Published: April 20, 2008 12:23 am      

WOLCOTT: Yankee Stadium, the pope go together

Yankee Stadium. I don’t remember the last time I was there. That’s because I didn’t know it was the last time and didn’t take note.

We do that a lot. We don’t know the last time. I don’t know the last time I played pickup basketball or went for a draft beer with the boys. Had I known it was going to be the last time — heck. I don’t know if I would do anything different.

The pope. I don’t know if I saw John Paul II. There I was trying to keep track of 11 Niagara Catholic students somewhere on the rim of Central Park, and a big trailer went by. A man in white waved and looked at me. I think it was the pope. The high-schoolers thought it was John Paul II. I don’t know.

Today, Pope Benedict XVI will say Mass at Yankee Stadium. I remember my first visit to the House that Ruth Built. It was May 1961, and the new Minnesota Twins were in town. I was passing through New York City en route to my first permanent station, McGuire Air Force Base.

How do you get to Yankee Stadium? Practice, boy, practice. Or, take the D train.

I went into the ground and took the first train that came around — and wound up at Yankee Stadium. My uniform allowed free admission.

There were lots of Yankee haters in the crowd. We saw Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris homer and walked out to centerfield to see the monuments after the game. You could walk on the grass then and the monuments were in play.

On the 4th of July 1961, I returned to Yankee Stadium to watch a doubleheader between the first-place Detroit Tigers and the second-place Yankees. Everyone crammed into subway cars for that twin bill, and I got stuck in a door. Wearing an Airman Third Class uniform, I shoved two Navy officers in order to avoid falling back on the tracks.

If the Yankees won both games, they would be in first place. Whitey Ford won the first game for the Yankees and the Yanks were on top for a few hours.

Frank Lary, the Yankee Killer, won the nightcap for the Tigers on a squeeze bunt. Al Kaline fell into the rightfield stands trying to catch a Maris home run.

Fans broke a Yankee Stadium attendance record that day, with 75,900 people, including servicemen who got in free. That stuff I remember.

This is the last season for Yankee Stadium, and I don’t remember the last time I was there. I saw a World Series game against the San Francisco Giants from behind the last row of seats in right field. I saw Y.A. Tittle of the New York Giants in a frozen December duel against Jimmy Browns of the Cleveland Browns. I don’t know the date and I don’t remember who won. My seat was behind the frosty baseball backstop.

I don’t want to leave Yankee Stadium with that last memory. I’ll remember how good the folks were in Gotham, getting me to and from the games.

n It was more than 30 years later when I think I saw Pope John Paul II, the end of the millennium’s most popular man. I boarded the bus in Tonawanda not knowing who was in charge of the 11 Niagara Catholic Students. When I got off the bus, I learned it was me.

The ride was dreary. It rained the entire trip, and instead of showing “Going My Way” on the bus, someone decided on Monte Python. The sacrilegious spoof was totally inappropriate.

My concern in Central Park was not losing any of the kids among the 400,000 people. I was preoccupied as a teen-ager sitter when I think the pope went by. Thousands of us never made it in the inner circle, but one of our adventurous girls slipped through security — and found her way back. I started with 11 and came home with the same 11.

There was no sightseeing. No time to shop. No time for lunch. We just got back on the bus.

The kids slept. I wrote my story. Curiously, all the teens thought the experience was great. They appreciated being at a once-in-a-lifetime event.

In weak moment, I volunteered to do it again, but there was no way. Security was too tight to allow late entries.

My last trip to Yankee Stadium was my last trip to Yankee Stadium. I’ll never see a pope again, if I ever saw him once.

Contact reporter Bill Wolcott at 439-9222, ext. 6246.