Four months earlier, a steal beam and five hundred pounds of concrete collapsed right before batting practice. As part of the schedule shuffle that saw the Yankees call Shea Stadium home for two days and swapped home series with the Detroit Tigers, both teams lost their off day originally scheduled for Monday, August 24th and added a doubleheader on Wednesday to turn a three-game series into a five-game superset.
It could not have gotten off to a worse start for the Yankees, who were in the early days of a late-August, early-September slump.