April 18th, 1923 –
On the first day of the new baseball season, the gates of Yankee Stadium were opened and 74,200 people flooded through turnstiles, while another 25,000 were turned away – an amazing number, given that previous attendance record for a single game was 42,000 for the 1916 World Series in Boston. In an ironic twist, the first game was fittingly played against the Boston Red Sox, Babe Ruth’s former team. Even more fitting was that Ruth hit the first homerun in the stadium on the opening day of the new ballpark – a three-run homerun, giving the Yankees the 4-1 win.
Before Yankee Stadium opened in 1923, the Yankees rented from their cross-town rivals, the New York Giants and shared the space at the Polo Grounds. Threatened with eviction, the Yankees were forced to build their own stadium in the Bronx. The ballpark became the first to have three tiers of seating, consisting of 58,000 seats. It was also the first ballpark to be called a stadium due to its enormous size.
The Haus of Dcaligari 