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It's the last Opening Day at Yankee Stadium

By Ryan Chatelain | rchatelain@am-ny.com

8:22 AM EDT, March 31, 2008

A sign on the exterior of Yankee stadium lists the years of recent Yankee champtionships. Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, New York will play host to the New York Yankee home opener for the last time. The Stadium is slated to be town down at the end of the Yankees season to make way for the new Yankee Stadium located directly across the street. (RJ Mickelson, Newsday / March 31, 2008)

Bucky Dent still vividly recalls opening day 1977, when he, for the first time in pinstripes, charged out on to the same Yankee Stadium field where icons Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle once roamed.

Today, as the House that Ruth Built celebrates its final opening day - and a new $1.3 billion stadium is erected next door - Dent, the Yankees' All-Star shortstop when Derek Jeter was still learning his ABCs, is among those who fear the team's home will be stripped of its history.

"The new one's going to be nice," said Dent, best known for hitting a three-run homer in Boston that propelled the Bombers into the 1978 World Series. "But the old one, you knew that those great players played in there. That was like sacred ground."

After this season, games will no longer be played in the very spot where Lou Gehrig delivered his tearful goodbye speech and Don Larsen captured World Series perfection, where Reggie Jackson needed just three swings to hit three homers to win the 1977 World Series and Wade Boggs stole a ride on a police horse to celebrate the team's 1996 world title.

"All of those memories go to waste when they take it down," said Andy Lofficial, 69, wearing a Yankees cap last week while he worked the counter at Ball Park Lanes, a popular bowling alley across the street from the current stadium.

The House that Ruth Built is slated to be torn down in early 2009. The new stadium is touted to include about 4,000 fewer seats but feature better sight lines, more luxury boxes and modern amenities such as a martini bar and a corporate area equipped with video conferencing.

Elizabeth Repp, 34, a lifelong Yankees fan from Denver, Colo., used her two young sons' spring break from school last week as a last chance for them to see the current stadium, which opened in 1923. Repp said she has attended several games there and cried the first time she saw the field in person.

"There's always room for improvement," she said. "But there's a certain nostalgia you're going to lose that you'll never get back again with a new stadium."

Yankee Stadium also has hosted its share of non-baseball history. Joe Louis and Muhammad Ali defended their heavyweight boxing titles in the stadium. And in 1958, the Giants, who once called the Yankee Stadium home, played in - and lost - the NFL championship game, often referred to as the greatest football game ever played.

Still on tap before the stadium closes is July's baseball All-Star Game and, possibly, a Rangers hockey game. And in a few weeks, Pope Benedict XVI will become the third pontiff to celebrate Mass there.

While Dent said he and his teammates often discussed the tradition of Yankee Stadium, former All-Star first baseman Bill "Moose" Skowron, who played for the Yankees from 1954-62, said he never thought much about the stadium's past and believes the new venue can be just as special as the current one.

The fans, he says, make the stadium.

"The beautiful fans," he said. "They were always great. Win or lose, they were always nice. You don't forget things like that."