Yankee Stadium has been site of many great moments
As baseball's elite prepares to play the final All-Star game in the storied stadium that opened in 1923, a look back shows how many key events have occurred there.
After acquiring Babe Ruth from the Boston Red Sox before the 1920 season, the New York Yankees set out to build a stadium. They bought 10 acres of land in the Bronx in 1921 from the estate of William Waldorf Astor for $675,000. Two years and $2.5 million later, Yankee Stadium opened. Next season, the Yankees will open a new, $1.2-billion stadium and tear down the old one.
Tonight, baseball's elite return for the final All-Star game in the original "House That Ruth Built," and return to a place that has housed some of the most memorable moments in sports history. Here are a few of them, in chronological order:
Sultan of Swat -- Babe Ruth barely kept his 60th home run fair down the right-field line on Sept. 30, 1927. With that blast, Ruth broke his own single-season home run record of 59, set in 1921.
Gipper game -- George Gipp, an offensive star at Notre Dame, received a visit on his deathbed from his coach, Knute Rockne. Gipp told the coach, "Sometime, Rock, when the team is up against it, when things are wrong and the breaks are beating the boys -- tell them to go in there with all they've got and win just one for the Gipper." Rockne decided that day was Nov. 10, 1928, when his Irish traveled to Yankee Stadium to play undefeated Army. Notre Dame won, 12-6.
"Down goes Schmeling!" -- In their first match in 1936, Max Schmeling defeated Joe Louis, a win that Nazi leader Adolph Hitler used to propagandize his belief in Aryan superiority. Two years later, they met again at Yankee Stadium. Hitler called Schmeling before the fight, asking him to win for the Third Reich, but this time, Louis knocked Schmeling out in the first round.
"Luckiest Man . . . " -- In 1939, Lou Gehrig was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the disease that bears his name today. But Gehrig made one last trip to Yankee Stadium to bid fans farewell on July 4. A tearful Gehrig proclaimed to the crowd, "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth." Gehrig died nearly two years later.
Brooklyn's year -- It was 1955 that "next year" finally arrived. The popular mantra of Dodgers fans, "Wait till next year," began to sound hollow after the Yankees defeated Brooklyn five times in the fall classic (1941, '47, '49, '52, '53). But in 1955, the Dodgers finally got back at their crosstown foes, thanks to a game-saving catch by Dodgers outfielder Sandy Amoros with the tying runs on base in the sixth inning, and won the deciding Game 7 in the Bronx.
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