The House That Ruth (and Max) Built 2.0

Our mayor is proposing a near replica of the original Yankee Stadium—the one that, according to family lore, one of my great-grandfathers, Max Sander, helped to build. In tribute, I went to the last game held there, in 1976, with my father and his uncles. Fans were dismantling the seats even before the game was over. Max’s sons, grandson, and great-grandson looked at each other, slightly stunned. It never occurred to any of us to vandalize the place, but hey, we had more right to it than anyone else. But here was the problem: we weren’t going to just grab a seat; we wanted something Max himself had created. As we left, my father looked at the finely styled concession stands. This, he concluded, must have been our family's contribution to the place. This was the kind of work his grandfather did. But there was no way we were going to take one of those things apart, and so we left empty-handed.