In Remembrance of an Excursion to Yankee Stadium

By Greg Fieg

It was eight years ago or so, so far back now that certain details do not immediately come to memory.  Still a very special day:  it remains emblazoned in the mind.

It was in Old Yankee Stadium, the "House That Ruth Built."  Ed Fieg Sr. and his sister Lisa Fieg and Lisa's neighbor and longtime friend Louis DiIulio were watching the game from high above the field behind home plate. An interleague contest between the Yankees and the Braves, the game raced toward its conclusion.

To recall the exact score is not so important, but one thing is certain:  the home team was winning but the visitors were threatening. The game was definitely on the line.

Ed remembers that at the top of the ninth inning, the din of the crowd suddenly intensified to a deafening roar and everyone rose to his feet.  Ed looked around, trying to figure out why all the commotion.  Had Bruce Springsteen suddenly appeared to sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame?"  Was Yankees owner George Steinbrenner passing out $100 bills?

Ed turned to Louis, a long-time New Yorker and veteran of many Yankee Stadium games and, yelling at the top of his voice, asked him why everybody was so excited.  Louis, screaming back but knowing he probably couldn't be heard, spoke slowly,  enunciating carefully so that Ed might be able to read his lips.

Pointing to a solitary figure trotting toward the mound from the bullpen, Louis said:  "Mariano Rivera!"

The young Panamanian pitcher, then at the very pinnacle of his prowess and well on the way to enshrinement in Cooperstown, toed the rubber and began to throw:  one, two, three; one, two, three; one, two, three.  The ninth inning and, of course, the game had just come to an abrupt conclusion.  Rivera, notching the save, struck out the side on nine pitches.

Fast forward to the present.

Last Sunday night as the Yankees hosted the first place Texas Rangers, with Rivera once again readying to come in to put the game away, ESPN, which was broadcasting the game nationally, took time during a station break to show a 30-second historical vignette in honor of the Yankees' storied past and hallowed environs.

With documentary footage of the late Marilyn Monroe -- an immortal icon of a different sort -- it was recalled that it was in 1954 that the greatest motion picture actress of the day travelled to Japan on her honeymoon, then took time to fly to South Korea for an afternoon to entertain American troops there.

When she took the stage she wore hoop earrings the size of silver dollars, four-inch high heels and a glittering, relatively voluminous size 16, sequin-studded, royal blue evening dress in which her considerable bosom, hips and derriere were not all that easily contained.  The soldiers, who perhaps had not seen a woman in weeks and certainly had never seen a woman such as this, went wild, absolutely wild.

Later that day, when she returned to Japan to rejoin her new husband on their honeymoon, Marilyn, recounting the day, said to him:  "You have never heard such cheering."

Joe DiMaggio looked back at her and replied:  "Yes, I have."