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Getting a handle on the The Big Bat

BY ANTHONY RIEBER | anthony.rieber@newsday.com

March 23, 2008

"Meet me at The Bat."

It's as much the Yankee Stadium experience as a visit to Monument Park, the Bleacher Creatures' first-inning roll call or a $7.50 beer.

It's The Bat, a popular meeting place at The House That Ruth Built. And no one is saying what's going to happen to it once the stadium is demolished.

The 120-foot Louisville Slugger outside Gate 4 - actually a boiler stack fitted to look like a bat, complete with a knob at the top, tape at the handle and Babe Ruth's signature on the barrel - seems to have been overlooked as the Yankees prepare to make the move across the street to a new Yankee Stadium in 2009.

"We do not have knowledge of what will happen to The Bat," Yankees spokesman Michael Margolis said.

A spokesman for the city parks and recreation department, which owns and runs Yankee Stadium, referred calls about The Bat to Mayor Bloomberg's press office.

Said mayoral spokesman Joseph Gallagher: "The city is working with both the Mets and the Yankees on a plan to sell memorabilia from their respective stadiums that will be timed with the end of the 2008 season, and won't interfere with existing plans to demolish the stadiums."

Does that mean The Bat is considered memorabilia to be sold? Or is it part of the stadium structure that will be demolished?

"Sorry, not getting more specific," Gallagher wrote in an e-mail message. "We're still in touch with both organizations."

The Mets had a similar situation crop up when the famed "Home Run Apple" in centerfield seemed to have been overlooked in the plans for Citi Field. After an outcry from Mets fans on the Internet - the Web site www.savetheapple.com was created and an online petition brought attention to the issue - the Mets announced their intention to have some sort of apple presence at the new stadium.

"We're either going to take it over [from Shea] or we're going to put up a new one and display the old one in some form," Mets COO Jeff Wilpon told Newsday's Ken Davidoff last week.

If the city and the Yankees wanted to sell The Bat as memorabilia, it could be done, according to memorabilia expert Howard Schwartz of Grandstand Sports in Manhattan, who is seeing "great demand" already in items having to do with Yankee Stadium.

Teams now cut up game-used jerseys, for example, and sell them in pieces, or sell dirt from their stadiums. Could the same be done with a 120-foot bat?

"They could do whatever they want," Schwartz said. "No matter how large an item, certainly you could cut it into how-ever-many pieces. They could cut it into fifths and some people could put it on their lawns."