Sometimes, baseball plays a role in a piece of fiction, but not really a big enough one where I can do a full piece on it.
Take Marvel, for example. The fact that 95% of their heroes are in New York City means that there are plenty of stories where heroes or villains visit Yankee Stadium but where their visit isn’t long enough or baseball-focused enough to really justify giving them the full Bizarre Baseball Culture treatment.
So, this time, I’m killing many birds with one stone and showcasing some of Yankee Stadium’s appearances in Marvel comics.
Incredible Hulk #103 trashes Yankee Stadium
Unlike some of the later things here, the fight between Hulk and the Space Parasite at Yankee Stadium actually is fairly long and is more than a mere cameo. However, the most baseball-related of the panels is this first one when they land at Yankee Stadium, if only because Stan Lee (who was now an editor instead of a writer) goes out of his way to explain where the 1968 Yankees are at the time (playing an exhibition against the Mets).
Tales To Astonish #18 also trashes Yankee Stadium
Waaay back in 1961, before Marvel’s “Silver Age” got going, the two things that Marvel printed were romance comics and monster-on-the-loose sci-fi comics. This is from one of the Sci-Fi Comics, Tales to Astonish (which would later be turned into a superhero comic that would introduce Ant-Man), and it features “Gorgilla” (drawn by Jack Kirby) totally ruining the Yankee Stadium playing surface:
Captain America #377 comes from arguably the Yankees’ worst era
The very early 1990s and very late 1980s were the lowest point of the New York Yankees. For example, in 1990 they finished 67-95! No doubt this futility was what this little panel from a Captain America comic from that year was referencing.
New Yankee Stadium went over budget because Nick Fury built a giant secret base underneath
During a multi-series plotline during the later part of the first decade this century, it was revealed that Nick Fury had a secret base, code name “Home Run”, underneath the New Yankee Stadium. And we learned the horrible truth as to why the stadium was so damn expensive to build in 2009’s Thunderbolts #135:
We see the exterior of the stadium in the next issue of Thunderbolts as well:
To see more examples of Yankee Stadium making cameos in Marvel comics…check out The Baseball Continuum.
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