Last Sunday, an icon in sports history came to an end. Yankee Stadium, a stadium that has been around almost as long as baseball itself, saw its final game. There were 54,610 fans there to say farewell, many who would not leave for almost an hour after the Yankees beat the Orioles 7-3. The old ballpark gave its final blow to make room for the new $1.3 billion dollar stadium across the street. The new stadium will also be called Yankee Stadium, but it will have to be around for many, many years before it can even come close to the history that the old Yankee Stadium held.
Yankee Stadium was the home of many baseball greats over the years and love or hate the Yankees, you have to respect the history. Mickey Mantle played there. In fact, Mickey was a Yankee his entire career, so he always called Yankee Stadium home. Lou Gehrig told us from Yankee Stadium that he considered himself to be the “luckiest man on the face of the Earth.” Yankee Stadium was where Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio, the Yankee Clipper, led the team to nine titles in only 13 years – not too shabby! And, let’s not forget that Yankee Stadium was known as “The House That Ruth Built,” that Ruth being the legendary Babe Ruth.
(Photo is a NASA satellite image and as a work of NASA, the image is in the public domain.)
But, fear not Yankee fans, you can own a piece of the old stadium. It has been reported that pieces of Yankee Stadium, including seats, bases, turnstiles, signs, trash cans, and even urinals may be available for purchase soon. These is no deal in place right now because the city owns items like the seats and scoreboards, but word is that the city and the Yankees plan to make the items available for sale to collectors soon. Experts are estimating that urinals may go for as much as $3,000 while bases will probably fetch between $1,500 and $2,500.
All in all, the parts of the old ballpark could bring in as much as $50 million.