Yankee Stadium (29 September 2007).jpg

Yankee Stadium is a baseball stadium located in the Bronx, New York City. It is the home field of the New York Yankees of Major League Baseball, and New York City FC of Major League Soccer.

Opened in April 2009, the stadium replaced the original Yankee Stadium that operated from 1923 to 2008; it is situated on the former site of Macombs Dam Park, one block north of the original stadium's site. The new Yankee Stadium replicates design elements of the original Yankee Stadium (including its exterior and trademark frieze), while incorporating larger spaces and modern amenities. It is the third-largest stadium in Major League Baseball by seating capacity.

Although construction began in August 2006, the project spanned many years and faced many controversies, including the high public cost and the loss of public parkland. The $2.3 billion stadium, built with $1.2 billion in public subsidies, is one of the most expensive stadiums ever built.

Along with baseball, the stadium has hosted soccer matches; in 2014, it became the home field of the new Major League Soccer expansion club New York City FC, which is owned by City Football Group and the Yankees. Yankee Stadium was intended to be an interim venue for the club until a soccer-specific stadium is constructed. It has also occasionally hosted neutral-site college football games, including the annual Pinstripe Bowl, as well as concerts and other events.

History

Planning

New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner began campaigning for a new stadium in the early 1980s, just a few years after the remodeled Yankee Stadium opened. Steinbrenner at the time was reportedly considering a move to the Meadowlands Sports Complex in New Jersey. New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean in 1984 authorized the use of land for a new baseball stadium in the Meadowlands, but the state legislature did not provide financing for the stadium. In a statewide referendum in 1987, New Jersey taxpayers rejected $185 million in public financing for a baseball stadium for the Yankees. Despite the rejection from New Jersey, Steinbrenner frequently threatened to move as leverage in negotiations with New York City.

In 1988, Mayor Ed Koch agreed to have city taxpayers spend $90 million on a second renovation of Yankee Stadium that included luxury boxes and restaurants inside the stadium and parking garages and traffic improvements outside. Steinbrenner agreed in principle, but then backed out of the deal. In 1993, Mayor David Dinkins expanded on Koch's proposal by offering his Bronx Center vision for the neighborhood, including new housing, a new courthouse, and relocating the Police Academy nearby.

In 1993, New York Governor Mario Cuomo proposed using the West Side Yard, a rail yard along the West Side of Manhattan and owned by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, as the location for a new stadium for the Yankees. However, Cuomo lost his re-election bid a few months later. By 1995, Steinbrenner had rejected 13 proposals to keep the Yankees in the Bronx.

In 1998, Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer proposed spending $600 million in public money to add dozens of luxury boxes to the stadium, to improve highway and public transportation access, and to create a Yankee Village, with shops, restaurants, and a museum. Steinbrenner rejected this as well. That same year, Mayor Rudy Giuliani unveiled a plan to relocate the Yankees to the West Side Yard for a $1 billion stadium. However, with most of the funding coming from taxpayers, Giuliani tabled the proposal, fearing rejection in a citywide referendum. The West Side Stadium plan resurfaced in December 2001, and by January 2002, months after the September 11 attacks, Giuliani announced "tentative agreements" for both the New York Yankees and New York Mets to build new stadiums. He estimated that both stadiums would cost $2 billion, with city and state taxpayers contributing $1.2 billion.

Michael Bloomberg, who succeeded Giuliani as mayor in 2002, called the former mayor's agreements " corporate welfare" and exercised the escape clause in the agreements to back out of both deals, saying that the city could not afford to build new stadiums for the Yankees and Mets. Bloomberg said that Giuliani had inserted a clause in this deal that loosened the teams' leases with the city and would allow the Yankees and Mets to leave the city on 60 days' notice to find a new home elsewhere if the city backed out of the agreement. At the time, Bloomberg said that publicly funded stadiums were a poor investment. Bloomberg's blueprint for the stadium was unveiled in 2004, at the same time as the plan for the Mets' new stadium, Citi Field. The final cost for the two stadiums was more than $3.1 billion; taxpayer subsidies accounted for $1.8 billion.

Construction

Groundbreaking ceremonies for the stadium took place on August 16, 2006, the 58th anniversary of Babe Ruth's death, with Steinbrenner, Bloomberg, and then-Governor of New York George Pataki among the notables donning Yankees hard hats and wielding ceremonial shovels to mark the occasion. The Yankees continued to play in the previous Yankee Stadium during the 2007 and 2008 seasons while their new home stadium was built across the street. The community was left without parkland for five years.

During construction of the new stadium, a construction worker and avid Boston Red Sox fan buried a replica jersey of Red Sox player David Ortiz underneath the visitors' dugout with the objective of placing a "hex" on the Yankees, much like the " Curse of the Bambino" that had allegedly plagued the Red Sox long after trading Ruth to the Yankees. After the worker was exposed by co-workers, he was forced to help exhume the jersey. The Yankees organization then donated the retrieved jersey to the Jimmy Fund, a charity started in 1948 by the Red Sox' National League rivals, the Boston Braves, but long championed by the Red Sox and particularly associated with Ted Williams. The worker has since claimed to have buried a 2004 American League Championship Series program/scorecard, but has not said where he placed it. These attempts didn't have much effect upon the home team, though: the Yankees went on to win the 2009 World Series at the end of their first MLB season in the new stadium.

