While the Yankees have plans to tear down Yankee Stadium soon after their new ballpark opens next year, Detroit is still trying to figure out what to do with Tiger Stadium. The historic stadium has sat unused since Comerica Park opened in 1999, and some Detroit fans want to keep the oldest parts of the stadium. If they can raise the money soon, the stadium will stay. Check out this nifty slideshow that goes with Joe LaPointe’s article.

Rob Neyer today called Dan Levitt’s biography of Ed Barrow the “most important baseball book of the year,” and I’m going to read and review it as soon as I’m done with this one on Ebbets Field. But in the meantime, check out this extensive Q and A Rich Lederer of The Baseball Analysts conducted with Levitt. It is a thorough and fascinating look back at the way the Yankees assembled their first great dynasty.

Before delving into the game, Richard Bradley, author of The Greatest Game: The Yankees, the Red Sox, and the Playoff of ’78 (Free Press, $25), sets a high bar for himself. How exactly does one go about determining the “greatest game” ever with such certainty?

In my life — which started a good four and a half years after the 1978 playoff game — I’ve seen two perfect games, an amazing World Series game 7 and a 3-0 playoff series lead evaporate. Depending upon your perspective, most of those games could be considered the greatest game ever, and when Buster Olney wrote about that World Series game 7, he just called it the last night of a dynasty.

Bradley has no qualms about his claim. Game 163 of the 1978 regular season — played only by the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox in Fenway Park — stands as baseball’s greatest game. For nine innings, two bitter rivals duked it out with the victor becoming the heavy favorites to win the World Series.

For Yankee fans alive at the time, that game stands as one of the greatest baseball games of all time, and in his book Bradley takes his readers through both the game and the season. In alternating chapters of game play and 1978 baseball history, Bradley sets the stage for an epic showdown. It’s Carl Yastrzemski’s last hurrah, and the culmination of a Bronx Zoo-type season in the Bronx. It’s Yankee grandeur and success against the Red Sox’s decades of failure. It’s Mike Torrez trying to prove his former employees wrong, and it’s Bucky Dent trying to prove his manager wrong.

Bradley starts out inside the minds of Goose Gossage and Yaz. What takes this book that extra step are his sources. Bradley relied on a lot of interviews with players. It brings up questions of historical memory: What does Goose Gossage remember in 2007 of a game 29 years earlier? How do Mike Torrez and Bucky Dent recall seminal moments in their careers after volumes of ink have been spilled over the game’s most famous rivalry? But for now, we can let the players take it away.

And take it away they do. Bradley describes the characters involved. There’s the irascible Billy Martin, the pugnacious Thurman Munson, the arrogant Carlton Fisk. He discusses recent Yankee history and recent Red Sox history. We learn about Reggie Jackson and Dwight Evans, about Lou Piniella and Catfish Hunter, about Yaz’s time in Fenway and Don Zimmer’s managerial failures.

For avid baseball readers, Bradley’s book treads some familiar ground. Jonathan Mahler’s excellent Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx is Burning covers the Bronz Zoo Yankees and the 1977 season is detail, and Bradley rehashes that in an early chapter. But Bradley’s book is the logical literary sequel to Mahler’s seminal tome. Bradley’s writing and reporting takes you inside the minds of the players of this game, and for those of us who are fans of the game — alive or not in 1978 — the book takes us back to that crisp fall day in October 1978 when two teams laid it all on the line for a chance to move on.

Was the game really the greatest one ever? Two aces without their best stuff faced off against each other; the lead changed a few times; an unlikely hero emerged in Bucky Dent. A closer — Gossage — nearly blew the game, and a late-inning home run by Reggie Jackson would be the difference. Carl Yastrzemski was fitting the last out just as Gossage and Yaz imagined the game would unfold. For all that, it’s still tough to top that 2001 World Series Game 7.

