Sheppard: Yankee Stadium is like a second home

From Steve Serby:

The Post's Steve Serby chatted with the legendary voice of Yankee Stadium, who started as public-address announcer in 1951 but has missed the ballpark's final season due to illness.

Q: Your thoughts on the last game tonight at Yankee Stadium?

A: After having been there for more than 50 years, and missing this year because of illness, I shall miss the ending. I had planned being there if I could, but I don't have the stamina and I can't get up there and back (from Bellmore, L.I.), even though the Yankees have been so generous offering limousine service there and back and a seat in Steinbrenner's box. But physically, I wasn't up to it.

Q: What will your emotions be watching the finale on television?

A: Nostalgic. Really, really nostalgic. I started so long ago, and I never realized how many years I would spend up there. Never did I dream I would go on and on and on, like a river flowing constantly. Like the Energizer Bunny, I guess you could call it.

Q: Sum up what Yankee Stadium has meant to you.

A: It was like a second home. I was doubling, doing baseball for the Yankees and football for the Giants, and I loved them both, and I enjoyed doing football as much as baseball, and baseball as much as football. And when I retired from the football Giants a year ago, it was on my own wishes. I just felt the trip over to Jersey and back to Long Island got to be a little bit heavy on me.

Q: What would you say Yankee Stadium means to baseball fans across America?

A: I liken it to a cathedral, like St. Patrick's Cathedral is to the Catholic people of New York. The Yankee Stadium - and I hope I'm not being un-Christian here - the Yankee Stadium is like a cathedral for baseball people. I think it has a certain aura of dignity . . . name . . . history and star appeal . . . the kind of appeal that comes only with Ruth, and Gehrig, and DiMaggio, and Mantle, and Rodriguez and Jeter and so on. This place, Yankee Stadium, truly has been blessed, not only with the great stars, but with the phenomenal record over the years. I don't know how many World Series I did in my years up there, but what other announcer would have the joy and pleasure of being there and seeing all those World Series games? It was a bonus, even though they paid me too.

Q: The new Yankee Stadium?

A: Tell the people who read The Post I'm looking forward to next year.

Read the rest of the interview here. Sheppard discusses some of his favorite Stadium memories including Larsen's perfect game, Maris' 61 in '61, Reggie's three homers in game 6 of the '77 series, and others, as well as players from the past and present.