Something Extra When the stadium opened in April, Yankee hurlers and sluggers got most of the cheers. But the structure was roundly applauded as well.

Perhaps the only off notes were stunted early-season ticket sales, thanks to a crippling recession, and the conspiracy theorists who claimed the stadium’s configuration and orientation had created a home run-friendly “wind tunnel” into right field. While the Yankees did register the most home runs as a team in 2009 with 244, they were also second in all of baseball with 108 home runs on the road. And the critics might have noticed that the new stadium, like the old, features a short right field porch, and that the team is unsurprisingly stocked with lefties who can reach it with one swing.

The stadium’s modern amenities and design get most of the attention, with a scoreboard six times larger than in the old facility. It includes both a 60 x 102 ft high definition LED screen as well as a pair of manual scoreboard for that traditional touch. The open-air design also allows fans to view the field from many vantage points, including the concourse and concession stands, but there are also 1,100 flat panel video monitors throughout the facility. And there are restaurants, a banquet hall, and a Yankees Museum for fans, as well as a giant clubhouse for the team that stretches from behind home plate to the right-field foul pole – complete with coaching offices, training rooms, administrative space, the locker room, and conference areas.

The end result is enough to make a lifelong Yankee fan have to take a deep breath, says Crowley, who grew up rooting for Mantle and Maris.

“It’s a once in a lifetime project for a design team, and to have a major part in it was tremendous,” he adds. “What else can you say?”

Key Players

Owner: New York Yankees
General Contractor: Turner Construction
Design and Production Architect: Populous
Structural Engineer: Thornton Tomasetti
Development Manager: Tishman Speyer
Geotechnical-Foundation Engineer: Mueser Rutledge Consulting Engineers
Steel Contractor: Koch/CanAm
Plumbing Subcontractor: Almar Plumbing, Bethpage, N.Y.
Electrical Subcontractor: EJ Electric, Long Island City, N.Y.
Steel Subcontractor: BPDL, Quebec, Can.
Hoist Subcontractor: MDG Builders LLC, Bronx, N.Y.
Concrete Subcontractor: Central Excavators, West Caldwell, N.J.
Carpenter: Component Assembly Systems, Pelham, N.Y.