I’ve argued with old fans that the things they remember didn’t happen in the stadium that is closing for good on Sunday. The original Yankee Stadium, the one where it was more than 460 feet to the wall behind the monuments, was ripped apart and rebuilt in 1974-75, reopening in 1976 as a kind of Yankee Stadium Lite. The rebuilt stadium lacked the pillars and the outfield stands that extended to the level of the field. The entire field was moved a couple of feet toward the walls and lowered seven feet, so even that wasn’t the original. The right field line was short and inviting, but not as short as it was for Ruth. And the famous façade no longer decorated the room of the grandstands but instead was reproduced above the bleachers.

They know all of that and they don’t care. The walls and the foundations are the same as those that were erected to accommodate the fans who came to see the Babe, the same that were home to DiMaggio and Mantle and Maris and Thurmon Munson and all the rest. Within that shell 37 World Series were played, with the men in pinstripes winning 26 of them.

When Yankee Stadium opened less than a year after construction began on a 10-acre parcel in the Bronx, it was like nothing ever seen before, the biggest and the best home field in all of baseball. Other teams called their playgrounds parks or fields. The Yankees were the first to call theirs a stadium.

It expanded over the years and eventually was able to hold 80,000 fans. That number declined as fire marshals had their say about the number of standees, but it has always been one of the bigger parks in the game. Its contours also morphed over the years. When Yankee Stadium opened, it was 500 feet to the deepest part of the park just left of dead center. The right field line was 284; now it’s 314.

There was the renovation in the 1970s, a gift from the taxpayers of New York to George M. Steinbrenner III. But no matter how much it changed, it was always the home the fans had always known. It was the House that Ruth Built and so many great players and teams called home.

There is a time and a season for everything; a time to build and a time to tear down. It’s that time now for Yankee Stadium, the time to say goodbye.

I suspect tears will flow freely. It’s always that way when you leave a place that was home for so very, very long. I won’t miss the cramped quarters and inconveniences of working there. But I’ll miss the memories.

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