The New York Yankees have a long and illustrious history, and their home stadium is no exception. Yankee Stadium, located in the Bronx, has been the home of the Yankees since 1923. Its construction was fully funded by the owner of the Yankees, Jacob Ruppert, who was eager to have his own stadium after sharing the Polo Grounds with the New York Giants baseball team for the previous decade. The original design of Yankee Stadium took into account some geographical constraints, but its final form was unyielding. With the addition of the grandstands, the capacity of Yankee Stadium grew to nearly 80,000 spectators, depending on how many people were standing to watch the games.
In particular, regularly hitting the concrete on the top deck with Bate Day implements hastened the structural deterioration of Yankee Stadium. Around this same time, Burke issued a warning that, without a major stadium renovation, the Yankees would be forced to consider moving to Shea Stadium or to the Meadowlands in New Jersey. At this point, Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer opposed the 1996 HOK call to build a stadium in Manhattan by proposing a sports-themed development in Yankee Village around Yankee Stadium that would be largely funded by the city, although at a much lower public cost than a new stadium in Manhattan would require. Michael Bloomberg, who succeeded Giuliani as mayor in 2002, described his predecessor's agreements as corporate welfare and used the escape clause in the agreements to revoke both agreements, saying that the city could not afford to build new stadiums for both the Yankees and Mets. Years later, Jon Hanson, former president of the New Jersey Sports and Exhibition Authority, told the Bergen Record that before the vote he had reached a handshake agreement with Steinbrenner to move the Yankees to New Jersey.
Johnson complied in every sense of the word by selling the stadium to John Cox, a longtime business partner. Before its first game in 1923, Babe Ruth famously declared that he would give up a year of his life to hit a home run on opening day. During Game 5 of that same World Series year, marked by several fielding errors, several Dodgers seemed to blame their poor performance on Yankee Stadium. A sudden electrical storm caused many of the 9,000 fans who were in right field at Yankee Stadium to stampede for safety. Playing at home, the Yankees beat the Dodgers 4-3 in Game 6 of the World Series. During construction of a new stadium in 2009-2010, a construction worker and avid Boston Red Sox fan buried a replica of Red Sox player David Ortiz's jersey under visitors' bench in order to curse Yankees - just like Bambino Curse that supposedly plagued Red Sox long after Ruth was traded. Edu; Final Environmental Impact Statement from Yankee Stadium Project, New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, February.
It is baseball stadium of New York Yankees of Major League Baseball (MLB) and New York City FC of Major League Soccer (MLS).
