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02/08/2008 4:05 PM ET
Inside the Yankee press box
Part 2 of tour looks at storied room in Yankee history
By Doug Miller / MLB.com









For the second installment of our video tour of Yankee Stadium, we visit a place very familiar to MLB.com -- and especially our Yankees beat reporter, Bryan Hoch -- known as the press box.
During Yankee Stadium tour director Tony Morante's guided walk through the corridors of the old ballyard in the Bronx, you get to see the seating section in which the many media members following the Yankees congregate to watch the game and type in the reports and observations you read the next day in the newspapers or later the same day on MLB.com.

While it's not a particularly romantic section of the stadium, the press box is important and has its share of history, as Morante points out.

He traces the term "press box" back to 1891, when Henry Chadwick, whom many people call the "Father of Baseball," realized the importance of the press in getting information about the games to the fans, particularly the ones not located in the Northeastern United States.

Since most baseball fields at the time were not very built up and nothing like the cavernous all-purpose parks of today, Chadwick's innovation of separating the press from the rest of the paying public came in the literal form of a roped-off "box" along the infield lines.

As the game got bigger and bigger, the press box took the present-day form that we see today, overlooking the diamond from up top, giving the writers and broadcasters the bird's-eye view they need to retell all the drama that unfolds below.

Doug Miller is a Senior Writer for MLB.com/Entertainment. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.