Yankee Stadium was in all its glory as fans packed the ballpark for the Home Run Derby on Monday.

AP / Frank Franklin II

It was at Yankee Stadium that, while sitting in the press box one sunny May afternoon in 2000, a body went hurtling past me, plummeting down from the deck above, and landed on the screen behind home plate, where it lay motionless.

My kids find that less remarkable than that, as an 8-year-old in the late 1950s, on my first visit to Yankee Stadium, I walked across the outfield grass with my father to see the monuments in center field, after which we continued out under the bleachers to the subway platform behind the stadium and rode back from the Bronx to our hotel in Manhattan, near Times Square.

It is, after all, New York, where a falling body — did he jump, or fall, or was he pushed? — is less shocking in these times than the realization that, 50 years ago, fans would walk across a ball field without tearing up pieces of turf to take home as souvenirs, and that the monuments honoring Yankees greats could stand unprotected — and untouched by respectful fans —– along the warning track in deep center.

And so we measure the decline of Western Civilization by how people behave in The House That Ruth Built — the hallowed diamond where Gehrig, DiMaggio, and Mantle played, the home to so many World Series games, the place where all those championship banners fly.

It is the most famous ballpark in baseball, one of the most famous arenas in all of sports.

It’s the place where the All-Star Game was played last night. The place that will be torn down after this season.

The edifice will be gone, but the memories will remain.

I saw my first World Series game in Yankee Stadium. Game Five, 1964. It was unforgettable.

I had turned 13 that summer, a month after my mother had died of cancer at the age of 45. My Dad and I were left with each other. And baseball.

We had gone to Cooperstown for my birthday in late July, to see the Hall of Fame inductions. I still have a cardboard poster of the event bearing the signatures of two of the inductees, Luke Appling and “Heinie” Manush. That also was the year that the late and legendary manager of the Yankees, little Miller Huggins, was inducted posthumously. His patience had been sorely tested by his tempestuous superstar, George Herman Ruth. Their spats were as gargantuan as some of the Babe’s homers, but it’s documented that Ruth blubbered when Huggins died suddenly in 1929.

Among the other signatures on that poster is that of the Babe’s widow, who signed her name “Mrs. ‘Babe’ Ruth.”

That fall, my father took me to New York to see the World’s Fair. And, as it turned out, the World Series.

Bob Gibson, who became a Hall of Famer in 1981, pitched for the Cardinals. On the mound for the Yankees was a talented rookie by the name of Mel Stottlemyre, who’d gone 9-3 after being called up from Richmond in midseason.

It was a pitchers’ duel, with the Cards scoring just two runs, in the fifth inning, and Gibson taking a shutout into the ninth, when the Yankees tied the game on a two-out homer by Tom Tresh, scoring Mantle in front of him.

What made that homer even more dramatic was that Gibson had made one of the best fielding plays in World Series history to get the second out of that inning, chasing down a line shot back to the mound by Joe Pepitone that caromed off him, toward the third-base line. Gibson was somehow able to chase it down in time to nip Pepitone by a whisker at first.

Then, in the top of the 10th, Cardinals catcher Tim McCarver hit a three-run homer off Pete Mikkelsen and St. Louis went on to win, 5-2.

I’d been to Yankee Stadium several times before. In previous Septembers, my Dad and Mother and I would go to New York City for a weekend to celebrate her birthday. Our itinerary always included a visit to Yankee Stadium, where, when the game was over, you really could walk out of the stands and on to the field to see the famous memorials to Ruth, and Gehrig and Huggins.

It isn’t only baseball I remember seeing at Yankee Stadium.

On another October afternoon, in 1969, I saw Army and Notre Dame play football there, although it certainly wasn’t one of the classic games of that legend-laden series, which has featured some of the most memorable moments in college football history.

It was in the locker room at Yankee Stadium at halftime of a scoreless game with Army in 1928 that Knute Rockne made his famous “Win One for the Gipper” speech, inspiring the underdog Irish to a 12-6 upset of the mighty Cadets. And, in 1946, with three Heisman Trophy winners on the field — Felix “Doc” Blanchard (1945) and Glenn Davis (’46) for Army; and Johnny Lujack (’47) for Notre Dame — the nation’s top two teams battled to a 0-0 tie.

Those days of gridiron glory were a thing of the past for Army by the time I was a freshman at Notre Dame, which, coached by Ara Parseghian, and with a skinny junior named Joe Theismann at quarterback, overpowered the Cadets, 45-0.

I hoped then that I’d someday cover games at Yankee Stadium, and I have — the most memorable being ALCS games between the Red Sox and Yankees, when, on crisp, fall evenings, the voice of Ronan Tynan singing “God Bless America” brought chills to fans standing quietly throughout the packed park.

It was quiet, too, when that body lay, unmoving, on the screen behind home plate that May afternoon eight years ago. But then cheers erupted when he lifted his head, waved, and gingerly made his way to the edge, where he was greeted by security and medical personnel.

It made you want to sing, although hardly like Tynan: “I love New York.”

jdonalds@projo.com