100 years later: Looking back at Yankee Stadium's first game

The word of the day was inescapable: BIG. It peppered the talk among players and fans and dominated accounts in newspapers.

Even worldly New Yorkers had never seen anything quite like what originally was referred to as “the Yankee Stadium,” an edifice in the Bronx that opened to rave reviews — and awestruck gapes — 100 years ago, on April 18, 1923.

“The stadium is big,” The New York Times wrote in one of several unbylined stories about the opener. “It is a skyscraper among ballparks.”

And when Babe Ruth hit a three-run home run in the third inning for the day’s signature moment, The Times added this:

“The biggest crowd in baseball history rose to its feet and let loose the biggest shout in baseball history.”

John Durant authored an essay in Sports Illustrated in April of 1963 recalling the day he and some friends ditched classes at Yale to attend the opener 40 years earlier.

“It was the biggest one-day show baseball had ever staged, including World Series games,” he wrote. “Everything was big.”’

It was that kind of day in the Bronx, full of hyperbole and hype.

Famous composer John Philip Sousa, then 68, conducted one of the two pregame bands.

Gov. Al Smith threw out the first pitch — and violated the tradition of the era by firing a strike to Yankees catcher Wally Schang rather than throwing wildly.

Baseball commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis took the subway to the game, got swallowed up in throngs of ticket buyers and had to be extricated by police.

Even Yankees ownership got caught up in the excitement and reported an inflated attendance figure of 74,217 — with another 25,000 turned away at the gates.

Come May, when a sold-out boxing event drew a mere 62,000 or so, the Yankees had to admit publicly the Opening Day figure had been an estimate.

(The Daily News seemed to know something was up; its back page headline after the opener read, “65,000 SEE YANKS WIN FIRST.”)

Either way, the opener far surpassed the previous major league attendance mark, when 42,620 saw the Red Sox clinch the 1916 World Series by defeating Brooklyn in Game 5 at Braves Field in Boston.

Police arrested two “ticket speculators,” as they were called — Durant witnessed one of them being hauled away — one for seeking $1.25 for a $1.10 grandstand ticket.

The Yankees moved from rickety Hilltop Park in Manhattan to the Polo Grounds in 1913. But by the early ‘20s the Giants had tired of sharing their building with the surging Yankees and their young star, Ruth.

So the Yankees crossed the Harlem River and built a stadium of their own.

At the time, the Bronx had about half the population it has now and was viewed as the boondocks by stuffy Manhattanites.

The Times called those who traveled to the opener “intrepid Arctic explorers who ventured into the frozen northland of the Bronx.”

The stadium took only 11 months to build at a cost of $2.5 million — a modest $45 million or so in today’s dollars.

Its massive concrete and steel decks included three levels — a configuration that would grow even larger in the late ‘20s and boost capacity to over 80,000.

As for the inaugural game itself, which began at 3:30 p.m. and lasted 2:05, the Yankees beat the Red Sox, 4-1, behind a three-hitter by Bob Shawkey.

The Yankees scored all four of their runs in the third inning off Howard Ehmke, who tried to fool Ruth with a “slow ball” on a 2-and-2 count and paid the price.

Ruth ripped the ball into the rightfield seats, demonstrating his flair for dramatics.

“If the game had been rehearsed, it couldn’t have been staged better,” James Crusinberry wrote in the Daily News. “It made the opening of the biggest baseball park in the world a tremendous success.”

Crusinberry later added, “He smacked one as he never smacked one before. It was great!”

The Times wrote, “Governors, generals, colonels, politicians and baseball officials gathered together solemnly to dedicate the biggest stadium in baseball, but it was a ballplayer who did the real dedication.”

Before the game was over, some fans left the stands to join Ruth in rightfield to get a closer look at him.

After fashioning arguably the greatest season in baseball history in 1921, Ruth had fallen off badly in ’22. He batted .118 in the World Series, which the Yankees lost to the Giants. 

There was talk that his off-field antics had caught up with him, and that he might be through at age 28.

This was his first chance at redemption. Before the opener he reportedly said he would give a year of his life to hit a homer in the game.

Then he christened the stadium sportswriter Fred Lieb dubbed “The House that Ruth Built,” and went on to be a unanimous pick as 1923 American League MVP and lead the Yankees to their first world championship.

By the early ‘70s, the big ballpark in the Bronx had grown shabby.

In a Newsday column on Sept. 1, 1971, Ed Comerford wrote, “Yankee Stadium is dead,” and he called it “an uncomfortable arena in an obsolete traffic complex in a deteriorating neighborhood.”

But officials decided on a massive, two-year renovation, and when the stadium re-opened in 1976, the 85-year-old Shawkey threw out the first pitch.

The building closed for good in 2008, replaced by a brand new one next door. Its original seating capacity was 50,287.

Big? Sure. But nothing like the wonder that greeted wide-eyed fans in the Bronx a century ago this month.

By Neil Best

neil.best@newsday.com@sportswatch

Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.