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This chapter examines the history of the New York Yankees baseball team and their Yankee Stadium in New York City. The Yankees started their history as the bankrupt remnants of an old National League powerhouse, the Baltimore Orioles. When the team moved to New York in 1930 it was renamed the New York Highlanders with the Hilltop Park as its home stadium. In January 1915, the team was sold to Jacob Ruppert and Tillinghast L'Hommedieu Huston. The team's dynasty started with the inaugural season of Babe Ruth in 1920, winning its first pennant in the 1921 season. The planning, design and acquisition of a property for the construction of the stadium started in January 1921.

This chapter examines Jacob Ruppert's sale of the New York Yankees and the Yankee Stadium. On January 25, 1945, Del Webb and Dan Topping, together with Larry McPhail purchased the Yankees and the stadium for $2.8 million. McPhail was bought in 1947. The new owners experienced some of the same problems encountered by Ruppert. The Webb and Topping era covered a time when the World War I generation of stadiums were largely abandoned as obsolete. In 1964, they sold the franchise to Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS).

This chapter focuses on Congressional hearings conducted in 1953 to address Major League Baseball's (MLB) television policies. In addition to their fears about the adverse effects of broadcasting and televising MLB games upon their gate receipts, baseball owners were concerned over their supply of minor league players. National Football League (NFL) owners were not too concerned about the effects of their telecasts upon college football; they relied on collegiate football to generate well-known, gifted players. Their baseball counterparts did not depend on this source. The issue was complicated by the variety of broadcasts into minor league territories: telecasts, live radio broadcasts, and radio broadcasts of re-created games. This chapter first considers the notion that telecasts of MLB games were responsible for minor league baseball's woes before discussing the issue over MLB owners' right to broadcast or telecast their games. It concludes with an assessment of the reasons behind the demise of minor league baseball teams.

This chapter examines the history of the New York Yankees under the leadership of Jacob Ruppert. Under Ruppert's tenure, the Yankees became an important part of New York life, something that is more than an engaging amusement. The team developed its mystique, part of which centered on the baseball, politics, and entertainment that assumed new importance in the 1920s. Its star player Babe Ruth rose to national prominence and became the first star of the newsreel era.

This chapter examines the history of Columbia Broadcasting System's (CBS) sale of the New York Yankees franchise to the twelve-member syndicate headed by Mike Burke and George Steinbrenner for $10 million in cash in January 1973. Though the sale was about $4 million lower than the price when CBS purchased the franchise in 1964, analyst Red Smith explained that CBS broke even on the deal. The opening of the renovated stadium on April 15, 1976 signalled the resurgence of the Yankees to a championship team.

This chapter examines the crowd cheering for the New York Yankees baseball team at the Yankee Stadium in New York City during the 1920s. It suggests that the commercial success of the stadium and the team can be attributed to the transformation of the Bronx itself from a bucolic region north of New York City to a middle-class borough that defined modern urban living. Its population increased more than three-fold from 1900 to 1920 and it experienced revolutions in mass transportation, housing, and public works. Both the team's star Babe Ruth and the fans that cheered for him beat long odds to climb out of poverty.

This chapter examines the history of the New York Yankee's search for a new stadium during the 1990s. In 1993, Yankees owner George Steinbrenner considered several sites for the stadium including Van Cortland Park, Street and 11th Avenue on Manhattan's West Side, Coney Island in Brooklyn, the Meadowlands in New Jersey, Staten Island, three locations in Queens, and the Yonkers Raceway. Though the plan never materialized, the city council voted to spend $76 million to build a minor league ballpark in Staten Island for a Yankee farm team in 1999.