Pet Rock: The Pop Culture Blog

(Newsday photo / David L. Pokress)

This one is dedicated to Mom, Dad, my brother and everyone else who drank inordinate amounts of Dellwood milk in the 1980s to get enough proofs of purchase to earn free tickets to a Yankee game. (Those seats were usually pretty good, too!)

That was just one of the many memories running through my mind Sunday afternoon, evening and night as I sat in Yankee Stadium for the final game.

Yankee Stadium is a sports icon, a pop culture icon, a life icon for its fans. It's every bit the cathedral that people say it is. From the first moment you make it through the section runway and see that blue wall and green grass, you're fixated on everything that is Yankee Stadium. Ruth. Gehrig. DiMaggio. Mantle. Reggie. The Pope. The Beatles. The greatest game ever played. Berra. Mattingly. Jeter. Rivera. Etc.

As I mulled about the Stadium for more than 10 hours with fellow Pet Rocker Adam, aka Hokies fan Big Cat, my brain went in roughly 46 directions trying to remember where I sat for more than 100 games in The Stadium.

How I shed a few tears in Row 3 on Aug. 31, 1997 when my childhood hero Don Mattingly had his number retired.

How Restaurant friend Rob, Consultant friend Jay and I stayed through seven rounds of Frank Sinatra's "New York, New York" on Oct. 15, 2001, after the Yankees beat the A's in Game 5 of the ALDS (the year of the "Jeter Flip Play" when the Yanks dropped the first two games of the series).

How I'll have to name at least one of my future sons Michael in honor of Weatherman friend Mike who ponied up his tickets for this game.

How I screamed like the 22-year-old lunatic that I was from the fifth row -- two boxes to the left of then-NYC mayor Rudy Guiliani -- on Sept. 30, 1997, as Tim Raines, Derek Jeter and Paul O'Neill hit back-to-back-to-back home runs to come back from a 6-3 deficit in the sixth inning and beat Cleveland, 8-6, in Game 1 of the ALDS.

How Opening Day 1997 stung a bit watching Mattingly, who retired from baseball after the 1995 season, help raise the 1996 World Series banner.

How those four girls sitting in front of me, Rob and Lawyer friend Scurvy in the third-to-last row of the upper deck in right field were so annoying at the April 10, 1998 home opener, but how that 17-13 win over the A's was so awesome to witness.

How, on April 8, 2005, I got booed at Yankee Stadium.

How Dad scored front row tickets next to the visitor's dugout and how I almost got a foul ball if not for the 8-foot-7 Swede sitting three rows behind us who turned into Plastic Man and reached right over my 10-year-old body to snatch that ball.

How Dad, my brother and my grandfather cheered for me when I was the fan they froze the Diamond Vision screen on during my 11th birthday in 1986.

How Mom would make us roast beef sandwiches to bring to the Stadium when we sat in those Dellwood seats.

How I came up with my "Live from the Bronx" idea and sat in a different seat each inning during Opening Day 2006 and wrote about the scene and people around me.

How I did it again for Opening Day 2007 and a guy in the bleachers remembered me and how I remembered that his ritual was to wash his car the night before Opening Day and how how wife still thinks he's crazy.

How I printed dozens of "Da-ryl" and "Ti-No" signs and passed them out in the bleachers for the 1998 playoffs.

How I nearly passed out when Mattingly walked by me during batting practice in 2004 when I covered my first Yankee game as a journalist.

How I sat in the Yankee dugout, next to Joe Torre, with a pen, pad, voice recorder and six buckets of butterflies in my stomach.

How, for the first time, I traveled from the Yankee clubhouse, down the walkway, into the Yankee dugout and onto the field at Yankee Stadium, the same way legends did.

How Mattingly was the only reason to go to Yankee Stadium in the late 1980s and early 1990s and we didn't care because it was Mattingly.

How I once sat in Row A.

How on Oct. 5, 2006, Mama La Monica had set a wake-up call at her hotel in Italy to call me and see if the Yankees had won Game 3 of the ALDS because I had covered it from the auxiliary press box in right field.

How me and Chef friend Kate took Lawyer friend Jason and lovely wife Saira to their first Yankee game in the summer of 2000, and how I went to get them beers and came back to see Jason holding a foul ball he caught from Mo Vaughn.

How he still taunts me about it to this day.

How he never once offered me the ball for taking him to the game.

How there are so many other moments that I'll never forget, from the subway rides to getting lost in traffic to taking the ferry to the Stadium to the in-game conversations with friends and random people.

How, in April 2008, a guy sitting behind me offered an over-under of 2 runs that Kyle Farnsworth would give up when he came into the game. How I said "I'll take the over and parlay that with the under of 12 pitches before he gives up a bomb!" How Farnsworth served up a three-run homer on his seventh pitch.

How Angels fan Tim, aka Hughest, laughed and loved my "dignified Yankee clap" even though the Yanks lost to the Angels every time he and I went to the game.

How, on Sept. 21, 2008, I saw Mariano Rivera pitch a perfect ninth inning for the final time in Yankee Stadium.

How I set a personal best and chanted "PB! PB!" when the eighth round of Sinatra's "New York, New York" blared across the Yankee Stadium sound system after that final out.

How I didn't get any dirt from the last game at Yankee Stadium.

How that doesn't matter because I got the memory of a lifetime, and how it's 3:58 a.m. right now and I still have goosebumps just thinking about this moment life handed me.