Yankee Stadium (1923)

===Design===
[[File:Yankee Stadium satellite view.png|thumb|right|An aerial view of Yankee Stadium shows the asymmetrical shape of the venue.]]
Yankee Stadium was the first three-tiered sports facility in the United States and one of the first baseball venues to be given the lasting title of ''stadium''. The word ''stadium'' deliberately evoked ancient Greece, where a ''[[Stadion (unit)|stade]]'' was a unit of measure—the length of a footrace; the buildings that housed these footraces were called ''stadia''. Yankee Stadium was one of the first to be designed with the intent to be a multi-purpose facility. The field was initially surrounded by a (misshapen) {{Convert|0.25|mi|km|adj=on}} running track, which effectively also served as a [[warning track]] for outfielders, a feature now standard on all major league fields. The left and right field bleacher sections were laid out roughly at a right angle to the third base stands, to be properly positioned for both track-and-field events and football. The large electronic scoreboard in right-center field, featuring both teams' lineups and scores of other baseball games, was the first of its kind.

As Yankee Stadium owed its creation largely to Ruth, its design partially accommodated the game's left-handed-hitting slugger. Initially the fence was {{convert|295|ft|m}} from home plate down the right-field line, referred to as the "short porch" and {{convert|350|ft|m}} to near right field, compared with {{convert|490|ft|m}} to the deepest part of center field, nicknamed "Death Valley". The right-field bleachers were appropriately nicknamed "Ruthville". Although the right field fences were eventually pushed back after the 1974–1975 renovations, they were still relatively close to home plate and retained the "short porch" moniker, favoring future Yankee lefty sluggers such as [[Graig Nettles]] and [[Reggie Jackson]]. There is an urban legend that the stadium's field level was several feet below sea level, but that is easily disproven by observing how much higher the stadium site was (and is) than the level of the nearby [[Harlem River]]. The altitude of the old ballpark's site is {{convert|39|ft}} above sea level.{{Citation needed|date=December 2017}}