FOURTH OF JULY JUST PART OF HISTORICAL VIBE AT NEW YANKEE STADIUM EXPERIENCE

Photos--Top-A shot of the front of Yankee Stadium from the subway platform on the opposite track. Middle-The "Great Hall" where banners of former greats like Mantle, Howard & Rizzuto hang throughout the concourse. Bottom-The Stadium from behind home plate in the upper deck prior to pre-game festivities. 

Taking the NYC subway 4 Train up to the Bronx from Manhattan, I couldn't help but look out of the right side of the train like a grade-schooler with great anticipation as we neared the stop at 161st Street.  Literally just hundreds of feet away from the historic original site, baseball's most expensive new stadium appeared to be living up to its billing.  As I had repeatedly heard from all of the baseball pundits who have weighed in on their impressions of Yankee Stadium, the structure itself is just huge, intimidating to some degree.  If you are only building a new stadium every 85 years or so, you need to get it right, right?

As advertised, the concourses are amazingly wide, allowing for reasonably good flow of foot-traffic from one point to the next.  The stadium is as much of a museum as it is a sports venue.  When you first walk in "The Great Hall" has long, rectangular banners (see photo above) with Yankee greats adorning the walkway throughout the ground level concourse.  Of course, the Yankees recreated Monument Park behind the centerfield fence, just like it was in the original stadium, and they host tours prior to each game for thousands of fans. Yankee logos for each of the 26 World Series Championships with the respective year underneath them are painted on a large wall that serves as the back-drop for the right-center bleachers.  There is a Cooperstown-like atmosphere throughout with classic photos of old Yankees wherever you go on any of the four stadium levels. All that being said, the signature visual that confirms you are in Yankee Stadium is the uniquely famous white facade that trims the front of the roof's edge.

It being the Fourth of July, there was no better way to spend it than in the Yankees' new  home in the South Bronx and to share the excitement with about 53,000 others like myself. Not only were we celebrating the most important day in our country's history, this day also marked the 70th anniversary of Lou Gehrig's famous "luckiest man" speech as he announced his retirement from baseball due to ALS (a.k.a. Lou Gehrig's disease).  All of Major League Baseball participated in an awareness campaign over the weekend to promote research for this still incurable debilitating disease.  Being in the stadium, and seeing the entire crackly, old black & white news-reel footage of Gehrig's speech displayed on the 100' HD jumbo screen in centerfield was particularly moving.  

Prior to first pitch the sell-out crowd stood in applause as P.A. announcer Paul Olden introduced four local military veterans in attendance who had recently returned home after being injured in military activity in Iraq. The U.S. Marine band then marched in from centerfield to home plate to play our National Anthem while their brothers from the Navy presented the colors. Ever since 9/11/2001 Yankee Stadium has had some rendition of "God Bless America" played or sung during the 7th Inning Stretch. This day it was famous Irish tenor, Ronan Tynan, in-person performing his passionate version of the song that is usually a 60-year old Kate Smith recording.

Adding it all up--the Fourth of July, injured military heroes being saluted, the Marine Corps Band and Navy teaming up for the National Anthem with vocals from 53,000 amateurs, Lou Gehrig's speech, God Bless America, and a Yankee win...maybe I'm getting just a bit sappy as I get older, but it was one very historic day for a lot of different reasons.  One I probably won't forget.

CAN'T FIGHT THE FEELING 

Because I could not miss being a part of one more historic experience, I joined a couple of million others along the west side of NYC watching the ultimate fireworks display that commemorated 400 years since Henry Hudson mistakenly found his way onto this river while searching for a northern route to Asia.  Although the television broadcast of this event probably provided a wonderful visual treat, especially in HD, it couldn't effectively portray the faces of young and old, representing essentially a United Nations collection of people, that I witnessed that night.  One older man who spoke broken-English stood behind me, along with his family, with his portable radio tuned into an all-news station. The station was doing a play by play of the fireworks with some patriotic music playing behind their commentary.  Once the fireworks started, his conversation with his family stopped as he took in the pageantry 

Standing amongst a diverse mass of some million-plus people, all of whom had their own story, that were assembled to honor America in a very calm and organized manner as tons of fireworks were launched from three barges on the Hudson, was certainly a lot different than the basic backyard barbecue followed by some personal firecrackers that a family member smuggled in from out of state.