Ironic and fitting best describes the two opposing teams at this season’s final scheduled baseball game at Yankee Stadium on September 21, 2008, the last regularly scheduled event ever to occur at the ‘House That Ruth Built”. Specifically, I am referring to the New York Yankees and the Baltimore Orioles. And, the propitious allure and appeal of these two teams competing on this special day has absolutely nothing to do with either team’s likelihood, or lack thereof, of capturing a post season playoff spot. Rather, it is the fascinating historical connections these two teams and cities possess in the world of major league baseball, that add so much more to this upcoming event, an event that is historic even before it occurs.

For starters, without Baltimore and an original Baltimore Orioles franchise team, there would be no New York Yankees as they have come to be known. In 1901, the first year of the current American Baseball League, there was no New York franchise. (There were two National League franchises from New York, the Giants and the Dodgers who departed the “Big Apple” a half a century ago.) It was in 1903 that the American League charter franchise team from Baltimore, the original Baltimore Orioles, moved to New York and became the New York Highlanders. The team name was changed to “Yankees” in 1913.

For seconds, without Baltimore and a Baltimore Oriole franchise team, there would be no “House That Ruth Built” because there would have been no Babe Ruth.
George Herman Ruth was born in Baltimore in 1895 and started his professional baseball career with the minor league Baltimore Orioles in 1914 (a professional baseball club which replaced the original American League Orioles in Baltimore in 1903). Sold to the Boston Red Sox as a rising star pitcher six months later that year, a quirk of fate as it were, caused him to be traded to the Yankees in 1920 as an emerging home run slugger. In addition to paying for Yankee Stadium completed in 1923 with the huge crowds he drew, his unseen-before prowess as a prolific home run slugger attracted huge attendance at ballparks in every American League City. As a result, he saved baseball from almost imminent disaster following the infamous Black Sox Scandal of 1919.

Those points having been made, there are other memorable events and activities of interest to consider in anticipation of Yankee stadium’s upcoming demise. For instance, it was the site of many famous professional boxing matches, most memorable of which were the two (particularly the second) heavyweight championship bouts between Joe Louis and Max Schmelling in 1936 and 1938. (Both were refereed by Arthur Donovan, Sr., father of future pro-football hall-of-famer and native of the Bronx, Artie Donovan, #70. The latter starred as a defensive tackle with the Baltimore Colts in the mid-to-late nineteen fifties and early nineteen sixties.) Add to that three papal visits, numerous concerts, and many other special events related to sports and other activities.

But there is one grouping of team sport events which most people now don’t immediately connect to Yankee Stadium which is equally memorable and historic. That being college and professional football.

During the twenties and later, there were many famous Army-Notre football games held there which were broadcast on radio all over the country. One of those was Notre Dame’s famous upset victory in 1928 over heavily favored Army where at halftime legendary coach Knute Rockne urged his team to “Win one for the Gipper!”. In fact, Yankee Stadium was the home-away-from-home field, as it were, for both the Cadets of Army and Notre Dame. (Notre Dame had an enormous listenership on radio in New York, as well as nationwide, making the Fighting Irish one of most followed collegiate teams in the New York City area.)

What has stirred this soul at this cathedral, however, was professional football. In 1956, the New York Football Giants moved upstream from the Polo Grounds and made Yankee Stadium its home for the next seventeen years. It was at this already historic site just two years later on December 28, 1958, that the Giants hosted the Baltimore Colts for the National Football League Championship for that season. At the tender age of nine, I viewed this classic on tv., as all other Baltimoreans who couldn’t attend in-person did, a game that has come to be known by an overwhelming majority of football aficionados as the “Greatest Game Ever Played”. Whether or not it was the greatest football game ever played is not a subject to be argued here. All I can say with certainty is that for the National Football League, the Baltimore Colts, the City Of Baltimore, and a now fifty-year-later nine year old, this contest and its outcome was their and my greatest sports event experience.

And that is just another reason, among the others previously stated, that I will be making the pilgrimage on September 21, 2008 to this grand old shrine to bid farewell and thanks-for-the-memories at its last regularly scheduled event there ever, a baseball game between the Baltimore Orioles and the New York Yankees.

James C. DeWald
Baltimore, Maryland

Sidebar- New Yorkers have always been over the years a shrewd bunch, indeed. They bought Manhattan Island from the native Indians for $24.00 of wampum. Former Yankee manager Casey Stengel often successfully manipulated the baseball talent market by using both the brand new Baltimore Orioles and Kansas City Athletics of the nineteen fifties as major league “farm teams” (e.g., Bob Turley,
Don Larsen, Roger Maris, etc.).

Now consider this. Baltimore gave New York the Yankees- arguably the greatest and most successful team sport franchise of all time. Baltimore also gave New York Babe Ruth- without argument, the most famous baseball and sports figure of all times.

Question, other than Artie Donovan, what did Baltimore get from New York in return? Gus Triandos, Gene Woodling, remnants of the old Brooklyn Football Dodgers and New York Yanks from the now defunct All America Football Conference?

Good deal, even deal, fair deal; wampum?

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Historical dates and other information referenced/verified by staff members of the
Enoch Free Library Of Baltimore’s Fine Arts & Recreation Department & www.wikipedia.com