They Don't Do Nostalgia Like They Used To

I’m not a Yankees fan by any means, but as I am sitting here watching the final game in Yankee Stadium, I must say I am very disappointed that ESPN failed to show any of the pregame festivities. It seems like it would have been easy to shift SportsCenter over to ESPN2 and get a nice ratings boost from all the baseball fans looking to relive a little history. (Or perhaps I would be extremely disappointed once again in the stark realities of America’s collective taste and find out that they did do that study and found that people would prefer to watch highlights from NFL week 3 rather than highlights of 85 years of baseball’s most prestigious venue)

Without even thinking too hard, I come up with Ruth hitting the first home run at the stadium, Gehrig’s farewell speech (not to mention his consecutive games streak only recently broken), the only perfect game in the World Series, Jackie Robinson stealing home on Yogi during the World Series (though Yogi would argue), 26 Championships (plus however many World Series that the Yankees lost), the first time in baseball history where a team came from three games down in a seven game series (against the Yankees, but the final drama played out in Yankee Stadium) and the emotional World Series after 9/11.

So, I think it would have been worth and hour of ESPN's time to let baseball fans around the country share in the pregame ceremonies.

To come full circle, here are some of the first and last stats for Yankee Stadium. Hopefully Wrigley and Fenway will stay around for many years to come.

(Firsts shamelessly copied from Dugout Central)
First Game: April 18, 1923
Score: Yankees 4, Red Sox 1
First Pitch by: Bob Shawkey (Yankees)
First Batter: Chick Fewster (Red Sox)
First Hit: George Burns (Red Sox; no, not that George Burns, but he could have been, the late actor was 27 at the time)
First Home Run: Babe Ruth
First Error: Babe Ruth


Last Game, Sept 21, 2008
Score: Yankees 7, Orioles 3
Last Home Run: Jose Molina (Yankees)
Last Run Scored: Brett Gardner (Yankees)
Last Hit: Jason Giambi (Yankees)
Last Pitch by: Mariano Rivera (Yankees)
Last Batter: Brian Roberts (Orioles)