The Yankee Pantheon

NEW YORK -- With the markers, the flowers, and the overwhelming sense of history, Yankee Stadium's Monument Park looks and feels like a cemetery.

     No one is buried there, of course. The park, one of the more unusual sections of a professional sports stadium in the United States, is a tribute to well known Yankees of yesteryear and other aspects of New York City's past. Fans can visit before games and on stadium tours.

     Located beyond the barrier in the stadium's left-center field, the park contains bronze memorials to a couple of dozen New York players, managers and owners. There's also a plaque honoring the current P.A. announcer, Bob Sheppard, who has been at the mike since 1951; broadcaster Mel Allen; and two visits to the stadium by popes, John Paul II and Paul VI, who celebrated mass there. The 9/11 terror attacks are also memorialized.

     The most prominent monuments are the ones dedicated to Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle and Miller Huggins, the team's manager during the 1920s.

     Tiger great Willie Horton, who himself is memorialized in a statue at Comerica Park, visited the park Monday afternoon, as the Tigers were taking batting practice.

     "It's beautiful," said Horton, who recalled the older version of the monuments, three of which actually stood at the edge of the Yankee Stadium outfield -- in fair territory, amazingly -- when he was a visiting player in the 1960s. They were moved when the stadium was renovated in the 1970s.

     "Mickey and me, we chased a few balls out by them," said Horton, referring to fellow Tiger outfielder Mickey Stanley.

         By BILL McGRAW