Tonight, when the fanfare is complete and the final pitch is thrown, either to or by an Oriole, the light standards towering above Yankee Stadium in the Bronx will go dark.
And 85 years of baseball - starting with Babe Ruth's three-run homer in the park's opener, April 18, 1923, and finishing with an anticlimactic regular-season contest between two American League East also-rans - will come to an end.
Tonight's Orioles-New York Yankees game is likely the last sporting event to be held in the old stadium at the corner of East 161st Street and River Avenue, a sports cathedral that also hosted legendary NFL and college football games and prizefights.
"There is a lot of history there," said former Yankees pitcher Don Larsen, whose perfect game in the 1956 World Series might be Yankee Stadium's greatest moment. "I saw football games there, and they had boxing matches, the pope visiting. I think it is too bad it is [closing]. It's a shame, but that is the way things go, I guess."
It's making way for a $1.3 billion new Yankee Stadium across the street. The new one opens April 16 and will seat about 51,000, with standing room for 2,000 more. The seating capacity is about 6,500 less than the old park, but it will have 51 luxury suites, up from 16.
Much of the old stadium will be demolished next spring to create a public park; part of the field will be preserved as a Little League diamond.
The memories created, though, won't be plowed over as easily. Not just for Yankees die-hards, but also for baseball and sports fans everywhere.
Yes, the love-them-or-hate-them Yankees won 26 World Series championships while playing there - winning their first title in its first year of operation.
But it's as much an American historic site as it is a sporting venue.
It's where Notre Dame football coach Knute Rockne gave his legendary "Win one for the Gipper" halftime speech before his Fighting Irish beat Army, 12-6, in 1928.
It's where Joe Louis, an African-American, knocked out German Max Schmeling in front of 70,000, a one-round championship fight that was closely followed by Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany and is considered one of the most important sporting events of the 20th century.
It's also where Baltimore professional sports and the NFL arrived simultaneously in the national spotlight Dec. 28, 1958. In what was dubbed "The Greatest Game Ever Played," the Baltimore Colts beat the New York Giants for the NFL title on national television in the league's first sudden-death overtime.
