One of the world’s most iconic sports venues, Yankee Stadium in New York, held its final Major League Baseball game on Sunday 21st September 2008. A capacity crowd of 54,610 fans attended the final match, fittingly a 7-3 victory for the home side over Boston Orioles, including a host of celebrity fans and former players and staff. The game itself was merely a sideshow, however, next to the outpouring of emotion and celebration of the stadium’s 85-year history. And it has been quite a history.

Yankee Stadium was the first dedicated stadium ever built for Major League Baseball and became known as the ‘cathedral’ of the sport in the USA. As the home of one of the most famous sports teams in the world – only European soccer clubs Manchester United and Real Madrid come close to the wide-ranging popularity of the New York Yankees – Yankee stadium became not only baseball’s most famous stadium, but also a genuine New York tourist attraction.

Yogi Berra, one of the most famous players in the team’s history who appeared for the Yankees between 1946 and 1963, was one of the legendary players at the centre of the final night festivities. Now 83, he summed up the mood amongst many Yankee fans when he said: “Well I hate to see it go. I played all my life there, 18 years. I’m really sorry. It’s still Yankee Stadium and everybody who comes to New York wants to see Yankee Stadium. It will always be in my heart.”

Lou Giordano, a fan from Brooklyn, put it another way: “It’s not distinctive in size or architecture and the amenities are terrible. There’s nothing great about it other than the aura and history that surrounds it.”

The story effectively began in 1919 - although the Yankees have existed, in one form or another, since 1901, when the team was based in Baltimore and known as the Orioles. After moving to New York and becoming known as the New York Highlanders in 1903, the Yankees name started appearing in press reports about the team. In 1913 the name-change was made official.

Two years later the team came under the ownership of Jacob Ruppert and Tillinghast L’Hommedieu Huston, both ex-military men. Ruppert was the moneyman, however, and the starting point for the new era that peaked with the construction of Yankee Stadium. Although he was from a military background he was also active in politics as a congressman and in business, running his own family brewery.

In 1919 Ruppert agreed a US$100,000 deal to buy out the contract of baseball’s biggest star of the day, Babe Ruth, from Boston Red Sox. It was a deal that was, ultimately, the catalyst for the new stadium. Ruth was already the biggest star in baseball and, increasingly, in American sport as a whole. His signing galvanised the New York Yankees and raised awareness of the team across the United States. In New York the Yankees immediately reached a new level of popularity.

At the time the Yankees were playing at the Polo Grounds, the stadium owned and run by the New York Giants’ manager John McGraw. At the time the Giants were the pre-eminent New York baseball team (in 1957 the team would relocate to California to become the San Francisco Giants), winning the end-of-season World Series in 1921 and 1922. The ground share agreement was one that, for a time, suited both parties perfectly. The Yankees required a place to play and McGraw worked a deal that meant he received 10 cents per fan that attended Yankee games at the ballpark. Yet the rivalry between the two teams remained intense and McGraw was generally dismissive of the Yankees. Until the arrival of Ruth, thanks to Ruppert’s big pockets and grand ambition, that had never been a problem.

In 1920, however, such was the impact that Ruth made on the Yankees, the team’s overall season attendance was higher than that of the Giants – 1.289 million against 929,609. It infuriated McGraw, who decided he didn’t need tenants anymore, particularly if they were to become big rivals of his team. The Yankees had to find a new home.

There were, by all accounts, several options with the preferred choice being a plot of land in lower Manhattan. However, it soon became clear that many of these sites were unrealistic, and with time relatively short Ruppert decided to buy a plot of 10 acres on the other side of the Hudson River, close to the existing Polo Grounds, in the west Bronx area of the city. The land, acquired from the estate of financier William Waldorf Astor, was purchased for US$565,000 in February 1921. It was at least close to a subway line even if it had little else going for it. McGraw, still seething, was very publicly dismissive.

Ruppert had decided to do what had previously been considered unthinkable and construct a brand new arena dedicated to baseball. He and Huston came to the conclusion that it was a risk worth taking given Ruth’s popularity, plus the winning team that his presence was likely to help foster.

The daring initial plans for the stadium had it as a fully enclosed four-wall arena, which would have been the first of its kind. Ultimately that part of the plan was rejected on account of the fact that daylight into the stadium would be severely restricted. At that time baseball was very much a day game.

The final design, put together by Osborn Engineering Company of Cleveland, was submitted to the construction firm, White Construction Ltd., on May 5th 1922. Ruppert set a budget of US$2.5 million for the three-tiered construction – a first for baseball – and the whole project was completed within 284 days, on-time and under-budget. White Construction used 2,300 tonnes of steel to put the structure together and, given the timeframe, the result was widely considered to be a remarkable feat of engineering.

Such was the scale of the arena, it was the first baseball venue to be described as a stadium as opposed to being given the traditional ‘ballpark’ moniker. What was originally supposed to be called Yankees Field quickly became known in New York as Yankee Stadium.

It also became the blueprint design for a host of other ballparks, even in the second-generation of baseball stadiums that have been built in the last decade, most of which have adopted a very deliberately retro-look. In no other sport is history and tradition prized so much.