I took my first subway ride of the season to Yankee Stadium last night for Yanks-O’s.  I exited the station as always, turned to cross 161st St., as a year in the New Yankee Stadium had programmed me to do, the large blue temporary walls standing in their normal spots along the south end of the roadway.

Only this time, they weren’t serving as they did in 2009, as a barrier between the sidewalk and the old Stadium.  They were instead blocking a huge open construction expanse.

I wasn’t until I crossed the street to wait for my friend at Babe Ruth Plaza that it hit me.  It’s really gone.  All that’s left of the old Stadium as I write this is a small segment, maybe six seating sections worth in what used to be the right field corner, about where my friends and I shared a season package for the past decade.  The rest has been demolished by the wrecking cranes.

It’s been 33 years since I went to my first game there, a year after the Old New (or is it “New Old?”) Yankee Stadium opened in ‘76.  The past few years it had become more and more obvious that the House that Ruth Built (not the “REAL House that Ruth Built,” as proclaimed the Stan’s Bar tshirts on the young ladies giving out fliers in front of the namesake’s Plaza) was at the end of its life cycle.  It’s only a building, I’ve told myself, and pretty much believed it.

True enough, but as I looked at the remnants across the street, in the context of the fans streaming past, on their way to the huge new facility behind me, I reflected more on why the building was so significant.  It’s because people lived through happy moments, sad moments, but mostly uniting moments there.  It’s where history happened, the kind that brought friends together, that brought fathers and sons together, that introduced sweethearts, that made memories.

I’m fine with the new Stadium, like watching the game there just as much, enjoy the experience as much.  Reflecting on the old place isn’t an indictment of progress, or of what had to happen.  It’s the Yankees’ new home.

Somehow, though, it won’t ever quite be mine.