrances and exits along River Avenue, at 157th and 161st Streets.
In the final weeks before Opening Day, the finishing touches were applied. The final grandstand and bleacher seats were installed and painted green, and the sections and seats were assigned numbers. The club intended to move its offices from Midtown to the Stadium, but that was one part of the project that was not ready for the start of the season. Underneath the grandstand were the clubhouses and various storage rooms. The Yankees occupied the dugout on the third-base side, a difference from the Polo Grounds. Their clubhouse was located under the grandstand at street level, accessible from the dugout by a passageway and flight of stairs. The visitors clubhouse was also on the third-base side, which required opponents to walk across the field and through the Yankees dugout in order to reach it. Ruth opined that the arrangement might lead to tussles between opposing players.30
The Yankees received applications for Opening Day tickets throughout the winter, but tickets were not made available for public purchase until April 11. Even then, fans could buy tickets only at one of three Manhattan locations: the Yankees offices and the Winchester store, both in Midtown, and Spalding’s sporting goods store on Nassau Street downtown. Most of the tickets, however, were held over for sale on game day. That is, approximately 50,000 tickets (30,000 in the grandstand and 20,000 in the bleachers) were held back until noon on April 18, just 3½ hours prior to first pitch.
On Opening Day, fans swarmed the area surrounding Yankee Stadium. Demand for tickets proved so great that an estimated 25,000 were turned away. Before the game, the Yankees and Red Sox players paraded to the center-field flagpole, where the American flag and AL pennant were raised. Governor Al Smith received the honor of throwing the first pitch, which he delivered cleanly into catcher Wally Schang’s glove. The pitching matchup featured New York’s Bob Shawkey against Boston’s Howard Ehmke. Shawkey delivered the first official pitch to Chick Fewster at 3:31 P.M., one minute later than scheduled. The highlight of the game was provided by The Babe himself. In the third inning, Ruth delivered the moment the occasion required with a line-drive shot into the right-field bleachers, a three-run homer that provided the winning margin in the Yankees’ 4-1 victory. The time of game was two hours and five minutes, and the attendance was officially stated as 74,200, a mark that bested by a considerable margin the former record of 42,620 who attended Game Five of the 1916 World Series between the Red Sox and Brooklyn Dodgers at Braves Field.
Other milestones occurred at Yankee Stadium in 1923. The Yankees hosted their first Sunday game on April 22 against Washington. With the legalization of Sunday baseball in New York in 1919, the Giants and Yankees recognized the potential for large gates, and jostling for Sabbath dates contributed to the conflict between the clubs. The Yankees could grab more of this market now, and the crowd of 65,000 against the Senators proved the concept. Days later, President Warren G. Harding became the first chief executive to grace the Stadium. An avid baseball fan, Harding chatted up Ruth before the game and kept score of the Yankees’ first shutout in their new home. Tex Rickard indeed promoted the first boxing event at the Stadium on May 12 for the Milk Fund charity. The gates opened five hours before the opening bout of this boxing festival with the feature fight involving Jack McAuliffe against Luis Angel Firpo.31 When the Milk Fund attendance was announced as 62,000, Yankees business manager Ed Barrow was forced to admit that the Stadium’s capacity was not as large as advertised on Opening Day. College football debuted with a contest between Syracuse and Pittsburgh on October 20 with more games scheduled for that fall.
In February 1924 the Yankees announced several changes to the Stadium for the coming season. The most significant concerned the playing field and its effect on foul-line distances. The infield diamond was pushed out by 10 feet and tilted slightly to the right. In doing so, this move added foul territory but also extended the foul lines. Right fielders would have been pleased by the elimination of the so-called “bloody angle.” In the 1923 season, the foul line met the right-field grandstand almost at its terminus. This feature created a pocket between the end of the grandstand and the start of the bleachers where balls took strange and challenging caroms and bounces. With the change, the right-field foul line connected with the bleacher wall, extending the length from 258 feet to 295 feet. In left field, the sweep of the grandstand with the reconfigured infield created an additional 24 feet of distance, from 257 feet to 281 feet.
The Stadium never became the fully-enclosed three-tier colosseum of its original designs, but later projects expanded the upper decks beyond the foul poles and into the outfield. In 1928, Ruppert hired L.M. Neckermann to add seven sections to the mezzanine and upper deck on the left-field side at a cost of $400,000. The same firm was retained to do similar work on the right-field side during the 1936-1937 offseason at a cost of $850,000.32 This latest project also included the replacement of wooden areas in the Stadium – with particular attention to the bleachers – with concrete and steel, addition of curves to the fences to eliminate some of the sharper angles, and reconfiguration of the right-center-field bleachers to bring them almost 30 feet closer to the center-field flagpole.33 With that project complete, Yankee Stadium achieved its familiar structural shape and reached a capacity of 72,000.
