Malcolm Drummond – The First One

There’s a great feature from Steve Edelson in the Asbury Park Press on the first fan to ever get into Yankee Stadium. Some highlights:

As Patricia Trigani gazed at the article from the evening edition of the Bronx Home News, dated April 18, 1923, the years seemed to melt away in a flood of memories surrounding her blue-and-white pinstriped family tree.

For several years, Malcolm Drummond watched the massive steel and concrete structure rise from his Bronx neighborhood, just three blocks from his family’s home on 158th St.

On that fateful morning some 86 years ago, the 16-year-old slipped out of the apartment in the early hours of the morning, long before Bob Shawkey would throw the game’s first pitch. And when they opened the gates for the first time at Yankee Stadium, Drummond was the first patron to pass through the turnstiles and enter the House That Ruth Built.

“He was so proud of the fact that he was the first one in the stadium that day,” said Trigani, 71. “He played hooky from school that day. He used to carry around a newspaper article from that day in his wallet and show it to people.”

Near the top of the newspaper article is a description of Drummond being the first in line, taking his place “soon after daybreak.” It even listed his exact address. Since the newspaper was on the street early that evening, the reporter likely telephoned the story back to his editors, and instead of 16, his age was listed as 60.

It turned out to be the first of many pilgrimages to the baseball temple over the years.

“You have to remember that this was before television and the Internet,” Trigani said. “There were no rock stars. My father didn’t like movies. The Yankees were the entertainment. That’s what you talked about. If you were from Brooklyn, you were a Dodger fan. If you were from the Bronx, you were a Yankee fan.

“I remember going to Yankee games in the 1950s when I was little. We were living on 204th St. at the time and you could take the D train there and the tickets were cheap, so you would spend the whole day there. We had a little 6-inch Philco television when they first came out and we’d all sit around watching that.”

The tattered newspaper article Drummond used to pull out and show people had long since disappeared. So in 1990, Ben and Pat Trigani made their way to the New York Public Library, where they uncovered the Bronx Home News recount of that day’s festivities.

The Daily News also recently ran a story on Drummond.

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