to the Bronx. When the Dodgers and Giants left for California in 1958, Yankee attendance actually dropped 70,000 for the year. And in 1961—a great team, a great pennant race, and the great home run race with Maris and Mantle—attendance was up only 120,000 from the year before, and still a paltry 1.7 million as the only team in town.
Mantle retired in 1968. The Yankees were prepared to give him another $100,000 to play another year, but he said he couldn’t hit anymore. So they went out there without him—and drew only 57,000 fewer fans, including a full house on Mickey Mantle Day during the summer.
The 1972 attendance number was embarrassing, but in line with what had been going on. All fingers were pointing to the stadium itself.
Those of us who worked there knew the increasing crime numbers in New York made subway travel late at night precarious and trips to the South Bronx scary. We also knew that Yankee Stadium was literally falling down.
Bat Day in 1971, and again in 1972, had the young fans pounding their bats on the concrete to get a rally going. The action caused cracks, chips, and then chunks of the fifty-year-old concrete to fall. Nothing awful happened—no one was hit with debris, and there were no photo ops of the crumbling, but it was a strong message to us that the stadium needed an overhaul.
We also saw that new ballparks in Cincinnati, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Kansas City, and Pittsburgh had helped attendance spike in those towns.
So, armed with a small threat of considering the Superdome in New Orleans as a possible new home, Mike Burke, the Yankees’ president (on behalf of CBS), and John Lindsay, the city’s mayor, agreed on a plan that would condemn the current stadium, turn the land and the structure over to the city, and have the city pay for a complete remodeling. Lindsay was no baseball fan, but he knew he didn’t want the Yankees leaving on his watch. The process would take two years; the Yankees would share Shea Stadium during those years, and 1973 would be the fiftieth anniversary and final year in the original Yankee Stadium.
Munson, the budding real estate baron, was interested in all of these proceedings and phoned me often in my stadium office with questions. “How long would the lease be for?” he wanted to know. “How did they come up with the $24 million cost? Seems low.”
I had a feeling part of him wanted to be the Yankee catcher and part of him wanted to have a real role in the rebuilding process.
He was right about the $24 million being low. It wound up costing about four times that, prompting howls of protest from budget watchers. The figure had been the cost of Shea Stadium, from the ground up, a decade earlier. It was a number to work with, nothing more. And certainly nothing less.
We thought that celebrating the fiftieth anniversary would be our big focal point for the year, with the announcement that it would be the last season of the original “House that Ruth built.” Butright after New Year’s came bigger news. The franchise was being sold.
CBS had presided over eight seasons of generally uninspired baseball. It hadn’t been a good business acquisition for them, they hadn’t leveraged the relationship in any meaningful way, and they were happy to get out. In fact, they sold the team at a loss—they paid $13.4 million and sold it for $10 million. It remains, at least as far as public records indicate, the only time a major league team has ever been sold at a loss.
Munson’s attention focused on the Cleveland connection. The purchaser was George M. Steinbrenner III, whose father had started American Ship Building on the Great Lakes, and who was buying the team with Mike Burke as well as thirteen limited partners. Gabe Paul, a part owner of the Cleveland Indians and their general manager, had brokered the deal, introducing Burke to Steinbrenner, who he had known was interested in buying the Indians. Steinbrenner had owned the Cleveland Pipers of the
Mantle retired in 1968. The Yankees were prepared to give him another $100,000 to play another year, but he said he couldn’t hit anymore. So they went out there without him—and drew only 57,000 fewer fans, including a full house on Mickey Mantle Day during the summer.
The 1972 attendance number was embarrassing, but in line with what had been going on. All fingers were pointing to the stadium itself.
Those of us who worked there knew the increasing crime numbers in New York made subway travel late at night precarious and trips to the South Bronx scary. We also knew that Yankee Stadium was literally falling down.
Bat Day in 1971, and again in 1972, had the young fans pounding their bats on the concrete to get a rally going. The action caused cracks, chips, and then chunks of the fifty-year-old concrete to fall. Nothing awful happened—no one was hit with debris, and there were no photo ops of the crumbling, but it was a strong message to us that the stadium needed an overhaul.
We also saw that new ballparks in Cincinnati, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Kansas City, and Pittsburgh had helped attendance spike in those towns.
So, armed with a small threat of considering the Superdome in New Orleans as a possible new home, Mike Burke, the Yankees’ president (on behalf of CBS), and John Lindsay, the city’s mayor, agreed on a plan that would condemn the current stadium, turn the land and the structure over to the city, and have the city pay for a complete remodeling. Lindsay was no baseball fan, but he knew he didn’t want the Yankees leaving on his watch. The process would take two years; the Yankees would share Shea Stadium during those years, and 1973 would be the fiftieth anniversary and final year in the original Yankee Stadium.
Munson, the budding real estate baron, was interested in all of these proceedings and phoned me often in my stadium office with questions. “How long would the lease be for?” he wanted to know. “How did they come up with the $24 million cost? Seems low.”
I had a feeling part of him wanted to be the Yankee catcher and part of him wanted to have a real role in the rebuilding process.
He was right about the $24 million being low. It wound up costing about four times that, prompting howls of protest from budget watchers. The figure had been the cost of Shea Stadium, from the ground up, a decade earlier. It was a number to work with, nothing more. And certainly nothing less.
We thought that celebrating the fiftieth anniversary would be our big focal point for the year, with the announcement that it would be the last season of the original “House that Ruth built.” Butright after New Year’s came bigger news. The franchise was being sold.
CBS had presided over eight seasons of generally uninspired baseball. It hadn’t been a good business acquisition for them, they hadn’t leveraged the relationship in any meaningful way, and they were happy to get out. In fact, they sold the team at a loss—they paid $13.4 million and sold it for $10 million. It remains, at least as far as public records indicate, the only time a major league team has ever been sold at a loss.
Munson’s attention focused on the Cleveland connection. The purchaser was George M. Steinbrenner III, whose father had started American Ship Building on the Great Lakes, and who was buying the team with Mike Burke as well as thirteen limited partners. Gabe Paul, a part owner of the Cleveland Indians and their general manager, had brokered the deal, introducing Burke to Steinbrenner, who he had known was interested in buying the Indians. Steinbrenner had owned the Cleveland Pipers of the
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