Selig will miss Yankee Stadium

Commissioner Bud Selig is certainly an advocate of teams building new stadiums, but yesterday he took some time to reflect on how much he'll miss Yankee Stadium.

“July 30, 1949, my mother took me to my first game at Yankee Stadium on my 15th birthday. That started a long trail of memories. When I think back to all the things. I’m a kid sitting in Milwaukee, Wisc., watching the Notre Dame-Army game and the fights and great pro football games. Like in 1958 when Ameche scored.

“There’s no place like it. Even for me, there’s something about walking into Yankee Stadium. And I’ll say that about Fenway Park and Wrigley Field. It evokes in me a lot of great memories.

“But I am a pragmatist. I give the Yankees a great deal of credit. They’re building (the new stadium) right next to it. It’s going to look even more like the place I saw in 1949. The concourses will be wider.

“Downstairs between the clubhouses. That’s where I used to pace and I could tell by the roar of the crowd whether Rollie Fingers and our (Milwaukee Brewers) relief pitchers were getting them out or not. And the place was always cramped, but it was Yankee Stadium.

“The reason this game survives a lot of the things we do is because we have the history and the tradition. Yankee Stadium, that’s why this game is able to survive,” Selig said.