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HALLOWED GROUND: Monument Park, New York Yankees Museum honor greatest players from most legendary team in sports
BRONX, N.Y. — Standing beyond the centerfield wall at Yankee Stadium will cause chills to radiate through the body of any baseball fan.
There rests monuments honoring some of the most legendary players in baseball history: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle.
It’s a step back in time into the heyday of these players’ careers. A time when Ruth was bigger than the Pope, Gehrig’s farewell speech was lauded by fans, DiMaggio’s hitting streak captivated Major League Baseball, and Mantle’s sweet home run swing was idolized by kids from coast to coast.
Monument Park at Yankee Stadium is a place where legends are immortalized for eternity with arguably the most revered franchise in not only baseball but all of sports.
Greg Bates and Jeff Owens of Sports Collectors Digest took an exclusive, behind-the-scenes tour of the hallowed grounds — including Monument Park and the team museum — prior to a Yankees game during the 2022 season.
Yankees curator Brian Richards led an insightful, magnificent tour.
“I call this ‘baseball’s most exclusive fraternity,’” Richards said about Monument Park. “This is really secular, sacred ground. If you go to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, I think now 340 inductees are there, and that’s a hallowed place, truly. I think the world of the Hall of Fame. When you come here, what you see is far more exclusive company. These are the greatest of the great who have been with the Yankees — players, managers, executives, broadcasters — and it’s a much smaller pinstriped fraternity, if you will.”
New Yankee Stadium opened in 2009. All of the monuments, plaques and retired numbers moved across 161st Street in late 2008-early 2009 and were reinstalled in their new home.
“In the original stadium, Monument Park evolved,” Richards said. “Out of what used to be fair territory, of course, the Ruth, the Gehrig, the Huggins monuments used to be on the field of play in deep centerfield out in front of that flag pole. When Yankee Stadium was renovated in 1974 and ’75, the fences were brought in. So, in that kind of new no-man’s land of sorts in between the wall and the new fence, a garden was planted, the monuments and plaques were put out there. As the fences were brought in more over time, more plaques were put up, the retired uniform numbers were put up.”
When the new Yankee Stadium was being built, Monument Park was an area planned by the team.
In Monument Park, all the uniform numbers on display are in order in which they were retired. Each retired number is represented by a circulator plaque with the player’s number with pinstripes in the background. Each player also has an accompanying monument.
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Gehrig’s No. 4 was the first number retired by not only the Yankees, but any team in Major League Baseball. His number was retired in 1940, and Ruth followed in 1948 and DiMaggio in ’52.
Every number from 1-10 is retired by the Yankees. No. 8 is honored twice for Bill Dickey and Yogi Berra.
In all, 24 players — arguably four of the top 10 players in the baseball history — and managers have had their numbers retired by the team. Paul O’Neil was added to the list in August.
“You go through and you look, each one of these numbers, you’re talking about a franchise-altering career,” Richards said. “You go over and you look at a Whitey Ford, you look at Thurman Munson, you look at Roger Maris. These are guys that made a mark that we still celebrate today. These guys had impacts that make this franchise so special.”
With so many retired numbers, that begs the question, what does the franchise do if it ever runs out of numbers for active players to use?
“I look forward to having the number of players worthy of that designation,” Richards said. “That’s a good problem to have, believe me.”
There are also 38 plaques for distinguished players and coaches, and six have been awarded with red granite monuments. They include Gehrig, Ruth, Mantle, DiMaggio, owner George Steinbrenner and manager Miller Huggins.
“There isn’t really a set criteria as far as who receives a plaque versus a number or a plaque and a number or a monument,” Richards said. “There’s really not a regular selection process. It’s all up to ownership, the Steinbrenner family, to determine who receives what honor and at what time.”
Everybody player with a retired number also has a plaque in Monument Park, while some players, like pitcher Lefty Gomez, have plaques but not retired numbers.
“I guess you could say there’s sort of an unofficial tiered designation there, but it’s nothing that’s formally determined,” Richards said.
Huggins’ monument was dedicated on Memorial Day in 1932, nearly three years after he passed away. Gehrig’s plaque was dedicated in 1941. The monument says it was dedicated on July 4, but the game was rained out that day and postponed until July 6. But since the bronze was already cast, the date couldn’t be changed.
Ruth’s monument was dedicated on Opening Day 1949. Ruth died eight months earlier, so his widow, Claire, and two daughters unveiled that.
