Much talk over the last few weeks following Sulaiman al-Fahim buying Manchester City to rival Manchester United of what is the world's biggest sporting brand. Despite all the cash and interest surrounding the Premier League arguably the world's biggest sports brand is not a football club at all, but a baseball club and namely the New York Yankees. You can hardly walk down a street in London without seeing a headful of teenagers wearing Yankees caps in all manner of colours (rather like Turtle in 'Entourage' who seems to have a full wardrobe of colours). It's sort of compulsory street wear with race and colour being no boundary.This week, of course, marked a major moment in the club's history as it said good-bye to Yankee Stadium, which is to be demolished after 85-years of loyal service.The Yankees reach into fashion and youth culture goes far beyond the realms of baseball and outstrips the ability of any other sports club, in football or baseball for that matter. Manchester United might come close (the two signed a marketing partnership a few years ago), but beyond that no one can touch the Yankees.As part of that sporting brand Yankee Stadium has to be the world's most famous.There are certainly many that are bigger, but none as famous or that have had as much impact on their own sport and beyond. Maybe Fenway Park in Boston (home of the Red Sox) and Wrigley Field in Chicago (home of the Chicago Cubs) come close, but these are names about as familiar as Old Trafford, one of football's most famous statdiums granted, to people who have no interest in baseball. But even Manchester United don't have something like Yankee Stadium that is variously known as the Cathedral of baseball and the "The House That Ruth Built" after ball legend Babe Ruth for whom the stadium was literally built and he hit the stadium's first home run in 1923.There last days of Yankee Stadium, as the club literally move across the street to their new home and wave goodbye, even managed to get plenty of coverage on this side of the Atlantic where baseball and softball gets little attention. The Guardian, the Independent and The Times all gave coverage to the Yankees this week in what proved to be a good news bad news week for the team. The very last game at Yankee stadium showed the team on great form as they beat the Baltimore Orioles and Yankees catcher Jose Molina was able to answer what a dying Babe Ruth told fans in a farewell address: "I'm very proud to have hit the first home run in Yankee Stadium. God knows who'll hit the last one". The answer was Molina. He hit a two run homer – the stadium's final home run in a night that also saw Johnny Damon hit a three-run homer.The bad news for club was that it paid for its inconsistency as it failed to make it to the Post Season play-offs (for the first time since 1993) and a chance to make it to the World Series. A big knock for a club that has won the World Series 26 times, still 2009 will mean a new stadium and a new start - and what a start, a $1.3bn (£880m) stadium project with dimensions to match those of the original Yankee Stadium.
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Gordon Macmillan
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