Leave the Stadium Alone Destructive plan flies in the face of logic and tradition As a crowd of 55,589 human beings roared beyond the high walls of Yankee Stadium the other day, five kids played with a baseball in the bright sandy infield of Babe Ruth Field. This is a small ballfield, with giant trees dwarfing the outfield fence, perfect for kids or middle-aged softball players. It lies in the leafy heart of Macombs Dam Park, a neighborhood oasis in this part of the Bronx. The boys, each about 11, tossed a baseball, skidded it across the infield, leaned in to make catches, practiced pitching. They didn't put a bat against a ball. The reason was simple: The outfield grass was jammed with parked automobiles. Welcome to Babe Ruth Field. No ballplaying allowed. There were cars lodged elsewhere in Macombs Dam Park, which is a short walk from the Stadium. Cars crowded the footpaths through the park, jammed sidewalks and curbs, and bruised the summer grass. Most of them carried plates from New Jersey and Connecticut and Long Island. On the edge of the park at Jerome and Woodycrest Aves., a few New Yorkers sat on benches, taking the cool Bronx river breeze, but when it was time to go home, they had to squeeze through the cars that overflowed from Yankee Parking Lot 1. A bus from T&K Tours hugged one part of the sidewalk at 161st St., and limo drivers were parked all the way to the Major Deegan. "I love this little park," said Lourdes Mendoza, 26, who was walking with her 4-year-old daughter. "But when there's a ballgame, they take it away from us." Zeroing in on the Park The plans of Mayor Giuliani now seem to be as blunt as an ax: He will take the park away forever. The great plan to "save" Yankee Stadium seems based on the destruction of Macombs Dam Park. Or to be more precise, its complete obliteration. If Giuliani and his people have their way, they will come in and cut down all the trees, some of which are more than 50 years old. They will bulldoze away the beautiful outcroppings of granite, which have been there since wolves roamed the forests of New York. They will churn up little Babe Ruth Field. Then they will build a new domed stadium on the site of the park, complete with those skyboxes beloved by rich guys and their fellow candidates for RICO indictments. Yankee Stadium then will be torn down and turned into a parking lot. This is clearly insane. The way to save Yankee Stadium is to fix it. Let Steinbrenner and the Yankees do what all other businessmen do: go to the bank, get a loan, and use the money to rehab their ballpark. All over New York, buildings are being rehabbed, living spaces refurbished, "mature" businesses brought back to vivid life. Where I live in downtown Manhattan, teams of workers labor every day rehabbing buildings that are 80 years older than Yankee Stadium. They don't tear down the buildings that exist. They fix them. The Yankees and Mets are in the entertainment business. They are like the people who run moviehouses. But if a moviehouse starts to run down, or lacks the latest sound technology, the owner of the house doesn't demand that taxpayers build him a new moviehouse. He doesn't insist that the vest pocket park in midtown be seized and destroyed so that his moviehouse can be built on the site at taxpayer expense, while the old moviehouse becomes his personal parking lot. There's only one way to fix a rundown moviehouse: Go to the bank, borrow some money, close it down for a while, and bring in the rehab teams. Perfect Place to Picnic In a quiet corner of Macombs Dam Park, a family spread a tent the other day, and three generations gathered for a picnic on the grass. A radio was tuned to the Yankee game. A grandfather took an iced Pepsi from a water cooler. A mother prepared food. Two boys wandered off to watch a mounted policeman exercise his big Morgan, watching the great horse in wide-eyed wonder. Why should that family be asked to pay for the destruction of their small part of the Earth? Why should those 11-year-olds on Babe Ruth Field be asked to keep paying for a new Yankee Stadium into the years when their own children are looking for a sandlot where they can play ball? Rudy Giuliani, with only six months left in power, insists that all of us should pay for a new park for the Yankees, for decades to come. He stands there in his Yankee jacket, looking like a silky knish, and blathers on about the economic benefits. But he won't submit his billion-dollar idea to a referendum. He won't let New Yorkers vote on this welfare plan for the rich. Giuliani won't give the cops a raise (who deserves one more?) or forge a contract with the schoolteachers, but he wants us to subsidize an immensely rich entertainment business. Capitalism for the customers. Socialism for the owners. Tradition Gets Trashed The most curious thing about the Giuliani Plan (which will be announced, he says, "very soon") is its utter contempt for tradition. You don't have to be a Yankee fan (or even a baseball fan) to know that the present ballpark is a very special New York place. The Landmarks Preservation Commission is a joke if this place isn't landmarked. It isn't simply that Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio played here. Not simply that Whitey Ford pitched here. Not simply that Rizzuto and Berra and Mantle and Maris showed us their skills and their intelligence and their guts in the existing Yankee Stadium. Everybody else played here, too. I'm an old Dodger fan and grew up hating the Yankees. But my guys played on that field, too. Jackie Robinson stole home there in the 1955 World Series. Reese and Campanella, Furillo, Snider and Hodges all played here. In the rotten days before Robinson, Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige played here with the stars of the Negro Leagues. When I walk into that Stadium, I know their ghosts are there, as real to me in memory as the Celts of Tara. For places contain memory, too. That family on the grass the other day, lolling in the shade on a summer afternoon, shouldn't have to remember what used to be, as limousines deposit sleek strangers on their journeys to the skyboxes. Those 11-year-olds in Macombs Dam Park shouldn't have to point at a parking lot and tell their own kids that Derek Jeter used to play right there. They should be able to walk past the rocky outcrops of their old neighborhood park and cross 161st St., into the bleachers of the same Yankee Stadium where Pele kicked a soccer ball and Joe Louis boxed seven times and Nelson Mandela was welcomed to New York. Right there. In the only Yankee Stadium that should ever exist.