I've looked into the question before of where the Polo Grounds, for many years baseball home of the New York Giants, was located: answer is Coogan's Hollow in upper Manhattan, adjoining the Harlem River just north of 155th Street. But I'd never realized how close it was to Yankee Stadium till I saw this cool photo from the Facebook group Baseball in Pics.
Yankee Stadium is in the foreground. Looking very much smaller, I assume because of some kind of distortion relating to camera angle, is the cavernous Polo Grounds, just across the Harlem River. Before Yankee Stadium opened in 1923, the Yankees and Giants both played at the Polo Grounds, which was owned by the Giants. The Yankees became more popular after they acquired Babe Ruth and so didn't want to be a mere tenant of the Giants anymore. It's said they chose a stadium site close to the Polo Grounds in order to taunt their former landlord with what they predicted, accurately, was an approaching era of hegemony. It was about a 10-minute walk over the Macombs Dam Bridge between ballparks.
In the FB comments, someone points out that it would have been highly unusual for both the Giants and Yankees to be playing home games on the same night. Someone else hypothesizes that the picture was taken on the evening of September 17, 1954, when the Giants lost a home game to the Phillies and Ezzard Charles fought Rocky Marciano in a heavyweight championship match at Yankee Stadium. Maybe, but someone else observes that, farther in the background, the George Washington Bridge appears to be under construction, which would place the date somewhat later—the bridge opened in 1931 but construction on a new, lower deck began in June of 1959. In that case, it wasn't a baseball game at the Polo Grounds, because the Giants left for San Francisco after the 1957 season.
Probably the full story behind the photo is known to someone, but it's sort of fun to be forced by ignorance to speculate. The heavyweight fight at Yankee Stadium was one of the most famous in boxing history. In the sixth round, Charles opened a gash in Marciano's face and appeared headed toward victory by TKO before Marciano, covered in his own blood, rallied to knock him out in the eighth round.
In the picture, we're looking northwesterly across first the southwestern end of the Bronx, then northern Manhattan, then New Jersey. Not far out of the frame, at the upper right, is where the Harlem splits off from the Hudson River, forming Manhattan's northern tip.
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