Yankee Stadium and Monument Park

Baseball legends were remembered in this piece of Yankee Stadium real estate, a tradition continued today in the ballpark’s namesake.

by Rich Watson

Yankees manager Miller Huggins died of a form of blood poisoning on September 25, 1929 at age fifty. The former Red and Cardinal led Babe Ruth’s squad to three championships. The American League cancelled its schedule the day of his funeral and the World Series observed a moment of silence for him.

Three years later, in his honor, the Yankees built a granite slab with his image and accomplishments inscribed on it in bronze. They placed it in front of the center field flagpole at Yankee Stadium for all to see and remember. Its inscription calls him “a splendid character who made priceless contributions to baseball.”

When Ruth and Lou Gehrig died in the forties, similar markers joined the one for Huggins. They formed the foundation of a memorial unique in all of sports, one that could only have come from the House that Ruth built.

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1920s Yankees Era Depicted in Kim Van Alkemade’s ‘Bachelor Girl,’ Inspired By Actual Events

The era of Babe Ruth and the creation of Yankee Stadium is the backdrop for an unconventional love story.

by Rich Watson

The Yankees were not always the perennial powerhouse we think of today. It wasn’t until the acquisition of Babe Ruth in 1920 that their fortunes began to turn around—a deal set in motion by their owner at the time, brewer Jacob Ruppert.

Ruppert is a pivotal character in the historical fiction novel Bachelor Girl by Kim van Alkemade, a book set in the post-World War One period. The Yankees still played in the Polo Grounds, Ruth was a pitcher for the Red Sox, and Prohibition was the new law of the land.

The centerpiece, however, is a fictitious, unusual love story uniting the woman Ruppert would one day name his successor as Yankees owner with a secretary who lives a double life as a gay man.

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