I’ve been going to Yankee Stadium for 30-plus years. Over the course of a misspent youth and protracted adolescence, I have probably passed through those turnstiles some 300 times. Having lived in a dozen places, gone to four different schools, and attended three different churches over that same span, it strikes me that the southwest corner of River Avenue and 161st Street is the firmest geographical constant in my life — an odd thought. There was no chance, then, that I’d miss the final home game at the House That Ruth Built.

This past Sunday, the long history of the big ballyard in the Bronx ended as it began — with a Yankees win. Andy Pettitte pitched five solid innings, Johnny Damon and José Molina homered for the Bombers, and Mariano Rivera finished off the 7-3 win to stave off elimination from the 2008 postseason — for a few days, at least. A victory was essential, of course, to ring down the curtain on the Stadium in style. But the game itself was a secondary consideration. The night — a long, exhausting night — was about more than one game of baseball. It was about 85 years of cherished memories — not all of them sweet, but no less cherished — that will long survive the building’s impending demolition.

The Stadium gates actually opened seven hours before game time to give as many fans as possible a chance to stroll through Monument Park and along the outfield warning track. Even seven hours wasn’t enough: The early birds lingered and many fans waited for three and four hours without ever having that opportunity. When I arrived at six, hundreds of fans who remained on line were being turned away.

The Yankees planned an elaborate opening ceremony to celebrate the Stadium’s 85 years. The banner from the team’s first World Championship in 1923 was laid across the black bleachers in centerfield. The U.S. Army Field Band played, with a precision tighter than their drums. (In the only off-key note of the evening, actors dressed in vintage uniforms were introduced as if they were the players from the 1923 championship team — “Field of Dreams, without the corn,” I couldn’t help but mockingly observe.)

On the Diamond Vision screen, classic moments from the franchise’s storied past reeled by — Gehrig’s farewell, Don Larsen’s perfect game, Maris’s 61st, Reggie’s three dingers against the Dodgers, Bucky Effin’ Dent. And then, in a welcome reprise of the pre-game ceremony from the 2008 All Star Game, former Yankee players (and members of deceased players’ families) were introduced and took their familiar positions on the field. Whitey Ford and Yogi. Reggie and Roy White. Dave Winfield loping out in pinstripes once more. Willie Randolph sliding into second to get his uniform dirty. Bernie Williams, back at last to a deafening ovation, and looking ready to play. Honestly: The memories were so thick, we had to brush them away from our faces . . .

My dad took me to my first Yankee game in 1976, the year the team returned to the refurbished Stadium after its two-year exile in Shea. It was a Sunday in July, the Yankees were in first place, and there were at least 50,000 people there to see the Bombers beat the White Sox 5-0. To be honest, I don’t remember much about the game itself — other than being disappointed that Willie Randolph and Lou Pinella didn’t play (Team captain Thurman Munson did play, so the disappointment was mild). There were too many sights and sounds and smells for this seven-year-old to pay a scorer’s attention to the action.

Later games stand out clearer in my memory. On July 4, 1983, two neighborhood pals and I decided to take the 4 train down to the Stadium — as much because fans 14-and-under got a Yankee mug filled with mini Baby Ruths and Reggie Bars as because Boston was in town — and so it was that we got to see Dave Righetti throw a no-hitter.

We sat in the top corner of the upper deck in right (it wasn’t a full house, so we snuck down to the tier boxes soon enough). By the middle of the fifth — with zeros across the board for the Sox — a superstitious, indistinct buzz was building about the game Rags was pitching. John Tudor had started for the Sox — no slouch he: the lefty would lead the Cards to an NL pennant two years later. He held the Yanks scoreless until the fifth, when three singles and a walk gave the Bombers a 1-0 lead with the bases loaded — and Tudor promptly struck out Don Mattingly and Dave Winfield to end the threat. But Don Baylor added a solo dinger an inning later, and by the eighth, the Bombers had built a 4-0 lead.

For his part, Righetti sagely walked Jim Rice twice — the eight-time All-Star from Beantown just hammered lefties. The game would end with a rare Wade Boggs strikeout — footage that every Yankee fan has seen countless times now. We had gone for a cheap plastic mug (and I kept mine for years, until the team picture inside turned to mush) but we got a lot more for the price of admission. The Stadium was, well, like a box of chocolates: you never knew what you were going to get.

