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The New York Yankees Stadium club, built during
the winter of 1945-1946, opened to its
membership of about 400 for the season
opener on April 19th. The
exclusive and expensive "club" inside
Yankee Stadium where members can eat
and drink and entertain favored guests,
was the innovation of club president
and general manager (1945-1947), Larry MacPhail. In time, the idea
spread to other cities as the magnates
welcomed a new source of income.
The interior decoration of the Stadium Club, was compared to Manhattan's
swank night clubs. It's bar is long and
its kitchen perfect and its chairs the
deep and restful sort calculated to
smooth the corrugations wrought by
sitting nine innings in a grandstand
seat. By special ramps its members
enjoy quick and easy access to their
box seats in the stadium. They can see
as much or as little of the game as
suits their liquid fancy, and they can
sit around as long after the game as
they please, discussing the contest's
finer points.
To gain membership, you needed to purchase a box of 4 or 6 seats for the
season. That is, if the management,
after careful screening, decided that
the applicant is impeccable,
financially and even somewhat socially.
Known gamblers, for instance, were
carefully excluded. It was estimated at
the start of the 1946 season, the
Stadium Club had already generated
$450,000 in revenue.
The outside front of this circa 1970 tri-fold Yankee Stadium Club Luncheon
Menu pictures Yankee Stadium on two
flaps. The back is blank. The menu
opens to 4 panels, with an illustration
of a baseball bat (and ball) spanning
across the panels at the top, with
"Yankee Stadium Club, Luncheon Menu"
below it. The first pane features -
Cocktails; second panel - Appetizers,
soups and Entees; third panel - Eggs,
Cold Buffet, sandwiches; fourth panel -
Little League special, dessert,
beverages.
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