They tore down a piece of my childhood this week. OK, not really, but Stanford Stadium -- in whose turf my love of sports first took root -- has been ripped to shreds by giant backhoes that didn’t even wait until all the fans were gone after Stanford’s 38-31 loss to Notre Dame last Saturday.

The game that night was a fitting way to end an era, with the heavily favored Irish eking out a last-minute win on national television over a Stanford team that, in a microcosm of their season, came up just short.

But in the end, it will not be the result of that game or this season (You lost to Davis?!) that I will remember. It will be the surreal experience of visiting Stanford Stadium one last time on Monday afternoon, watching a giant claw tear at the outer rim of the stadium like it was picking apples, grinding its cold metal treads over piles of twisted gold-colored metal and splintered boards. My camera and I gasped in horror as the site of so many great memories was swept into history.

Now I’ll admit that the old stadium was long overdue for a facelift. At 84 years old, it was quite literally just bleachers dropped onto manmade dirt hills. Until the World Cup in 1994,the bleachers were almost all wood! I love splinters in my legs. And the fans were kept ridiculously far away from the field thanks to a no-longer-used track, in stark contrast to today’s new venues, where the fans are practically hanging over the end zone.

But no matter how beautiful the new stadium is -- and if the models are any indication, it will be beautiful -- I’ll never again get the same nostalgic feeling as I walk through the long, dark tunnel into the south end zone. I’ve been walking through that tunnel since, well, before I could walk. And every time I walked through it, I felt like was walking into a scrapbook. Here are some of my images:

There was a tradition of throwing those little Carnation malt lids -- they made perfect Frisbees -- onto the grass behind the end zone; it would be covered by halftime.

After youth soccer games in the fall, my friends and I would go straight to the game, still wearing our AYSO uniforms,and roam around in the wide expanses ofthe rarely filled 85,000-seat coliseum, tossing footballs around and generally being kids.

One ofthe few times I went when all 85,000 seats were filled -- the World Cup game between the United States and Brazil on the Fourth of July, 1994. What a game! Brazil -- which would go on to winthe Cup that year -- prevailed 1-0, but the Americans felt like they belonged, and I felt like I was witnessing a true world football atmosphere. Later that night my friends and I piled into my old Rambler and went to Los Gatos to party with 40,000 of my closest friends. Those Brazilians know how to party.

Attending a 1984 Olympic soccer game with my dad. At the time, Stanford Stadium did not have lights, and they had to rent trucks with huge banks of lights on hydraulic arms for night games. My dad, not realizing that the game we were at was itself a night game, mused out loud that it was awfully early for Stanford to rent the lights for Super Bowl XIX, which was to take place there a few months later.

My first night football game: Colorado vs.Stanford, Sept. 18, 1993 on ESPN. Stanford won 41-37 on a last-second touchdown catch by Tony Cline that he only had for a millisecond before being blasted by Colorado safety Dwayne Davis. To this day, no one’s sure whether or not it was a catch.

Countless East-West Shrine Games. There was a long time when I could count on finding East-West tickets in my Christmas stocking. I remember more about the pageantry, the homing pigeons, and the old men in funny hats than I do about any of the games. Oh, and Neil Patrick Harris (aka Doogie Howser, M.D.) was at one game.

As silly as it sounds, the very dirt under our feet,which was covered by bottle caps and peanut shells. I remember always keeping my eyes open, in hopes that I’d find some money or something cool buried in the dirt. And the earth gave the stadium a natural smell unlike anything you’ll find at Lincoln Financial Field.

I could go on and on, but you’ve probably either gotten the picture or lost interest, or both. Bottom line, as we march forward in the name of progress and modernization, it is at the cost of erasing physical links to history and memories. I felt the same way as I watched a helicopter remove home plate from Candlestick (yes, Candlestick, not3Com/Monster/Whatever) Park after the last Giants game there and take it to PacBell/SBC/AT&T Park.

And believe me, Candlestick was a miserable, frigid place to watch a baseball game, but that doesn’t dampen the warm memories of Will Clark’s symphonic swing. To be sure, I’ve formed many new memories in just six years of Pac-Bell/SBC/AT&T Park, and I know the same will be true of the new Stanford Stadium. But the south end zone will never be the same.