Day, a wealthy young merchant and Tammany politician who preferred to think of himself as a baseball player, and Jim Mutrie, a man without Day’s financial means but with a greater understanding of baseball.The look of the Polo Grounds continued to change in its final 40 years, not as dramatically as in the 1920s when the grandstands were extended but in ways that were noticeable.Inside the stadium, changes in policy were made in the late 1940s to help the players get to the clubhouse after games without having to interact with the fans on the field.
But events were transpiring that would bring about a dramatic turn-around for the occupants of the Polo Grounds.It wasn’t until 1880 that professional baseball was played in Manhattan. Cathedral arches were taking shape on the masonry towers of a bridge that was under construction, but completion of this span was still several years away.A roll-up door on the left-field fence, just to the left of the foul pole, led under the stands to where the entrance of the apartment, which consisted of a kitchen, bathroom, living room, and a bedroom that was used by Jerry. It has been reported that the club had been originally called the Gothams, although this name was not used in newspaper accounts, which referred to the team as the New-Yorks. The Yankees continued playing in the Polo Grounds until their new home, Yankee Stadium, was ready for the beginning of the 1923 season.On March 9, 1961, the New York City Board of Estimate had doomed the Polo Grounds with a decision to demolish the stadium to allow the New York City Housing Authority to erect a low-rent housing project — consisting of four 30-story towers to house more than 1,600 families — on the site. The late start made it impossible to complete nine innings, but the Metropolitans, behind the pitching of Hugh “One Arm” Daily, defeated the Nationals, 8-3, in six innings. If it said the Fifth Avenue side, it meant the game was on the east diamond; if it indicated the Sixth Avenue side, it meant that the game was on the west diamond. It took a crew of 60 workers more than four months to bring the venerable structure down.In the broadcast booths, while Ernie Harwell described the play for television viewers, on the radio side Russ Hodges was shouting into the microphone his rendition that would become a classic in the annals of sports announcing: “The Giants win the pennant . A third-generation groundskeeper (Schwab’s grandfather and father had both tended ballparks in Cincinnati), Schwab was amenable to Horace Stoneham’s offer to come to the Giants in 1946 and be in charge of nothing more than the field.The Giants were successful during this period and, in 1888, won their first National League pennant to advanced to the World Series, against the St. Louis Browns of the American Association. Its horseshoe-shaped grandstand and elongated playing area provided for ridiculously short distances down the foul lines and equally ridiculous long distances to the power alleys and center field.