“I think the three monuments here in the center really are still very much the core of Monument Park, just because those three monuments, they stood in deep centerfield for 25 years and they just witnessed so much excellence from the late Joe DiMaggio all through Mickey Mantle’s career and a younger Bobby Mercer,” Richards said. “So many legendary Yankees’ teams of the ’30s, ’40s, ’50s, ’60s — those three monuments were there as kind of silent witness to everything that makes the Yankees so special.”
Behind the monuments of Gehrig, Huggins and Ruth are monuments of Mantle and DiMaggio. When they both passed away, their plaques were taken down and they were given monuments for enshrinement.
Steinbrenner was the first monument dedicated in new Yankee Stadium. He passed away in July 2010 and his widow, sons and daughters unveiled that monument two months later. The tribute to the former boss is front and center in Monument Park.
“Some people say, ‘It’s awfully large,’” Richards said. “Well, he was larger than life. He really was.”
Monument Park was a special place for Steinbrenner. It allowed fans a glimpse into the impact the former Yankees players had on the storied organization.
“Mr. Steinbrenner was very respectful of the Yankees’ legacy,” Richards said. “He used to say, ‘When you’re putting on that uniform, you’re putting on pride, you’re putting on greatness.’ He was very cognizant of what the Yankees had done in the past and how that past excellence shaped, was shaping, continued to shape what he wanted his present teams to do and what the teams future would be.
“I say that, too, our history is our identity with the Yankees. What we’ve done in the past is shaping what we’re trying to do today. What we expect of our players on the field, what we expect of our organization, our stadium, and it shapes what we’re looking for in the future as well. Mr. Steinbrenner was absolutely the biggest believer in that.”
Monument Park is special for fans and Yankees employees alike. Even though Richards has stepped inside Monument Park hundreds, if not thousands, of times, it’s still a magical feeling every time.
“There’s almost a sense of going to a shrine of sorts,” he said. “I call it secular, sacred ground, just because you are celebrating the greatest of the greats. Some people may walk past these faces on bronze plaques and names they don’t necessarily recognize, somebody who was on the team a long time ago, but in these individuals’ day, an Allie Reynolds or a Ron Guidry or a Tino Martinez even, these guys were as big as today’s stars were. These were household names amongst Yankees fans. These guys really helped shape that tradition, that greatness.”
Richards said it isn’t often that current Yankees players venture out to Monument Park to look around. However, slugger Aaron Judge was in the museum in July during the 2022 season.
“We were interviewing him for a story in there and Judge spoke with one of our writers for Yankees Magazine, and he was really impressed by what he saw,” Richards said. “We let him hold Mickey Mantle’s glove, let him hold Babe Ruth’s bat and he was just really wowed by all of it. When he was done, he said, ‘Can I come back here?’ I said, ‘You’re welcome any time.’
“It felt a little bit like Shoeless Joe in Field of Dreams. ‘Can we come back? There are eight of us, you know. You’re always welcome. I built this for you.’”
YANKEES MUSEUM
As we move upstairs to the main level, we weave throughout the concourse. We are headed near Section 210 to a room that houses the Yankees Museum.
Inside the room is a shrine filled with World Series trophies, rings, autographed baseballs, game-worn uniforms, historic bats and balls, and a single locker of a Yankees great.
Richards tries to rotate exhibits every one to two years, but during the pandemic, exhibits stayed mostly the same.
“I never want an area that’s static where people say, ‘Oh, I’ve been there before. There’s no reason to go back.’ That’s not true at all,” Richards said. “There’s maybe something you haven’t seen before, something even if you have you can look at it again and get something different from it.”
With such a big story to tell about the Yankees’ 121-year-old franchise, Richards wants fans to get a feel for the rich history. Richards is a storyteller, and he wants to convey that in his work.
“If you can tell a story, you’re making something tangible and human and relatable to people,” Richards said. “If you can tell that story and you have a piece that was actually there and was part of it, that’s as close as a person can get to actually being in the past and experiencing the past and truly understanding why what was in the past was so special.”
Most pieces in the museum are borrowed from private collectors. When Richards started as the Yankees’ curator in 2008, he quickly realized that the Yankees did not have a large internal collection that had been kept over time, and that was due to a number of factors.
The team’s offices were moved in the mid-1940s from 42nd Street to 5th Avenue and 57th Street, and then again in the late-60s into Yankee Stadium.
“In the mid-’70s when the stadium was renovated, every closet was emptied, everything was given away, sold, thrown away in some cases,” Richards said. “By 2008 when I started here, there just really wasn’t the massive treasure trove of internal pieces that I had expected. But as you well know and your readers well know, I like to say not all the great paintings and sculptures are at the Louvre or at the Metropolitan Museum of Arts or the MFA in Boston. A lot of those paintings and sculptures are in private galleries and private collections, really all around the world — and the same is true with baseball pieces. The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum has a collection that is just jaw-dropping without parallel, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t tremendous pieces that are in private collections otherwise.
