Baseball Cards Celebrate Yankee Stadium Swan Song

With the New York Yankees moving across the street to a new ballpark next April, Sunday marks the final home game ever played at the current Yankee Stadium. For the first time in 13 seasons, there will be no post-season baseball in the Bronx so the game with Baltimore marks the end of an era.

As the wrecking balls ready themselves to start demolishing the old site, the Upper Deck Company has released the largest baseball trading card set ever assembled in tribute to the world-renowned sports shrine. The "Yankee Stadium Legacy" (YSL) collection is a 6,661-card compilation chronicling every single New York Yankees home game ever played at the current venue. It began its official debut in February by being inserted in random packs of Upper Deck´s 2008 Series 1 Baseball release. Since then, seven of the nine additional Upper Deck baseball launches including YSL insert cards have packed out.

With the old Yankee Stadium playing out its last regular season this week, Upper Deck decided it was a great opportunity to acknowledge the incredible history and happenings that have occurred at Yankee Stadium since its doors opened in 1923. Besides chronicling 85 seasons´ worth of Yankees home games, this enormous compilation also includes some of the most famous sporting events that have taken place at Yankee Stadium including: legendary Notre Dame Football coach Knute Rockne´s famous "Win one for the Gipper" halftime speech inside the Yankees locker room (Nov. 10, 1928); the then-Baltimore Colts´ 23-17 overtime victory against the New York Giants in the NFL Championship game, which is often referred to as "the greatest game ever played" (Dec. 28, 1958); and Muhammad Ali´s title defense against Ken Norton (Sept. 28, 1976).

"Not only is this an ambitious effort by our Product Development Team, but it´s a timely tribute to one of the sporting world´s most celebrated franchises ever, " said Kerri Stockholm, Upper Deck´s director of Sports Marketing. "And we packed the cards out in a very unique way as we decided to insert them inside of ten different Upper Deck baseball product launches during the course of the year, giving collectors everywhere a chance to share in the tribute."

Considered a cultural memorial that pays well-deserved respect and recognition to the awe-inspiring accomplishments of retired and active ballplayers that have played on the hallowed grounds, the Yankee Stadium Legacy set is truly a collection for the record books. Even the Guinness Book of World Records is ready to recognize the effort as the "largest baseball trading card set ever produced." The remaining nine brands of 2008 Upper Deck baseball products that boast Yankee Stadium Legacy insert cards include: Spectrum; SPx; First Edition; Piece of History; Upper Deck Series Two; SP Legendary Cuts (Hobby-only); UDx; SP Authentic (late Sept.); and UD Masterpieces (mid-October).

Depending upon how ambitious a collector is, there is certainly the possibility of putting together the entire Yankee Stadium Legacy Collection. But it will take patience and some luck to achieve. Since Upper Deck´s YSL set includes only Yankee home games through the 2007 MLB season, the first five lucky collectors who put together the entire set and have it validated will also receive each of the insert cards chronicling the 2008 season (82 cards, including this year´s All-Star Game) to complete their sets. The YSL cards representing 2008 will appear in 2009 Upper Deck Series One Baseball next February and thus put a close to the Yankee Stadium Legacy promotion.

Since there was so much publicity surrounding the closing of the old Yankee Stadium after this season – including the fact that the 2008 MLB All-Star Game was held in the Bronx on July 15 – Upper Deck had several promotions running throughout the year in which it rewarded lucky collectors with special prizes. Some of those included a trip for two to this year´s MLB All-Star Game; two trips for two to the last regular-season game in 2008 at Yankee Stadium; and two trips for two to the first 2009 regular-season game held at the new Yankee Stadium. Since February 1, collectors have gone to ownthelegacy.com to record their cards by entering the unique alpha-numeric codes found on each of the card backs. This automatically enters them into the year-long "Own the Legacy" sweepstakes for the aforementioned Yankee Dream prizes.

The website includes message boards where collectors can share their personal Yankee stories with fellow YSL card-collecting enthusiasts; a "Top Collectors" section which shows how many different unique users have registered their YSL cards online (9,000 to date); and finally, the comprehensive YSL Checklist, which shows all 6,661 game cards within the set as well as seven "miscellaneous events" cards from Yankee Stadium´s glorious past that Upper Deck has included.