Shh . . .

. . . don’t tell them that they probably replaced all that “dirt” a long time ago:

When they move across the street to their new stadium next year, the Yankees will leave behind the ghosts of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio. And also Ned Marvin.

Mr. Marvin was a lifelong Yankees fan who could remember the starting lineups from when, as a boy, his house was a short walk from the House That Ruth Built in the Bronx. The Yankees were such a cornerstone of his life that after he died in 1999 at age 86, his grandson Jeff scattered his ashes in Monument Park.

He was not the only grieving relative to leave a family member’s ashes in a New York major league baseball stadium — usually in Monument Park or behind home plate in Yankee Stadium, or on the mound, the warning track or left field at Shea Stadium in Queens. Doing so was a very private act carried out on the sly, because officially, the teams have never permitted ashes to be scattered in their stadiums.

When the two stadiums are being razed in the coming months, demolition crews will be working where Reggie and Mookie once played. But the ashes, apparently, will stay where they were scattered. And that means that relatives who believed they were giving their loved ones a resting place have had to accept that in New York, the quintessential tear-down-and-build-again city, nothing is forever.

“It’s sad,” said Jeff Marvin, who works in film distribution in Manhattan. “I’ve been thinking they’ll be tearing up where he is. The question is, can I convince myself they’re taking the ground to the new stadium, so that’s Grandpa?” (The Yankees say they have not decided whether or not to move dirt from Monument Park along with the plaques that honor Yankee greats.)