“So, I rely very heavily on loans from private collectors, and I’ve found there are a lot of private collectors out there who are very generous on lending pieces on short-term loans, usually one to two years. That really works well with our rotating exhibits.”
AROUND THE HORN
Working our way around the room, we come first to the “Yankees by the Numbers” feature exhibit. This exhibit was inspired by the “One for the Books” exhibit at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. It dives into the history of baseball records, how those records have evolved and what those records mean to baseball.
“I kind of put my own spin on that a little bit,” Richards said. “I picked 50 records in Yankees franchise history — some of which are household names or household numbers, I should say, for Yankees fans and some of which are a little more obscure and just a little bit fun. But numbers that really define why we remember and celebrate and revere these teams and players and accomplishments.
“In so many ways, some of these numbers are an equal sign. For example, 56 games in a row with a hit equals Joe DiMaggio. Roger Maris equals 61 home runs in a season. Lou Gehrig equals 2,130 consecutive games. Those numbers are why we revere these players. Or, if not, they’re certainly part of that player’s identity as far as Yankees history goes.”
The display cases feature 12 players’ jerseys, bats, caps and other items. “Yankees by the Numbers” hasn’t been changed since 2017.
Richards said there haven’t been many opportunities to feature Don Mattingly in the museum because he doesn’t fit into World Series-winning teams or Baseball Hall of Fame players’ categories. What comes to mind instantly for Richards when he thinks about Mattingly’s time with the Yankees is him holding the record for the most hits (238) in a season for the Yankees, which he achieved in 1986.
A nearby circulator display case is filled with World Series rings. The Yankees hold the major sports record for the most world championships with 27. However, there are only 26 World Series rings on display because in 1923, all the players received pocket watches.
On the other side of the room, there are seven World Series trophies on display. Only seven? But the Yankees have won 27 titles.
“Because George Constanza took the other 20, and they’re still somewhere out in the parking lot,” joked Richards, who is a big fan of the TV show “Seinfeld.”
Actually, the reason is the first World Series trophy wasn’t handed out until 1967. The Yankees’ first title after that was 1977.
The trophies are displayed in pairs with 1977 and ’78 going together; ’96 and ’98; ’99 and 2000, which was the first year made by Tiffany & Co., which are sterling silver with gold vermeil inlay; the 2009 trophy is in a case by itself.
“It’s looking for a little brother or sister, I like to say,” Richards said. “I call that our youngest child in 2009. We’re due for another one.”
On the same side as the World Series trophies is a “Bronx Bombers” display. It features Ruth, Mantle, Maris, Reggie Jackson and Judge, who broke Maris’ record when he slugged an American League record 62 home runs in 2022.
“I like to say that the Yankees are baseball’s home run team, and the home run really is the Yankees’ identity,” Richards said. “Even that name, ‘Bronx Bombers‘ — it’s not ‘Bronx Bunters,’ it’s not ‘Bronx Suicide Squeezers,’ or ‘Bronx Base-stealers.’ That bomb, that’s that four-base hit, and that’s really this team’s identity from the big Pinstripe Sluggers to the Home Run Base Lineup to that milestone four-base hit. Throughout Yankees’ history, that home run really is such a core part of the Yankees’ success and the Yankee’s identity.”
The display features Maris’ uniform that he wore when he hit his record 61st home run on the final day of the 1961 regular season.
There is also the ball from when Mantle hit a home run off the copper frieze in 1956 that almost left the stadium. He did that again in 1963, claiming that was the hardest ball he ever hit. In the display, there is a 600-foot tape measure that was given to Mantle to commemorate a home run he hit at Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C. in 1953. His homer reportedly traveled 565 feet, but that was a total fabrication, noted Richards. That’s how the term “tape measure home run” entered the vocabulary for baseball.
Richards’ favorite piece in the museum is in this display case.
“The bat that Babe Ruth used to hit the very first home run at the original Yankee Stadium, the day it opened back in 1923,” Richards said. “There were thousands of home runs hit at Yankee Stadium thereafter, but there can only be one first homer. And that homer is what gave birth to the name, ‘The House that Ruth Built’ from sportswriter Fred Leib that night. That piece is just so special to me.
“That bat was actually held by Derek Jeter at home plate prior to his first plate appearance here on April 16, 2009 when the stadium opened. The bat was passed around the dugout after and I think the magic might have been spread a little bit.”