But this book is also about baseball at a moment in its history. It’s is about baseball on the cusp of change. It’s about how the onset of free agency would forever alter the game’s economics but how playoff baseball remains the pinnacle of the sports world.

You didn’t have to be there or be alive to still feel the goosebumps as Bucky F***in’ Dent blasts a three-run home run over the Green Monster to give the Yanks a lead they would not relinquish. It was a good day for Yankee fans.

The going rate these days for historic World Series rings seems to be around $55,000. At least, that’s how much Southeby’s raked in for auctioning off Darryl Strawberry’s 1998 World Series ring. The ring was estimated to sell for between $20,000-$30,000, but the final tally, obviously, far exceeded those guesses. No one knew if Strawberry himself would take in the dough or if he had already sold it to another buyer who was now putting the ring up for auction.

Joe Posnanski has taken the Internet’s recent obsession with retired numbers to an extreme. A few days after berating Yankee fans over their booing of LaTroy Hawkins, Posnanski has written a diatribe on every single retired number in Major League Baseball. The piece is amusing, and Posnanski thinks the Yankees have gone a bit overboard with the sentimentality lately.

That sure is a long line of retired numbers. (Photo by flickr user aeonix01)

The Yankee fan masses have spoken. After three days of voting, 79 percent of you feel that Paul O’Neill’s number should not be retired while 21 percent of you would like to see 21 added to the growing list of Yankee retired numbers.

Despite these overwhelmingly one-sided results, the debate has generated a lot of conversation about the nature of retired numbers and the way the Yanks go about retiring the numbers. Some fans seem to feel that the Yanks retire way too much numbers; others feel that the honors are warranted. And no one can agree on exactly what standards are applied to a player to determine if a number is retired.

Take Phil Rizzuto’s number 10. Rizzuto is, famously, in the Hall of Fame after many passionate fans waged a rather rabid campaign to get him inducted, and one could say that he’s in the Hall as much for his decades-long career behind the microphone as he is for his play on the field. In fact, his play on the field, while great at its peak, wasn’t that spectacular overall. He played 13 years for the Yanks and hit .273/.351/.355.

In 1985, the Yanks decided to hang up Rizzuto’s 10. At that point, he had been retired for 31 years, and seven other players — including Chris Chambliss, Tony Kubek and Rick Cerone — had worn 10. Why the Yankees opted then to retire Rizzuto’s number is anyone’s guess. In fact, as an August 18, 1985 letter to The Times shows, Yankee fans 23 years ago were not of the mind that Rizzuto was deserving of a spot alongside the Yankee greats.

Ron Guidry’s 49 and Reggie Jackson’s 44 are also big question marks. Guidry was great for a long stretch but not a baseball immortal. Reggie had a few iconic games in the post-season for a team that played during an era when George Steinbrenner was hell-bent on winning the World Series. He ended up spending just five of his 21 seasons in the Bronx.

Interestingly, the timing of these two retirement ceremonies raises an eyebrow or two as well. Reggie’s number was retired in 1993 when he was inducted into the Hall of Fame. At the time, the Yanks were mired in their worst World Series drought since the early years of the Twentieth Century, and perhaps, George was looking to recapture some of the aura of his glory years of the 1970s. Guidry’s number was retired in 2003 right when he was returning to the Bronx fold. The Times speculated that perhaps it was some sort of gesture of appreciation designed to draw Guidry into a soon-to-be vacant coaching job.

Whatever the case, retired numbers are a prickly issue in Yankee-land. Fans of players from recent teams grow vehement in their arguments for or against enshrinement in the outfield. Take the 1990s teams. Off the top of my head, I would guess that Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Joe Torre and Bernie Williams will see their numbers retired. Paul O’Neill supporters will feel slighted, and Jorge Posada fans will wonder why their catcher doesn’t get the same respect. Andy Pettitte’s 46 never comes up and was in fact given out to five players during’s Pettitte’s three years in Houston. And the A-Rod debate will rage forever until or unless the Yanks win a few rings while he’s in town.

