Yankee Stadium I

The Copper

The owners wanted an air of dignity, and they spent approximately 86,000 pounds of sea-green Toncan copper to get it. A frieze hung down sixteen feet from the roof of the upper deck — there from the first day, and fans came to call it the facade. It belonged to a building that went up fast. Groundbreaking came in May 1922. The White Construction Company finished the job in less than a year, at a cost of $2.5 million, and the doors opened on April 18, 1923. Osborn Engineering had designed the first triple-decker ballpark in the major leagues: a field level, an upper deck, and a 19-row mezzanine between them. It sat on ten acres in the west Bronx that the Yankees had purchased from the estate of William Waldorf Astor for $675,000.

The ground carried other firsts. The playing field was the first in the major leagues encircled by a running path, which became MLB's first warning track. And on Opening Day, Babe Ruth hit a three-run home run into the right-field seats off Howard Ehmke — the first home run in the new stadium. The Yankees beat the Red Sox 4-1. Sportswriter Fred Lieb called the place The House That Ruth Built, and the name held for over eight decades.

What the Field Held

Two afternoons carry the weight of the place. On July 4, 1939, Lou Gehrig stood before the crowd and told them he was the luckiest man on the face of the Earth, fighting the ALS that would kill him less than two years later at 37. In Game Five of the 1956 World Series, Don Larsen pitched the only perfect game in World Series history, beating the Dodgers.

A renovation completed in 1976 — designed by Praeger-Kavanaugh-Waterbury at a cost of $160 million — reshaped the structure midway through its life. The park stood from 1923 to 2008 on that ground in the Bronx.

Reporting: SABR, Baseball Almanac, CBS Sports. Park data: MLB StatsAPI and Retrosheet, via the Fever engine.