Derek Jeter Set to Take His Place in Monument Park. But Where Exactly?
Fans visiting Monument Park at Yankee Stadium before the Yankees’ season opener in 2015. On Sunday, Derek Jeter will have his plaque and his number unveiled there.
Members of the University of South Florida baseball team wandered through some of the better-known real estate in New York on Thursday. They moved slowly, soaking up the history in every crowded corner of Monument Park at Yankee Stadium.
Chris Chatfield, a sophomore outfielder from greater Tampa, explained that he and his teammates were in the area for a three-game series against Connecticut and were given a day off to attend a Yankees game. Monument Park was a must-see stop on their tour, even if they came three days too soon.
“Where is it going?” Chatfield asked as he stood by a grand monument honoring Babe Ruth and scanned the park.
On Sept. 11, 2016, pitcher Dellin Betances and Manager Joe Girardi carried a wreath to the September 11th memorial in Monument Park.
“There isn’t a lot of space left,” Roberts said.
Already brimming with the historical markers of a distinguished baseball legacy, Monument Park will welcome its newest resident on Sunday, when the Yankees unveil Jeter’s plaque and permanently retire his No. 2 somewhere within the confines of this outfield shrine.
Jeter won five World Series in his 20 years with the club and amassed more hits than any Yankee — 3,465. Sunday’s ceremony has been planned for months, but as of Friday, only a handful of people knew exactly where Jeter’s new permanent markers — the plaque and the circular numerical plate — would go.
“It’s a secret,” said a smiling Doug Behar, the Yankees’ senior vice president for stadium operations.
But there are clues.
For the plaque, there is ample space beside the plaques for Yogi Berra and Posada along the back wall of Monument Park, near the entrance.
As for his number, the area where Jeter’s former teammates Pettitte, Posada and Williams are honored features a little garden of purple hyacinth flowers. There is scant room left in that plot, but just a few feet down the path, the wall of gray granite blocks has ample space with no plaques on it — yet — and the same type of garden lies in front of it. It aches to be adorned.
“That would be a good spot,” said Gary Skiles, a retiree from Moline, Ill., who was visiting his 29th ballpark Thursday. Skiles said that soaking in Monument Park was part of a bucket-list quest to see the stadiums of all 30 major league clubs. He and his wife, Leslie, were headed to Boston over the weekend to complete the tour at Fenway Park.
Like the Skiles couple, many of the visitors to Monument Park were out-of-towners. John Nolan, a truck driver from Nashville, gazed at all the plaques and monuments squeezed into the park, which sits beyond the center-field wall.
“I grew up a Dodgers fan, and all these guys used to kill us,” Nolan, 55, said. “I didn’t mind Jeter. It’s too bad we missed his plaque, but we can come back.”
Nolan never met Jeter or any of the heroes enshrined at Monument Park, but he proudly told of buying a Coca-Cola for Johnny Cash, the country music legend, at a Tennessee supermarket. Alas, there is no plaque there to commemorate that event.
Music was a theme at Monument Park on Thursday as Ian Koeller and Dave Whittle, both professional drummers and amateur Yankees fans, drove down from Burlington, Vt., to visit. They would have attended Sunday’s ceremony for Jeter, but ticket prices for the game on the secondary market were prohibitive.
“No way we could afford that on a drummer’s salary,” Koeller, 25, said.
The Yankees estimate that 2,000 to 2,500 people visit Monument Park on a typical game day, and that as many as 250,000 show up over the course of a year, but they say the site definitely gets a lot more crowded after a new player is enshrined.
More : Nytimes.com