Starting in the mid-nineties, you could be pretty sure that you would get to the postseason. Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, and Jorge Posada — the young core that came up together in the mid-nineties — rightly receive a ton of credit for the Yankees’ perennial regular-season success. But a November 1992 trade of All-Star centerfielder Roberto Kelly to the Cincinnati Reds — acquiring right fielder Paul O’Neill, and clearing the way for Bernie Williams to man center — played an under-appreciated role in setting the stage for the Yankees’ turn-of-the-century dominance.

I’ve been to some two-dozen postseason games since 1996. I can still feel the way the Stadium shook as fans willed the team, trailing the Seattle Mariners 4-0 in Game Six of the 2000 ALCS, to a comeback victory — how, after Dave Justice’s three-run dinger cut the M’s lead to one, everyone — including the Seattle bullpen — knew that the Yankees would win.

I was sitting in the first row at the very end of the upper deck in left for Game Seven of the 2003 ALCS (which was an ideal seat, because you could stand without blocking anyone’s view) when Jorge Posada’s excuse-me double found enough grass to tie the score against Pedro Martinez and the Red Sox. Two folks in the section snapped my picture after the game because, as Aaron Boone stepped to the plate in the eleventh, I had hollered “Here’s where the kid earns his pinstripes.”

The Yankees’ drive for a fourth straight championship in 2001 stands out most vividly to me — not least because baseball played such a role in helping New York heal after 9/11. No video or audio recording can capture the resolute defiance with which Yankee fans belted out The Star Spangled Banner at the start of the September 25 tilt against Tampa Bay, the first game at the Stadium after the attack. And the house was only two-thirds full: It’s easy for some folks today to forget, but in the weeks after the towers fell, people were shying away from public spectacles, fearful of further attacks. Remember?

Even the socialists were cheering when President George W. Bush threw out the first pitch before Game 3 of the 2001 World Series — wearing a flak jacket — all the way from the mound — and tossed a strike. I remember Tino Martinez’s ninth-inning, Game-4-tying, two-run shot on Halloween night. Followed an inning later by the game-winner — after midnight — off the bat of Derek “Mr. November” Jeter.

Of course, the Yankees didn’t win in 2001. Sure, they got as far as Game 7 in the Series, but that means little in Yankeeland. You don’t go to 39 World Series — and win 26 of them — if something short of a championship marks a good season. This week, team captain Derek Jeter was asked how it felt not to make the postseason for the first time in his 14-year, four-ring career. His (paraphrased) answer was instructive: you either win or you go home — and if you don’t win, it doesn’t really matter when you go home.

The last night at the Stadium was undoubtedly bittersweet — and the disappointments of the 2008 season helped make it so, for me at least. But (bracketing the issue of how the Stadium is being paid for, mind you) it’s hard for me to get too upset about the new venue. The old ballpark has undeniable charms. The fact is, though, it’s not the original House That Ruth Built, either — I never even set foot in that place. I still consider myself a Yankee fan. And somehow the Yankees managed to go to ten World Series and win six of them in the renovated building, so I have no fear that a relocation to the northwest corner of River Avenue and 161st Street will bring an end to pinstripe pride.

The new park will preserve familiar traditions, restore some old ones — like the façade and the old seat-numbering system — and make some welcome changes, to boot: more legroom, for one. Most likely, too many concession-stand workers will remain slow and surly — a Stadium tradition that I’d be happy to see go the way of Wally Pipp — but at least while you’re waiting in line on the new concession concourses, you’ll be able to turn around and watch the live action, instead of craning for a view of the TV hanging over the pretzel machine.

On Sunday night, a guy in the section next to mine held up a sentiment that is just about right: “We, the Fans, Are the House That Ruth Built.” Come April 2009, Jeter will still be at short, Cano at second, Posada behind the plate, and Wang on the mound, God willing. I’ll stop by Glacken’s to say hello to Tommy and Mike, and then head up to the House That Ruth Built with no remorse — and with a lot of enduring memories.

– Edward John Craig is the managing editor of National Review Online.