There is another Ruth bat that has 11 notches in it that the “Great Bambino” carved in personally —indicating he hit 11 home runs with that specific piece of lumber. Ruth finally cracked the bat and it had to be retired.
A Gehrig bat — which is owned by legendary collector Marshall Fogel — in which he hit four home runs in one game against Philadelphia in 1932 is prominently displayed. Gehrig was the first player in the 20th Century to hit four homers in a game. Surprisingly, Gehrig is the lone Yankee to ever accomplish this feat.
Chris Chambliss loaned his bat in which he hit a home run vs. Kansas City in the American League Championship Series (ALCS) in 1976. Bucky Dent loaned the museum his 1978 World Series MVP trophy.
Jeter’s bat that he used to hit the Jeffrey Maier homer vs. the Orioles in ALCS in 1996 is there. Also, Judge’s uniform he wore when he crushed his rookie-record 52nd home run in 2017.
There is an exhibit for Mariano Rivera and Mike Mussina, who were both elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2019.
The cool display highlights Rivera’s accomplishments and has wallpaper in the background with 652 baseballs pictured — one to commemorate every regular-season save by baseball’s most dominant closer of all time.
Mussina lent some items from his personal collection to be on display.
Tucked away in the corner of the museum is the locker of Yankees catcher Thurman Munson. He used that locker from 1976 until he tragically passed away in ’79.
“It’s just impressive how he truly was the core of those Yankees teams in the 1970s,” Richards said. “When he came up late 1969, he was rookie of the year in 1970, and the Yankees really were not that great at that time. But championship teams were built around him, around his defense, around his pitch-calling, around his clutch hitting. He truly was the leader of that team. He was the first team captain since Lou Gehrig — he was named team captain in 1976. Most valuable player that season as well.
“So when Thurman died in a tragic plane crash in 1979, it was just devastating for Yankees fans. The heart and soul of the team had suddenly and violently been ripped away. It was sort of like President Kennedy’s assassination or Sept. 11. It became one of those tragic occurrences that people always remember where they were and what they were doing when they got this devastating news.”
Steinbrenner immediately retired Munson’s No. 15 and said that locker would never be reissued again. For 29 years, that locker sat unused in original Yankee Stadium. When the franchise moved, carpenters disassembled the locker and moved it across the street; glass was placed in front of the locker and some pieces from Munson’s career were added to pay homage to one of the all-time greats.
During Old-Timers’ Day a few years ago, Munson’s widow, Diana Munson, visited the locker with Munson’s former teammate Ron Guidry.
“Ron and Diana stood in front of Thurman’s locker holding hands for a few minutes. Everyone backed off and gave them some room,” Richards recalled. “And after a minute, they turned and hugged each other and there were tears pouring down their cheeks. I started crying, guests around me were crying, security guards were crying. We were doling out paper towels left and right, because it was so emotional.”
At the center of the museum room is a pair of statues that replicate one of the most magical moments in not only team history but baseball history. Don Larsen is throwing the final pitch of his perfect game in the 1956 World Series. The top row of baseballs follows the arc of the fastball from Larsen’s hand down to Yogi Berra’s mitt 60 feet, 6 inches away.
Between the statues of Larsen and Berra is a wall with one side featuring facsimile signatures of 88 former Yankees players, managers and executives all from original Yankee Stadium.
On the other side of the wall is a collection of 870 signed baseballs.
“We want to get an autographed baseball signed by everybody who’s ever played for the Yankees or been a manager or coach or broadcaster on radio or television,” Richards said. “What we have is what we’ve collected so far. It’s a work in progress, we’re still collecting, but everyone there has been with the Yankees in at least one of those capacities for at least one game, and we’ve had several players that have played just one or two games for the Yankees.”
Richards said fans love going through and remembering names they may have forgotten about or maybe it was their favorite player or someone from their first game or from their hometown.
“It’s that stroll down memory lane, if you will, of Yankees autographs,” Richards said.
Whether fans are checking out the museum or Monument Park, it’s a special treat to be able see some of these players’ careers come alive through the exhibits at Yankee Stadium.
To this day when Richards stands out in Monument Park, he still gets chills.
“To be honored out here is the greatest honor that somebody in a Yankees uniform or an executive or a broadcaster of the microphone could ever hope to receive,” Richards said. “That’s not to take away anything from designation as a Baseball Hall of Fame inductee by any stretch of the imagination, but this is, like I said, a far more exclusive company in a very exclusive fraternity.”
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