In addition to the milestones noted above, two additional events set the Yankees on the road to becoming the most successful franchise in major-league history. In May 1923 Ruppert bought out his partner for approximately $1.5 million. The deal was complete with Huston being relieved of any debt or other liabilities on the Stadium and Ruppert dropping his demand that Huston stay out of baseball; however, Huston never re-entered the game in any significant capacity. In October the Yankees finally hosted a World Series in a ground of their own; Game One went against them when future Yankee manager Casey Stengel’s ninth-inning inside-the-park home run decided the game in favor of the Giants. The Yankees recovered to win the first of 20 World Series at pre-renovation (1923-1973) Yankee Stadium. Their tenure at the original Stadium included the eventual departure from New York of the Giants, whom the Yankees more than eclipsed in a reversal of fortunes. Ruppert may not have foreseen California baseball at the time, but his words proved prescient in many ways: “Yankee Stadium was a mistake – not mine, but the Giants’.”34
JOHN BAUER resides with his wife and two children in Bedford, New Hampshire. By day, he is an attorney specializing in insurance regulatory law and corporate law. By night, he spends many spring and summer evenings cheering for the San Francisco Giants, and many fall and winter evenings reading history. He is a past and ongoing contributor to other SABR projects.
SOURCES
In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author reviewed baseball-reference.com, retrosheet.org, and several New York-area newspapers accessible through newspapers.com.
NOTES
1 Ron Amore, A Franchise on the Rise: The First Twenty Years of The New York Yankees (New York: Sports Publishing, 2018), 269.
2 Amore, 271.
3 Amore, 272.
4 “Yankees to Build Stadium in Bronx,” New York Times, February 6, 1921: 20.
5 Amore, 273.
6 Amore, 274; Robert Weintraub, The House That Ruth Built (New York: Little Brown and Company, 2011), 46.
7 “Yanks Make First Payment for Land,” New York Times, March 19, 1921: 16.
8 “Deal for Yankees’ Home Completed,” New York Times, May 17, 1921: 14.
9 “Size of Stadium Impresses Crowd,” New York Times, April 19, 1921: 15.
10 James Crusinberry, “Yankee Owners Devoting Attention to New Stadium,” New York Daily News, January 4, 1922: 20.
11 “Yankees Call For Bid On Stadium,” New York Times, January 4, 1922: 15.
12 “Construction of New Yankee Stadium May Start Soon,” New York Evening World, January 4, 1922: 23.
13 “Sizable Job, Making Last Word in Modern Ball Parks,” New York Daily News, April 1, 1923: 51.
14 Amore, 276.
15 “Work Begins Today on Yankee Stadium,” New York Times, May 6, 1922: Sports 8.
16 W.O. McGeehan,”Yankees Start to Build Big Park,” New York Herald, April 1, 1922: 10.
17 “Yankee Ball Park Big Sports Arena,” New York Times, August 30, 1922: Sports 11.
18 Weintraub, 54.
19 Weintraub, 55.
20 “Where the Real Blow Comes,” The Sporting News, October 19, 1922: 2.
21 “Where the Real Blow Comes.”
22 John Kieran, “Infield at Yankee Stadium Completed as Per Schedule,” New York Tribune, November 28, 1922: 14.
23 Kieran.
24 “Sizable Job, Making Last Word in Modern Ball Parks.”
25 “Huston to Sell Out His Yankee Interest,” New York Times, December 12, 1922: 1.
26 “Ruppert Declares Huston Will Stay,” New York Times, January 6, 1923: Sports 10.
27 “Yankees Announce Changes at Stadium,” New York Times, February 3, 1924: Sec. 1, Part 2: 1.
28 “Yankees’ New Park Almost Completed,” New York Times, March 11, 1923: 1.
29 Joe Vila, “Faults Are Found With New Ball Park of the Yankees,” The Sporting News, March 15, 1923: 1.
30 Marshall Hunt, “No Homers, Despite Low Grade Hurling,” New York Daily News, February 15, 1923: 24.
31 “Rickard Inspects Yankee Stadium,” New York Times, May 8, 1923: 13.
32 Weintraub, 368.
33 Marty Appel, Pinstripe Empire: The New York Yankees From Before The Babe to After The Boss (New York: Bloomsbury, 2012), 54.
34 Amore, 282.