Book Review

Yankee Stadium: The Official Retrospective
Mark Vancil and Alfred Santasiere III

I should had read through this book before I went to the Yankees game earlier this month. I also should have taken the time to walk around the outside and inside of the stadium...

This is a really nice book. It's got lots of pictures, lots of first person reminiscings, lots and lots of the stories of Yankee Stadium. I think if I had read this book before going to the game, I would have had a much larger appreciation for the place. It's definitely an interesting read.

Something I didn't say when I talked about the baseball game a few weeks ago. The place smelled like hot dogs and beer. I don't even know if people near me were eating hot dogs, I imagine they were, there were definitely people drinking around us. I wonder if the place permanently smells like hot dogs and beer. The guy sitting next to me was a little older, he kept commenting to the people behind us (who he seemed to be related to) about the ERA of the pitcher, after every out. (It was the pitchers first game of the season, so it was easy to calculate.) He went around the 5th inning to get something from vending. When he came back, he found an old hot dog bun shoved into a slat in the back of his seat. My seat didn't have slats, but his did. It turned out that he had gotten mustard all over his coat, which was very bothersome to him. At one point in the game, when a Toronto player got on base, I yelled "Go two! Go two!" The guy thought it was pretty funny. (This is what I always do in intramural softball to try to get people to jump off first base. It's pretty funny when they do.) It was at this moment that I realized the guy was missing most, but not all, of his front teeth. New York City is an interesting town...

That place has a lot of history in it. I don't think my experience at Yankee stadium is all that typical of most of those that happen. This book talks about a lot of the big dramatic events in the history of the stadium, I think the rest of them are a lot like the one I had. If it's unclear to you what the history of Yankee Stadium is, go find this book and read it. It's definitely worth the read.