You don’t need to hurl a 90 mph pitch or slug a baseball over the center field wall to get a seat in the Yankee dugout. And you can get into the Knicks or Rangers locker room without a slam dunk or hard check into the boards.
You can sit where Joe Torre and his crew sit, and follow in the footsteps of Willis Reed and Mark Messier – just by touring Yankee Stadium and Madison Square Garden.
The Post went on these fact-packed tours of the most storied venues in sports. Here’s the scouting report:
A BABE IN THE BRONX
Even a Met fan will find the Yankee Stadium tour fascinating. After all, baseball history is baseball history. (In the amazing-but-true category, there’s a gutsy worker in the bowels of Yankee Stadium who not only admits he likes the Mets, but also carries a key chain with the Flushing team’s logo.)
The first stop on the tour? A look at a World Series Trophy, this one from 1977, when the Yanks beat the L.A. Dodgers after going 15 years without the championship.
Tour guide Tony Morante gave us a brief lesson in Yankee history, beginning in 1903, when the team was dubbed the Highlanders for the high elevation of its Hilltop Park.
The ball club, later re-christened the Yankees – which was shorter than the Highlanders and easily abbreviated, the better to fit in a headline – shared the Polo Grounds with the New York Giants from 1912 to 1922.
The Yanks, Morante says, were evicted by the Giants because they became more popular than the home team after Babe Ruth came to New York in 1920.
It was increased ticket sales, thanks to the Babe, that helped build a new stadium, which opened in 1923 – thus, the moniker “The House That Ruth Built.”
The stadium cost $2.4 million to build, which is nothing compared with the cost of its renovation in the 1970s, to the tune of more than $100 million. While the stadium was being rebuilt, the Yanks shared Shea Stadium with the Mets for two seasons.
After a glimpse across the Harlem River, to the Manhattan sites of the old stadiums, our tour group, which included a pair of tourists from London and a couple from Don Mattingly’s Indiana hometown (“My mom sees him all the time in the grocery store,” the Indiana gal said), headed for the press box.
From our comfortable perch in the loge level, we looked out to where Mickey Mantle came within 18 inches of blasting a ball out of Yankee Stadium in 1963, where Negro League great Josh Gibson came similarly close in 1930.
We saw where the sonorous voice of veteran Yankee public address announcer Bob Sheppard has been broadcast since 1951 – it’s a surprisingly tiny room for such a big voice.
And then there’s the best part: walking down the ramp underneath the stadium that leads to the dugout and hallowed field.
Following in the footsteps of Ruth, Lou Gehrig and other baseball legends is a goose-bump kind of moment. Sitting in the dugout, you get the same view of the field that the players get during a game. (If you stand up, be careful. The ceiling is low and you can easily bump your head.)
If you’re a Derek Jeter fan – one of millions, it seems – try to stay calm. You might get a peek at where he gets dressed in the Yankee locker room. There, you’ll discover that the shortstop had an extra locker last year – just for his fan mail.
ROOTING ‘ROUND THE GARDEN
You can’t predict the outcome of a basketball or hockey game, and you never know what you’ll find on an hour-long tour of Madison Square Garden.
One lucky tour group – ours – recently watched Garden workers make the ice for the Rangers, a painstaking but fascinating procedure that’s done only four times a year.
While we looked on from ground level, four men methodically walked back and forth on the ice, end to end, carrying a multi-nozzled contraption that sprayed a fine mist on a preliminary layer. The concrete floor had been chilled to 10 degrees by refrigeration pipes underneath; the lines and logos had already been painted on with a special concoction called Jet Ice Paint.
That icy surprise aside, the tour got off to a slow start. Checking out sports bars and restaurants isn’t that interesting, though the Play by Play restaurant features a regulation-size and -height basketball hoop and you’re invited to dunk a few right there. (Hint: Practice your free-throw shooting so you won’t embarrass yourself.)
Among the fun facts, you’ll learn: The lobby of the Theater at Madison Square Garden – the 5,600-seat venue under the 20,000-seat arena, which recently hosted “A Christmas Carol” – used to be a bowling alley, and was the set for TV’s “Bowling for Dollars.”
Did you know the Garden scoreboard weighs 25 tons? It does. Can you believe the Knicks use 300 to 500 towels per game? They do.
And then there are the locker rooms. Yes, you actually get to go in, nose around (as long as the players aren’t there) and get a peek at Marcus Camby’s size 17 sneakers. Just ignore the sign on the door to the Rangers digs that ominously reads “Authorized personnel only,” signed by the National Hockey League commissioner, no less.
Want to know what’s on Knick guard Charlie Ward’s reading list? A quick glance at his locker (they’re actually open spaces with clothes hooks, seats and a small shelf space – no locks) found “Women of the Bible” by Colleen Reece, “Path to Victory: An NIV Sports New Testament” and others.
Look around carefully and you might uncover a scoop. On the Knicks locker room board was scrawled the team schedule: “Mon., off. Tues., Team Awareness Meeting, 10:30.”
Who knew the Knicks had Team Awareness Meetings?
The inside story
Here’s what you need to know about the tours. Make sure you phone first, though, since what you can see, and when, will depend on the schedule of games and events.
* The Yankee Stadium tour starts daily at noon (except when there are day games during the season) for individuals and groups of fewer than 12. Admission is $12 for adults, $6 for kids 14 and younger. Group tours (which require reservations) begin at 10 a.m. The hour-long tours begin at the press gate. For more information, call (718) 579-4531.
* Tours of Madison Square Garden are offered Monday through Saturday, on the hour, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., and on Sunday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Admission is $16 for adults, $10 for kids under 12. Call (212) 465-5800.
