"In-Bee-Lievable" and "Farewell to the House That Ruth Built"

#984/#983

984. U.S. WOMEN’S OPEN, FINAL ROUND

JUNE 30, 2013

SEBONACK GOLF CLUB

QUALITY OF PLAY

6.16

DRAMA

5.98

STAR POWER

8.72

CONTEMPORARY IMPORT

6.93

HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE

7.94

LOCAL IMPACT

6.17

TOTAL: 41.90

Sebonack Golf Course is a lesser-known, and far newer, golf course neighbor of Shinnecock Hills in Southhampton, Long Island. Co-designed by Jack Nicklaus, it is a beautiful place along the Peconic Bay, an area seemingly created for golf. As the course founder and owner, Michael Pascucci, put it, “The golf course gives the appearance of being here a long time because it really was. It just didn’t have a green and a tee box.” Said greens were extremely tough, and overall Sebonack is held to be one of the tougher courses in the metropolitan area.

But for most of its existence it never held a signature tournament. That changed when the USGA staged the U.S. Women’s Open there in late-June, 2013. Nor did it have a signature performance, either—until Inbee Park strolled on to the Long Island course and made history.

Park was born in Seoul, but her golf-mad parents moved to the U.S. when she was 10 in order to foster her burgeoning career, if one can be said to have such a thing at such a tender age. Young Inbee made her parents proud, however, becoming an excellent junior player as a teen and turning professional just after graduating from her Las Vegas high school in 2006.

In short order Park became one of the best golfers on the tour. In 2008, at just 19, she became the youngest ever U.S. Women’s Open champ. She struggled mightily in the aftermath, however, losing her focus and her stroke to the point she entered the Japanese LPGA qualifying school to regain her game. 

Whatever she did, it worked. By the time of the Women’s Open in 2013, Park had won the year’s first two majors, the Kraft Nabisco and LPGA Championship, held earlier that spring. She was the world number one when she hit her first tee shot at Sebonack.

It went well immediately, perhaps aided by the fact that Inbee’s father, Gun Gyu, was watching her play live in a major for the very first time. Park shot a 67 for the first round, just a stroke back of fellow Korean Kim Ha-Neul. Kim collapsed with a 77 on Friday, beset by a heavy fog off the bay, while Inbee toured the seaside course in just 68 strokes, seizing the lead by two on cutdown day. 

Her third round was trickier. Looking flustered for the first time, Park bogeyed three consecutive holes. But on the downhill 14th green, she saved her round by dropping a 34-foot birdie putt. She finished with a 71. At ten-under she held a four stroke lead over her nearest competitor, yet another Korean, I.K. Kim. The devilish greens at Sebonack were dominating the field—Park was the only player to finish under par on Saturday.

Park’s best friend in the final round were the trying conditions at Sebonack. The difficult course was lashed again by fog, mist and a gusting wind, making any charge to the top unlikely. All Park had to do to capture the title was avoid disaster. She didn’t double bogey the entire tournament, and had just two bogeys on Sunday (ten in all), allowing her to easily hold off Kim by four strokes and claim the championship, along with the $585,000 that went with it. Kim, a consistent bridesmaid who might have achieved far more but for the dominance of Park, settled for second. Still another Korean player, So Yeon Ryu, finished third. 

Park became just the second female golfer ever to win three straight majors to start the year, after the immortal Babe Zaharias did it in 1950. 

Inbee-lievable, indeed. 

AFTERMATH

Park would need to win five majors to capture the 2013 Grand Slam, as the Evian Championship in France had been added as a fifth major, coming a few weeks after the British Open. One wonders at the controversy if she had taken the British at St. Andrews but not the Evian, but as it happened, she didn’t win either one. She did win the 2015 British Open (giving her a career grand slam), as well as the 2014 and 2015 LPGA championships, giving her seven major titles in her sterling career, tying Park with Juli Inkster and Karrie Webb for second-most in the modern era, trailing only the great Annika Sorenstam. 

WHAT THEY SAID

“The course flustered the former teenage sensation Michelle Wie, who withdrew 17 holes into her second round, at 11 over, with the official cause given as illness. It caused a rift between Jessica Korda and her caddie, Jason Gilroyed, midway through the third round. Korda abruptly fired Gilroyed after the ninth hole and replaced him with her boyfriend, Johnny DelPrete, who carried her bag the remainder of the tournament, which she completed at two over and in a tie for seventh place.”

—Zach Schonbrun, The New York Times

FURTHER READING:

“Inbee Park Claims Historic Win”—Associated Press

VIDEO

983. NEW YORK YANKEES VS BALTIMORE ORIOLES

SEPTEMBER 21, 2008

YANKEE STADIUM

QUALITY OF PLAY

5.93

DRAMA

4.97

STAR POWER

8.21

CONTEMPORARY IMPORT

4.55

HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE

8.75

LOCAL IMPACT

9.50

TOTAL: 41.91

“FAREWELL TO THE HOUSE THAT RUTH BUILT”

The closing of Yankee Stadium III seemed to most of us who grew up braving hellacious traffic or foul-smelling subway trains to get there, who grew up holding our breaths as the street toughs and prostitutes and conmen that worked the edges of this South Bronx oasis edged their way towards us, who grew up standing in long lines for cruddy food and to pee in enormous troughs that splashed urine and who knows what else on our legs—it seemed a terrible thing, is what it seemed. Necessary? Perhaps. Overdue? Arguably. Desired by the moneymen who would profit obscenely off the construction and operation of a new ballpark? Obviously. 

