Eddie Layton, the Yankee Stadium organist and a ballpark fixture for more than 35 years, has died after a brief illness.

Layton died Sunday, the New York Yankees said. The team did not know his age.

Layton joined the team in 1967 when the club began using organ music at Yankee Stadium and played until his retirement after the 2003 season.

"Eddie Layton was a treasured member of the Yankee family and, as a gifted musician, he made Yankee Stadium a happier place," owner George Steinbrenner said. "Eddie was a dear friend who will be missed by all who come to Yankee Stadium."

Layton also performed as the organist for the New York Knicks and Rangers for 18 years. He wrote scores for soap operas, played at Radio City Music Hall and was a member of the New York Sports Hall of Fame.

He played the organ at the Garden from 1967 to 1985 for Knicks and Rangers games. He also played at Islanders games in the Nassau Coliseum for a few seasons in the 1990's.

If the occasion fit, Layton would depart from his standard fare. When the Yankees' Alberto Castillo got a hit in mid-May 2002, after going 0 for 14 to that point in the season, he played the "Hallelujah" chorus.

When a Rangers opponent went to the penalty box for slashing, "If I Had the Wings of an Angel" might accompany him.

Layton lived in an apartment building in Queens, where he played a miniature version of his Yankee Stadium organ.

He never married. The Yankees' announcement of his death did not list survivors.

As the summers passed, recorded music pumped in through speakers cut into Layton's musicianship at Yankee Stadium.

But he expressed no regrets.

"I've had my day," he told The New York Times in October 2003 as he closed his career. "Playing with 50,000 watts of power, what rock star has an amplifier like that? I play for up to 56,000 people a night. Not even Madonna has done those kind of numbers."

He never married.
[right][snapback]75682[/snapback][/right]

Eddie Layton, the longtime organist for the Yankees, had a simple wish.

"It was Eddie's request that since he wasn't going to be buried near Yankee Stadium, he asked that they point his coffin away from Shea," Rabbi Joseph Potasnik said.

After a well-attended memorial service yesterday for Mr. Layton at the Parkside Memorial Chapel in Forest Hills, Queens, Rabbi Potasnik and nine others saw to it that Mr. Layton's wish was granted at Mount Hebron Cemetery in Flushing. It was a humble ending for a man who, despite his high profile, was a private person with no immediate family.

Mr. Layton was memorialized yesterday morning at Parkside with a eulogy by Mr. Sheppard.

After that, a black hearse and a half-dozen cars wound through Queens to the cemetery. Soon there were 10 people, most of whom Mr. Layton did not know well in life, staring down at his grave. The head of the coffin was pointed south, away from nearby Shea Stadium.

Rabbi Potasnik, who performed the memorial service and said a prayer at the grave, said Mr. Layton was serious about the request.

He called Mr. Layton "a mensch of music" and "a New York landmark."

There were blue and white flowers arranged in a Yankee insignia and carnations shaped into a keyboard.

Mr. Hagar said later: "Eddie had no real family - I was his family. I started taking care of him and one day he said to me, 'From this day on, you're my nephew.' "