Crowd Gathers to Say Goodbye NYTimes.com

The Yankees are known for giving their players more than any other franchise in baseball. But when it comes to souvenirs from the final game at the stadium, the players are being treated like the fans.

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On Saturday, the Yankees’ chief operating officer, Lonn A. Trost, sent a one-page memo to the players reminding them they are forbidden from taking anything from the stadium.

“Like the fans, the players were told that they cannot take whatever they would like,” Trost said in a telephone interview on Sunday. “They were told that if they would like something, they can provide us with a list and then we will see if we can sell it to them and they will pay the same price as fans.”

Fans were milling about River Avenue as early as noon on Sunday, eight hours before pregame ceremonies were to begin. The beer flowed freely outside the stadium and the crowds did too, with little commotion. With a long day ahead of them, the masses already queuing to enter the stadium at 1 p.m. seemed largely subdued. When the gates opened, there were only a few cheers from the fans — most of them pointing cameras upward — as police shepherded them through.

Once they were inside, they were allowed to parade into Monument Park and around the warning track. The line, which began under the left-field bleachers, wrapped its way around the entire lower concourse and finished somewhere far along the third-base line. By 2:30 p.m., security guards were telling fans that they could no longer accommodate them in Monument Park and had to close it.

Outside, people sat on the curb begging for extra tickets, and on their last workday of the season here, the scalpers could not offer much help. Those who were interviewed did not know exactly how much tickets were selling for on the street because they themselves could not find any to hawk. They drew little attention from the additional 1,600 security personnel the Yankees added for the final two games on Saturday and Sunday. A much higher priority was preventing fans from stealing a piece of the stadium, specifically the seats.

Many of the players have expressed interest in taking their own mementos. Johnny Damon told Trost that he would like to buy the foul poles and put them outside his home in Florida. Andy Pettitte, who was scheduled to pitch Sunday night, would like the rubber. Mike Mussina has inquired about the flag pole that stands in left field and the Baseball Hall of Fame has asked for the bat on the top of it.

“I inquired,” Mussina said on Saturday. “I live in Pennsylvania. I would stand it up. I was just interested to see how much it would cost.”

Mussina declined to say how much he was willing to pay for the pole.

The City of New York, which owns the Stadium, and the Yankees plan to sell pieces of the Stadium to fans and memorabilia collectors and split the profits.

The memo, which was typed in English and Spanish, also instructed the players they should not throw the final ball of the game into the stands. Trost said the Yankees wanted the final ball for the team’s museum, which will be inside the new stadium being built across the street.

“I specifically did not tell them to refrain from throwing the balls into the stands during the innings like a normal game; that’s traditional and they should not do anything differently in regards to that tonight,” Trost said. “If the game ends on a walk-off home run, that will be different.”

The players will be allowed to keep one thing from the game: their jerseys.

“The memo told them they cannot sell them and they must keep them until they die and then they can be turned over to their estates,” Trost said. “It’s a restricted gift until they die; we want the jerseys to stay in the family.”

The Yankees had been dealing with the issue of visiting players wanting stuff all-season. Every time a team came through, the players would ask for the bases.

“We are going through so many bases because players on the other teams are asking for them,” Trost said. “We are changing the bases all the time.”

As for home plate, that’s spoken for; the team plans on bringing it to the new stadium.