A crew of hardhats is the new “murderers row.”
By Jeremy Olshan

Drills whirring, they unbolt four seats at a time and toss them onto pallets, which are then carried by forklift onto what was once the hallowed field of the original Yankee Stadium…….

“I think this is the section I sat in when my dad took me to my first game at age 12,” said worker Jesumar Banhao, 31, as he stacked seats in preparation for one of the greatest memorabilia sales of all time.

Uprooting for the home team is an “eerie responsibility,” Banhao said. “We’re going to be the last ones to be in the stadium — the ghosts will leave with us.”

But as destruction goes, this is careful work, the hardhats said.

It’s not a demolition so much as a Mickey Dismantle.

Four thousand seats are being ripped from the stands each day at the Stadium. Just a few tufts of grass are all that survived the harvesting of the outfield, which is now a desert. The corridors, offices and locker rooms have been stripped bare. In the bottom of this sad and final inning, the once-glorious ballpark is a cadaver.

The Post was given an exclusive peek at the huge operation to surgically remove valuable souvenirs from the House That Ruth Built and sort, transport, inventory and sell off relics which, depending on whom you ask, amount to either gold or fool’s gold.

“You could argue that this could have all been kept here as a museum,” said Brandon Steiner of Steiner Sports Marketing, which last week started selling seats for $1,499 a pair and clumps of dirt and grass for $80.

“People complain to me, ‘Steiner, you’re selling everything,’ to which I say, ‘Would you rather we just throw Yankee Stadium away?’ ”

The seat backs, bottoms and frames have each been bar-coded and tagged by authenticators, and in the next two weeks, they will be shipped to Syracuse, separated, stripped of lead, repainted and reassembled.

“We found a color that looked like the faded blue they are now,” said Adam Raiken, the Yankee staffer charged with overseeing the carnage.

For years, George Steinbrenner threatened to move Yankee Stadium to the Meadowlands, and now, it’s actually happening for the rest of its innards. All the lockers, signs, outfield wall and even the foul poles are being trucked to an East Rutherford warehouse.

Stacked up in the warehouse, the segments of outfield wall — which may sell for as much as $25,000 each — are all torn and covered in grime.

But that’s the point, Steiner said.

“These objects have values because of the moments of history they witnessed,” he said. “Yankee Stadium is our closest equivalent to the Roman Coliseum.”

Packed into wooden crates, or stacked unceremoniously, the parts seem estranged from the whole. There are boxes of bases and home plates, giant plastic canisters of infield dirt, a phone booth with directories from the 1970s, the batting practice netting, the concession-stand signs and all the executive office furniture.

Steiner is renting the warehouse from Pat Dunne, who normally handles the liquidation of office furniture.

“At my son’s school, most of the kids say when they grow up, they want to be like President Obama. But after I took my son and some of his friends here, one kid said, ‘When I grow up, I want to be a liquidator,’ ” Dunne said.

jeremy.olshan@nypost.com
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Players Pick Out A Piece
By Jeremy Olshan

Mariano Rivera wants the bullpen, Bernie Williams covets the 408-foot sign from centerfield, and Johnny Damon is seeking seats.

George Steinbrenner may get back a good portion of the inflated payrolls he doled out over the years — because the biggest buyers of Yankee Stadium memorabilia are likely to be Yankees.

“There’s been tremendous interest from the players,” said Brandon Steiner, whose company, Steiner Sports, is handling the Yankee sale.

Rivera, the Yankee closer since 1997, wants to own much of the bullpen, including the bench, and is likely to get first dibs on the pitching rubber from which he threw the team’s final out at the Stadium Sept. 21.

Rivera pitched the last inning, shutting down the Orioles 7-3.

No price has been set for the centerfield sign that Williams wants, but Steiner expects it could go for $25,000.

Johnny Damon has expressed interest in buying the foul poles and placing them near his home in Florida.

“I really wanted both foul poles ’til word leaked out, and now I am not sure it is going to be possible because everyone knows that I want them,” Damon said.

Derek Jeter also wants seats — plus the Joe DiMaggio sign hanging on the top of the tunnel from the clubhouse to the dugout.

The sign quotes Joltin’ Joe as saying, “I want to thank the Good Lord for making me a Yankee,” and Jeter tapped it before every game.

Many players, including Reggie Jackson, David Cone and Mike Mussina, plan to purchase their lockers, Steiner said.

The lockers could go for as much as $50,000.

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