Mike Celizic

NEW YORK - Add one more Yankee Stadium moment to the memory bank: Josh Hamilton’s amazing show at the 2008 Home Run Derby in the last All-Star game in the old ballpark. The Texas slugger hit balls where I’ve never seen balls hit — in the farthest reaches of the upper deck, off the Bank of America sign behind the bleachers, deep into the black in the center-field bleachers.

A year from now, none of those places will exist. They’re tearing the place down once the season’s over. The new park is rising behind the left-field bleachers, and it will be better in every way than this place. Major League Baseball brought the All-Star game here to give the House that Ruth Built and George III remodeled one more night in the national spotlight. I came to watch the stars gather here and gawk at the vertiginous rise of the three tiers of seats, take a stroll down the memory lane that is Monument Park, feel the Yankee Stadium grass beneath their cleated feet.

I’m here for much the same reason. I’ve seen it several hundred times over the years I’ve been covering sports in New York. But I always knew that no matter how long I stayed away, I could always see it again.

But this could be it. If the Yankees don’t make the playoffs, it’s likely that the All-Star game will be my last visit. So I’d better remember the feel of the brick dust warning track under my feet, the texture of the grass, the battered planking in the dugouts, the way the infield sits a foot or more above the outfield — a feature made necessary by the poor drainage.

In medieval times, when few people could afford books that were hand-copied before the invention of printing, scholars would go to a library to read a text. Lacking paper to take copious notes, they memorized the books. The way they did it was to imagine a castle and fill the rooms with the things they wished to remember.

I think of that when I look around a place like Yankee Stadium. In every corner there’s a memory.

I can’t look at the alleys in left and right-center without thinking of a Don Mattingly double splitting the outfielders. And when I think of that, I see Mattingly coiled at the plate, his No. 23 turned to the pitcher, bare hands holding the bat in a grip of pine tar.

He had the corner locker when you came in the clubhouse. He inherited it from Ron Guidry, and after Donnie Baseball retired, Bernie Williams moved in with his guitar. The pitchers were against the right side going in. Derek Jeter was back and to the right, in the same neighborhood Rickey Henderson used to inhabit.

The manager’s office is a cramped little concrete bunker across from the washers and dryers. You can bet that situation will improve in the new building. I watched Billy Martin sit there wasting away by the day like a consumptive, starring balefully at the red phone on his desk that always rang after a loss and always carried unpleasant tidings from the resident owner.

So many managers and so much heartbreak are in that office. When I first got on the sports beat, I went in after a game and Yogi Berra, then the manager, first took a shower, then came out to talk to us. Naked. That was before women were a regular part of the press corps and that’s how things were. Believe me, that’s a memory you can’t ever shake.

Everything was different back then. The Yankees were always the big story because Steinbrenner was the owner and he was a madman. I started coming in 1983, and it was 12 years before I saw the Yankees in a playoff game. So my memories are of tirades and disappointment and mad managers and the owner leaving his box to stand behind the press box and wait for someone to ask his opinion of the sorry state of his ball team.

Fans remember where balls left the park and where fly balls were caught in impossible ways and where Nettles backhanded that shot down the line and saved the World Series. I remember where players dressed and managers fumed and owners bellowed and pregame dinners and postgame drinks were shared with wonderful writers and broadcasters and friends.

I had dinner with Bob Sheppard, the voice of the Yankees, and Eddie Clayton, who played the organ there for just about forever, and Roger Angell, the great, great baseball writer for The New Yorker. In my business, that’s like a college golfer chowing down with Tiger Woods. I wish I could name all the people I’ve shared the stuffy little workroom in the bowels of the stadium with. Dave Anderson, George Vescey, Mike Downey, Peter Gammons, Bob Ryan, Bob Verdi, Tom Boswell, Alan Greenberg — the list goes on and on and on.

I remember Billy Martin showing up in the clubhouse to start a new hitch as manager. He was tanned and fit and had a little meat on his bones. He wore a straw cowboy hat and jeans and he looked as if he hadn’t had — or needed — a drink in months. And six months later, he looked like he was in the last throes of consumption, his eyes burning little beads sunk deep in a cadaverous face, his skin grey, his sanity at an end.

I saw Dwight Gooden pitch a no-hitter here — the only one I’ve ever witnessed. I saw the Yankees win four World Series. I saw Jeter play short and Bernie play center and Jorge catch and Donnie Baseball play first and Rickey play left and Winfield play center. I saw Gator and Rags and Knucksie and Coney and Goose and Boomer and Mo and the Rocket pitch.

What I don’t remember is the original Yankee Stadium, the one that opened in 1923, paid for by Babe Ruth’s crowd-pleasing talents. I was in it once, for a football game, probably in 1971 or '72. But much as my Yankee-fan friends bewail the imminent demise of the only stadium they’ve ever known, this is really Yankee Stadium II. The only things that are the same as the old part are the exterior walls and cramped concourses and narrow ramps. So, while people will tell you about Mickey Mantle hitting the façade in right field, they can’t show you where he hit it, because the façade isn’t there anymore.

I guess that’s why I won’t cry to see it go. To me, it’s 32 years old and ready to be replaced. The new field will have the same dimensions and the park will be far more commodious and easy to navigate.

Besides, this one is starting to fill with too many bad memories, too many seasons that have ended unhappily for the home team. It really is time to take our memories and move on. It’s just across the street. You can see it from here.

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