Yanks Move Home Plate and Pitching Rubber to New Stadium

Today Paul O'Neill, David Cone, Scott Brosius, Jeff Nelson, Jennifer Steinbrenner Swindal, and nearly 60 local high school kids helped move home plate, the pitchers mound, along with some dirt, from the old Yankee Stadium to the new stadium. Here's more from MLB.com:

Paul O'Neill strode down a flight of concourse stairs at the new Yankee Stadium on Saturday, set his feet on the warning track -- a rough, dirt expanse, still studded with rocks and a few small puddles -- and took an exhaustive look around.

"Look at this joint, huh?" he said.

Out before him lay a baseball field, albeit an incomplete one, properly proportioned to match the dimensions of the old Yankee Stadium. Sod, with seams still showing, filled much of the area, and a large blue sign shouted the words "YANKEE STADIUM" from above center field. Waves of dark blue seats down the left-field line dumped into a still-unfinished section behind home plate, where metal supports hinted at where more seats are still to come.

And on the mound, roughly 60 area children helped cram some dirt from the old Yankee Stadium into the new one.

"You know that the Yankees are going to do everything in a first-class manner, and this is a pretty impressive place," said former third baseman Scott Brosius. "It's kind of cool to see it now, and it will be really cool to see it when it's all completed and ready to go."

That, of course, coming from a man who had already soaked in some of the best of what the old Yankee Stadium had to offer. So imagine how the children of local youth groups in the Bronx felt when the Yankees invited them to a symbolic ceremony on Saturday to transfer home plate, the pitching rubber and buckets of dirt from the old Yankee Stadium to the new one.

Brosius, O'Neill, David Cone and Jeff Nelson joined members of Youth Force 2020 and the ACE Mentor Program in the ceremony, using shovels to dig up dirt and then set it back down across the street -- all in the midst of a driving rain.

"It means a lot," Cone said. "It's a great symbolic gesture to be able to take the actual home plate and pitcher's rubber from the old Yankee Stadium and bring it over here. It was a great gesture, and to actually get kids in the Bronx involved with it, I thought was a really good thing to do."

Cone, like Brosius, spent a fair amount of time gazing up at the new stadium, which at once looks quite similar to and strikingly different from the old one. Set to open when the new baseball season begins in April, the structure has been rising up in the shadow of its predecessor for more than two years.

"There's a little twinge of jealousy, that's for sure, when you see this facility and how beautiful it's going to be," Cone said. "But then again, I was at the right place at the right time."

"This new Yankee Stadium has got a lot to live up to," Cone said, lounging in a concrete lean-to that will soon become the home dugout. "There are so many great memories, so many championships across the street, that anything you can bring over here -- any sort of memories you can bring with you -- it's a good thing to do to get this place off to the right start."

And here are some pictures of the ceremony from MLB.com:

Nice ceremony, but where was Jeter, Posada, Mo, and Pettitte?

And then there was this from Kat O'Brien:

Torre said he had been invited by the Yankees to a Saturday event at which Bronx high schoolers and a few members of the '98 team will transfer dirt from the home plate area at the old Yankee Stadium to the new Yankee Stadium. He's not going to make it due to a scheduling conflict with a brunch for his foundation, but it seemed like an olive branch of sorts.

Nice of the Yanks to at least invite Torre to help with the ceremony, and like O'Brien says, it does seem like an olive branch. It's a shame he couldn't make it.