But the old girl was our home away from home, site of several of the greatest moments of our young lives, repository of forever memories and amazing sights and sounds (no place could roar like YS3). The cliche is never more true than it is in this case—when you first glimpsed that particular sporting green after walking up the tunnel to the seating area, your life was forever changed. 

The first iteration was constructed as an F-You to the New York Giants and John McGraw, placed just across the Harlem River in the farmlands of the Bronx, and so colossal it couldn’t be missed by Old John as the game was wrenched from his aging, bunt-worshipping hands by Babe Ruth. McGraw hated the place to the point he had his team change at the Polo Grounds and walk across the river, rather than spend any extra seconds in Jacob Ruppert’s Palace (then co-owner Cap Huston too, though he was swiftly removed from the picture, and history). Everyone called it The Yankee Stadium in those days, it was such a singular construction.

In the wake of the end of WWII the place got an extended remodeling. Marketing genius (and alcoholic madman) Larry MacPhail, the owner of the team in the winter of ’45-'46, dropped the “The” and thereafter the newly painted, refurbished, and moneyed-up ballpark was known simply, universally, as Yankee Stadium. MacPhail set a new corporate tone that would reach its apotheosis as the “U.S. Steel” Yankees won fifteen pennants between 1947 and 1964. Baseball was still a game for the masses, but MacPhail’s masterstroke was to open new profit streams from seemingly every avenue. Yankee Stadium II was a cash cow, the first of its kind.

Another renovation came in 1973, this time in order to keep the team from moving to New Jersey or Albuquerque or G-d knows where. For two years the Yanks played at Shea Stadium while the place got an overdue visit from the pressure washer and the paint roller. The distinctive columns, 118 in all, were removed, and the original metal frieze swapped out for a cement model. The joint got elevators and ramps and a new roof, and come 1976, Yankee Stadium III was ready for action.

23 years. 27 years. And, at last, a run of 35 more before the renovations and refurbishments ended and an entirely new Stadium was constructed across 161st Street. By 2008 few doubted this would happen—George Steinbrenner and his progeny and coterie of fixers had been talking about it for ages. The Boss died before the new park was built, and we true believers in the magic of the old place hoped somehow the bureaucracy would work its trick bag and keep a new place from ever actually rising.

Alas. 

So it came that the 2008 season, the franchise’s 106th overall and 85th in the Bronx, would be the final one played on Ruppert and Huston’s original site. It was (by Yankees standards, anyway) a desultory campaign, with just 89 wins, a third-place finish in the A.L. East, and the first pinstripe-free postseason since 1993. By late-September, with no October baseball in the offing, all that remained were the lasts—the last homestand, the last game, the last inning.

If Boston would have been the proper and perfect opponent on Sunday night, September 21, 2008, than Baltimore, representing Babe Ruth’s hometown, was a solid runner-up. The game itself was routine, even dull. Andy Pettitte pitched well for the win. The final home run in the ballpark that made the home run as American as apple pie and municipal graft was hit in the fourth inning by Jose Molina, not exactly a Yankee immortal or even fan favorite. The great Mariano Rivera got the final three outs in a 7-3 Yankees victory. Not a classic, but Yankee Stadium went out a winner.

Derek Jeter addressed the fans, players took laps thanking the throng in person, “New York, New York” played, and then it was over. The new Yankee Stadium is more museum than ballpark, a monument to price gouging and cheap homers, but because the Yankees play there, it remains a place of (expensively purchased) joy. It is clean, well-lit, safe, and easy to get to, even featuring a long-awaited Metro North rail spur that I would have killed for in 1986. 

Man, do I miss the old place.

AFTERMATH

In 2009, the first season of New Yankee Stadium, as it was called until it became no longer so new, the Yankees won it all, just like they did in 1923 in their spanking House That Ruth Built. They haven’t won a title, or even a pennant, since, making that 2009 flag seem a Devil’s Bargain with each passing fall. 

Anyone want to take bets on when this “new” place will be deemed worthy of tearing down in the name of money? If this current Stadium reaches 2040 I’ll be surprised (and, hopefully, alive). 

WHAT THEY SAID

“I was traveling heavy to my last game at Yankee Stadium last night. Heavy in the thoughts and memories of the thousands of games I’d attended at the grand old ballpark, and heavy in emotion at the thought that this place, so much a part of my life, will soon be consigned to wrecking-ball history.”

—Bill Madden, longtime Yankees reporter, New York Daily News

FURTHER READING:

The House That Ruth Built, by Robert Weintraub (was there ever any doubt?)

VIDEO