The Stadium

The first time I went to work at Yankee Stadium, not the first time I went to Yankee Stadium, but the first time I went to work there, with a pen and a pad and a press pass, was Opening Day 2003. It was cold, and had snowed the day before, and so there were men, late that morning, a few hours before the first midday pitch, melting snow in the dugout with hot water from hoses. Steam slinked from the dugout and into the tunnel and down toward the concrete corridor outside the Yankees' clubhouse. It hovered there like a thick white cloud. I walked out of the press room, down just a bit from the clubhouse, and saw this, and stopped, and half-expected the ghost of Babe Ruth to emerge from the…