Yankee Stadium

Of all the famous sporting grounds around the world, Yankee Stadium might well be the most famous and rich in history. Each sport has its own hallowed grounds that might be considered its "spiritual home" - cricket has Lords, golf has St Andrews, rugby has the Waikaia Domain - but no stadium transcends sport like Yankee Stadium. You don't have to be a fan or even know much about the sport to recognise names like Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle. All were men who arrived at Yankee Stadium as baseballers and retired as legendary figures in American folklore.

But at the end of 2008 season, the bulldozers are due to show up and demolish the 85-year-old stadium, with a brand new ballpark to house the Yankees from 2009 onwards. As the New York Times so eloquently stated on June 8, "this season is your last chance to catch a game in the Old Yankee Stadium, before The House That Ruth Built is replaced by its modern cousin across 161st Street, the House That [owner George] Steinbrenner And Taxpayer Subsidies Built".

With so much history about to be forever lost to the city and the game of baseball, seeing a game here was top of my priority list while in the city. And so on this sultry Sunday afternoon, my father and I have joined 55,000 others at the old stadium to witness the 30th-to-last game ever to be played here. It's the New York Yankees versus the Oakland Athletics: the teams aren't important, the occasion is.

The current Yankees line-up boasts two players who may one day be considered equals to the four legendary Yankees of years gone by that I have already mentioned. They are Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez, two vastly different men launched into superstardom by the lucrative Yankees marketing machine. Jeter, the club captain, is a loyal-to-the-bitter-end Yankee lifer having come up through their junior system. He's like the Caleb Ralph of baseball, except that he's actually a good player and popular with the fans.

A-Rod, on the other hand, has endured a less harmonious relationship with the club and its fans. Those generally considered the best hitter of the past decade, A-Rod's perceived arrogance, fallibiliy in pressure situations and new allegations that he's been shagging Madonna have seen him receive more bad press than good since his move from Texas in 2004. At the end of last season, he opted out on his Yankees contract to become a free agent, only to discover that no other team was willing to meet his astronimical wage demands. Reluctantly, he signed a new, 10-year, US$275m deal with the Yankees. Okay for some.

The game gets underway on one of the hottest New York afternoons of the year. We're already dripping with sweat before the first pitch is thrown, sitting high in uncovered stands with the sun hammering down in our faces. A beer would be nice, but $9 for a Becks seems a touch unreasonable, so I take my empty water bottle into the bathroom and fill it up there instead, displaying Kiwi ingenuity far beyond the capablities of our American friends. We're lucky enough to be witnessing a duel between two of the game's higher-profile pitchers: on the mound for the Yankees is veteran Andy Pettitte, while Athletics starter Justin Duchscherer is having a career-best year and leading the major league in several pitching categories.

Both pitchers are having good days too, and after four innings it's still 0-0. The crowd is fairly muted, only occasionally chanting "Let's go Yankees!" when prompted by the ground announcer and yelling "charge" when the organ plays the traditional trumpeted battle call. Even though you can sense the rich history of the stadium, a lot of the older features of the stands have been replaced so that it doesn't really feel like an old school ballpark. Oakland, a mediocre team with no big-name players, don't particular inspire excitement like a visit from bitter rivals Boston always does.

Finally the crowd gets something to cheer about in the 6th inning when Jason Giambi blasts a solo home run into the cheap seats in right field. On the back of some flawless pitching from Pettitte, the Yanks hold on for a 2-1 win.

I thought I could not come closer to being cooked alive while sitting in the sun at the stadium, an opinion I quickly have to revise as we pack into the steaming hot subway train with thousands of other departing fans. The level of commitment shown by Yankees does rather show up New Zealand sporting fans. The Yankees play 81 home games a year and almost every single one draws a full house of over 55,000 despite the obscene price of tickets - a good seat near home plate will fetch over $100. Super 14 teams get six or seven home games a year, in far smaller stadiums, and continually fail to sell them out. Whether the apathy of New Zealand fans compared to Americans is down to matters of finance, transport or simply weather is anyone's guess. I've been down to Carisbrook on some pretty brutal winter nights, however, and the level of discomfort experienced there was almost was bad as the heat we endured today.

Our Yankee Stadium outing is one of my final acts before leaving New York and crossing the pond. Tomorrow, my family flies back to New Zealand and I fly in the opposite direction, to London. It will be the farthest I've ever been from home.

I'll be sad to say goodbye to New York. I've had three weeks in the area but would've needed closer to three months to do it justice, I reckon. The most pleasant aspect of the city was that all the cliches surrounding it are wrong: New Yorkers are not rude and obnoxious at all; they are friendly, up-front, occasionally in your face but usually good-humoured. New York does not look or feel like a dangerous city. Okay, so the taxi drivers are lunatics, but they have mini-televisions in the backseat to distract you from the on-rushing traffic about to hit you or the abuse being spouted at your driver from the unfortunate driver who he's just cut off.

The one cliche that does ring true is that the city never sleeps. You can get whatever you want, whenever you want, which is a pleasing novelty when you come from a country where you can't get a beer before noon or a meal after nine. And you can't get pastrami at any time of day.