History lesson: 1929 Yankee Stadium stampede
Tragic story from Shea Stadium Tuesday night: A 36-year-old father of two fell from an escalator while leaving the game and died. This sort of thing has happened twice before –- at Shea in 1985 and at Yankee Stadium in 1999.
But in doing our research, we stumbled upon another stadium tragedy that seems to have been overlooked in today’s media reports.
On May 19, 1929, a 17-year-old female Hunter College student and a 60-year-old male truck driver were trampled to death in a Yankee Stadium stampede. Sixty-two others were injured. At a time when more tickets were sold than seats were available, a sudden storm hit the Stadium, sending panicky fans in the right field bleachers to seek shelter.
The International Herald Tribune reports that “ ‘Babe’ Ruth rushed to the open bleacher in an effort the stem the wild rush for shelter. Fighting and pushing his way through the crowd he found the woman crushed beneath the trampling feet. He fought his way back to the field but the woman died in his arms before aid could arrive.” (We, however, couldn’t track down any verification of this part of the story.)