Meanwhile, as the Yanks slowly run out of respectable numbers, a few fans have floated the idea of un-retiring certain numbers while keeping the number circles up as monuments in Monument Park. While I like the idea in principle, how that would work is again anyone’s guess.

The Yankees have a tricky balancing act to perform. They have a vast history that they want to enshrine and recall. They have legends of the game and legends of the Bronx and just plain old fan favorites. As the available numbers decrease and more plaques find their way to the left field park, these debates will only grow more boisterous. Who needs single-digit numbers anyway?

I bet most young Yankee fans would be hard-pressed to identify Ed Barrow, one of the greatest Yankees executives of the early 20th Century. To that end, Daniel Levitt’s new book, Ed Barrow: The Bulldog Who Built the Yankees’ First Dynasty, soon to be reviewed here by me, is required reading for all Yankee historians. Levitt sat down for an interview with David Laurila for Baseball Prospectus’ Unfiltered blog. Check it out.

Unlike the Brooklyn Dodgers, the New York Giants were good at baseball. Unlike the Dodgers, they weren’t the heart and soul of a borough struggling to carve out an identity for itself during times of change. Unlike Brooklyn Dodger fans, old New York Giants fans don’t carry fifty-year-old grudges on their sleeves. And while Ebbets Field is often represented as the ideal embodiment of sepia-tinged nostalgia, the Polo Grounds don’t evoke the same feel of history in New York sports culture. Today, Richard Sandomir catches up with a few old Giants fans who still pine for the team of their youth. It’s a fun read of an oft-neglected part of New York baseball histroy.

Remember the Glory Days of the 1990s? Remember when Scott Brosius manned third, Chad Curtis manned left and Glenallen Hill manned the disabled list? Those were the days.

Over the last decade or so, a lot of players — some much, much better than others — have passed through the Bronx. Except for those who stick with the team in one capacity or another and those that are big names, most fans never hear from or think of the Mike Gallegos and Charlies Hayeses of the world once they leave the Bronx. Baseball is fleeting; it’s easy, as Mike recently noted, to make a lot of money, but it’s not so easy to stick around.

So let’s check in with some of our old fan favorites and Yankees who are lost to the sands of time. I’ve put together a rather random selection of Yanks from the 1990s who have faded from view. If anyone’s missing, leave a request in the comments.

Scott Brosius: Brosius retired at 34. He was ready to stop playing but not ready to give up the game. He is now the head coach at Linfield College, a DIII school in Oregon. (Brosius’ coaching bio is here.)

Glenallen Hill: Where have you gone, Glenallen Hill? In his 40 games with the Yanks, Hill turned in an OPS of 1.113 while hitting 16 home runs. It was impressive. He’s now the Rockies’ first base coach.

Mike Gallego: Gallego held down the back-up infield spot for a few years in the mid-1990s, hitting .262/.347/.383 during that stretch. I guess you could say he was Miguel Cairo ten years earlier. He is now the Rockies’ bench coach.

Alvaro Espinoza: Before Mike Gallego came Alvaro Espinoza. He was pretty bad at hitting and is now the infield coach down at Scranton.

Chad Curtis: Ah, Mr. Way-Too-Serious. Chad Curtis made a name for himself by picking a fight in the media with Derek Jeter following a bench-clearing incident in Seattle. While the Yanks tried to mix it up with the Mariners, Jeter and A-Rod, then on Seattle, were joking around. Chad didn’t like it, and the Yankees liked Jeter more than they liked Curtis. So at the end of 1999, Curtis left for greener pastures. He is now the athletic director and weight training expert of the NorthPoint Christian Schools. I would not want this man as my gym teacher in high school.

