YANKEE STADIUM

The Yankees played their final game in Yankee Stadium last night. They won 7-3 over the Orioles. There were reminiscences. There were cheers. The good guys prevailed in their last night in their legendary home.

The grand cathedral of baseball will be gone. They greatest and most famous franchise in professional baseball will be moving to a new home. History will not disappear. It never disappears. It will be linked to a new stadium and a new future. There will be more days of greatness in a sparkling new baseball palace. Many more.

I remember going to "old" Yankee Stadium as a boy. This was the original structure, before it was remade and reopened in 1976. All I remember is how high up I felt. It seemed as if I had sat within clouds and looked down at the diamond in a steep angle.

The "new" Yankee Stadium will always be vivid for me. The victories, the championships, the loudest and funniest fans. Watching baseball there was always a party. Watching baseball there was sacred.

Each year I made my pilgrimage. Each year I planned my homage to the diamond deity, the god of the summer grass. The Staten Island Ferry into Manhattan. The "4" train into the Bronx. A procession of metal chariots that clicky-clacked their way up towards Olympus. My body, a fleshy carriage carrying my soul. I would see the Stadium rise up in the distance gleaming in blue and white, glowing iridescent in the summer dusk. The memories would rush through me. The seasons of hope, passion, triumph and joy. I could hear the thoughts of others around me, thoughts like mine, thoughts of memories past and victories future.

I will miss the old place.

Understand, though, I look forward to the new. Greatness is born only from challenge. There is no challenge that the New York Yankees cannot meet.

Here's to a new New York Yankee century in the 21st Century of Our Lord. Here's to new championships, new memories, grand stories that I will pass on to my children and my children's children.

Here's to the New York Yankees and Yankee Stadium.