May 23, 2009
In New York City’s borough of the Bronx, daily operations began for a station of the suburban commuter transit system Metro-North Railroad. This new stop was the Yankees- East 153rd Street station on Metro-North Railroad’s Hudson Line. The station was constructed to serve both Yankee Stadium and the Bronx’s Concourse neighborhood. It was the former of these venues, however, that received the lion’s share of attention on the Saturday that the inaugural runs to and from Yankee-East 153rd Street station took place.
The opening of the station to the public, as a matter fact, coincided with a day on which the Yankees were playing a home game against the Philadelphia Phillies. “Yankee Trains a Hit with the Fans,” announced a headline in the next day’s edition of the Journal News (a newspaper based in the New York city of White Plains).
On the Friday before regular service began at the Yankee-East 153rd Street station, this facility was officially unveiled in a dedication ceremony. “After decades of talking and years of planning, Yankee Stadium is finally getting its commuter train station,” reported Journal Times reporter Jorge Fitz-Gibbon in his account of the ceremony. Fitz-Gibbon also noted that “the event had a Yankee feel to it, and not just because their name is on the sign — team general manager Brian Cashman and catcher Jorge Posada were there, as were former Yankees David Cone and Lee Mazzilli.”
Michael R. Bloomberg, mayor of New York City at the time, also attended this ceremony and he used the opportunity to highlight the broader significance of the station beyond just the National Pastime. “On game day, thousands of fans will use the station to get to the game,” said Bloomberg. “But let me stress, we built this station as a commuter hub that can be used 365 days a year by Bronx residents, and that’s exactly what will happen.” He added, “It’s not just for Yankee Stadium. It is for the entire South Bronx.”
Incidentally, the Yankees won the next day’s well-attended game 5-4. That fall, the Yankees – as champions of the American League – would prevail over the Phillies (the National League champions) four games to two in the World Series. This marked the Yankees’ 27th World Series championship.
(The accompanying 2016 photo of the Yankee-East 153rd Street station features — from left to right — Yankees teammates Didi Gregorius, Rob Refsnyder, Nick Goody, and Ronald Torreyes.)
Photo Credit: New York Yankees/Ron Antonelli (licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en)
For more information on the debut of Yankee-153rd Street station, please check out https://archive.nytimes.com/cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/metro-north-station-opens-at-yankee-stadium/ and https://6abc.com/archive/6828772/
Transportation History 
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