Features

The new stadium is meant to evoke elements of the original Yankee Stadium, both in its original 1923 state and its post-renovation state in 1976. The exterior resembles the original look of the 1923 Yankee Stadium. The interior, a modern ballpark with greater space and increased amenities, features a playing field that closely mimics the 1988–2008 dimensions of the old stadium. The current stadium features 4,300 club seats and 68 luxury suites.

Design and layout

The stadium was designed by the architectural firm Populous. The exterior was made from 11,000 pieces of Indiana limestone, along with granite and pre-cast concrete. It features the building's name V-cut and gold-leaf lettered above each gate. The interior of the stadium is adorned with hundreds of photographs capturing the history of the Yankees. The ''New York Daily News'' newspaper partnered with the Yankees for the exhibition "The Glory of the Yankees Photo Collection", which was selected from the ''Daily News'' collection of over 2,000 photographs. Sports & The Arts was hired by the Yankees to curate the nearly 1,300 photographs that adorn the building from sources including the ''Daily News'', Getty Images, the Baseball Hall of Fame and Major League Baseball.

The seats are laid out similar to the original Yankee Stadium's stands, with grandstand seating that stretches beyond the foul poles, as well as bleacher seats beyond the outfield fences. The Field Level and Main Level comprise the lower bowl, with suites on the H&R Block Level, and the Upper Level and Grandstand Level comprising the upper bowl. Approximately of the stadium's seating is in the lower bowl, the inverse from the original Yankee Stadium. 50,287 fans can be seated, with a standing room capacity of 52,325. The new stadium's seating is spaced outward in a bowl, unlike the stacked-tiers design at the old stadium. This design places most fans farther back but lower to the field, by about an average of . Over 56 suites are located within the ballpark, triple the amount from the previous stadium. Seats are wide, up from the previous stadium's wide seats, while there is of leg room, up from of leg room in the previous stadium. Many lower-level seats are cushioned, while all seats are equipped with cupholders. To allow for the extra seating space, the stadium's capacity is reduced by more than 4,000 seats in comparison to the previous stadium.

Many design elements of the ballpark's interior are inspired by the original Yankee Stadium. The roof of the new facility features a replica of the frieze that was a trademark of the previous ballpark. In the original Yankee Stadium, a copper frieze originally lined the roof of the upper deck stands, but it was torn down during the 1974–75 renovations and replicated atop the wall beyond the bleachers. The new stadium replicates the frieze in its original location along the upper deck stands. Made of steel coated with zinc for rust protection, it is part of the support system for the cantilevers holding up the top deck and the lighting on the roof. The wall beyond the bleacher seats is "cut out" to reveal the subway trains as they pass by, like they were in the original facility. A manually operated auxiliary scoreboard is built into the left and right field fences, in the same locations it existed in the pre-renovation iteration of the original Yankee Stadium.

Between the exterior perimeter wall and interior of the stadium is the "Great Hall", a large concourse that runs between Gates 4 and 6. With seven-story ceilings, the Great Hall features more than of retail space and is lined with 20 banners of past and present Yankees superstars. The Great Hall features a LED ( light-emitting diode) ribbon display as well as a 25' by 36' LED video display above the entrance to the ballpark from Daktronics, a company in Brookings, South Dakota.

Monument Park, which features the Yankees' retired numbers, as well as monuments and plaques dedicated to distinguished Yankees, has been moved from its location beyond the left field fences in the original Yankee Stadium to its new location beyond the center field fences at the new facility. Monument Park is now situated under the sports bar; black shades cover the monuments on the back wall during games to prevent interference with the vision of the batter. The new location of the monuments is meant to mirror their original placement in center field at the original pre-renovation Yankee Stadium, albeit when they were on the playing field. The transfer of Monument Park from the old stadium to the new stadium began on November 10, 2008. The first monuments were put in place on February 23, 2009. Yankees pitcher Mariano Rivera requested that the Yankees reposition the team's bullpen, as well as add a door to connect the Yankees' bullpen to Monument Park, in order to allow access to it by Yankee relievers. The organization complied with his request.

Field dimensions and playing surface

The field dimensions for the outfield fences have the same distance markers as the original facility prior to closing yet the dimensions are not identical. Due to the design of the right-field stands and the inclusion of an embedded manual scoreboard, the right-field wall is an average of closer to home plate. Overall, the fences measure to left field, to left-center field, to center field, to right-center field, and to right field. At the old Yankee Stadium, the right field wall curved from the right-field corner to straightaway center, while at the new ballpark the fence takes a sharp, almost entirely straight angle. This results in a difference at certain points between the right field markers of as much as . The dimensions in left field are substantially the same despite the presence of an embedded auxiliary scoreboard there as well. All these differences make the current Yankee Stadium more batter-friendly than the original one.

The outfield fences measure high from the left-field foul pole until the Yankees' bullpen, when the fences begin to gradually descend in height until the right field foul pole, where they are tall. This also marks a decrease from the previous Yankee Stadium, where the outfield walls stood at a height of approximately . The distance from home plate to the backstop is , a reduction of from the previous facility. The field is made up of Kentucky bluegrass, the same surface as the previous stadium, which is grown on a farm in Bridgeton, New Jersey

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