Roberto Kelly: The man who launched the Yankee dynasty. On November 3, 1992, Roberto Kelly unknowingly launched the Yankees on a march toward history when he found himself sent to Cincinnati in exchange for Paul O’Neill. Kelly would return to the Yanks for an unmemorable stint in 2000. After a few years of managing at the Minor League level, Kelly is returning to the Majors this year as the Giants’ first base coach.

Charlie Hayes: We all know this one: “Hayes, in foul territory. Hayes has room. And he makes the catch.” Charlie ended the 1996 World Series with a catch in foul territory and stuck around the Bronx for a disappointing 1997 campaign. He is now the owner of the Big League Baseball Academy in Texas and could really use some help with Web design.

Cecil Fielder: His estranged son is in the news in Milwaukee these days, but Fielder garnered headlines a few years back for domestic disputes and a gambling addiction. He was just named manager of the Atlantic City Surf and is sporting a rockin’ goatee as seen in this picture.

Talk about a good investment.

Thirty-five years ago, George Steinbrenner and a group of businessmen bought the then-struggling New York Yankees. They paid a pittance to CBS for the team. Each investor had to shell out $833,000 to own a piece of the Yankees.

Today, of course, no one’s buying anything from the Yanks for a mere $10 million. The team is building a $1.3-billion stadium, and with a successful team and TV station, the entire franchise operation is valued somewhere around $1 billion.

For the Yanks and Steinbrenner, it’s been a tumultuous 35 years that seems to be coming to a close. While George isn’t planning on selling the team, due to his advancing age and seemingly declining health, the men behind the scenes are now Hal and Hank, his songs who were just 4 and 15 respectively when he bought the team. The thirty-five year run is marked by intense micromanaging, scandals and an eventual return to greatness in the 1990s that has carried through to today’s team in one way or another.

But going into the 1973 season, with a new and complicated ownership group in place, no one in New York really knew what to expect. No one would guess what the next 35 years would bring.

* * *

It starts with a quote from a largely unknown Cleveland shipping magnate in 1973.

It’s January 4, 1973, and CBS has mercifully sold the Yankees to a group of interested buyers. Under CBS, as Joseph Durso fo The Times detailed, the Yanks finished no higher than third and saw their attendance dip below one million in 1972 for the first time since World War II. The Mets, meanwhile, were the darlings of New York. They drew over 2 million fans, leading the league.

But the quote. Back to the quote. At the press conference introducing the new owners, George Steinbrenner, largely unknown in New York, took the stage. “We plan absentee ownership as far as running the Yankees is concerned. We’re not going to pretend we’re something we aren’t. I’ll stick to building ships,” he said.

Famous first words if I ever I heard any, and at the time no one had any reason to doubt Steinbrenner. Head of what was generally assumed to be the largest ownership syndicate in baseball, Steinbrenner was a Cleveland native and lifelong Yankee fan.

In fact, George had a man back in New York, and this man — Michael Burke — knew New York. Burke had been at the helm of the Yanks for a while. A nine-year veteran of CBS when they bought the team, Burke, a fan of the game, slid seamlessly into his new role and toiled for the better part of the 1960s under CBS’ inept leadership. When the opportunity arose to buy the team, Burke put together a group of investors, and everyone assumed he would be the public figurehead of the team.

And who wouldn’t believe Steinbrenner? Involved in the NBA, Broadway and his own company, George kept saying the same thing. “I won’t be active in the day-to-day operations of the club at all,” he told a young Murray Chass. “I can’t spread myself so thin. I’ve got enough headaches with my shipping company.”

Of course, we know how that story ended. Burke left the team presidency in April when Gabe Paul’s involvement deepened. And George, well, we know what happened to George. He never really stayed true to his word and did become heavily involved in the day-to-day operations of the club both on the field and off for the next three decades.

As Steinbrenner’s reign nears its ends, it is very hard to imagine the Yankees without George Steinbrenner. But for a fleeting minute in 1973, imagine if George Steinbrenner had stayed true to his word. New York just wouldn’t be the same.