Take Me Out to the Ballgame, Again

Fandom, I believe, is mostly a product of geography and parentage. I wasn't born with my love of the Yankees, but I was born to a man who loved them. And why did he love the Yankees? Probably because he lived in upstate New York and grew up during the forties when greats like Joe DiMaggio were playing the game. I think parentage is actually the stronger influence of the two - my daughters have grown up in Red Sox country but they, too, love the Yankees. It doesn't hurt that Derek Jeter is so darned cute.

I really resent it, though, when people remark that I probably like the Yankees just because they win a lot. That is insulting to any fan, but this fan in particular because the Yankees have not been overwelmingly successful during most of my most obsessive fan days.

It was in the early 1970s when baseball started to really mean something to me. I had always enjoyed reading biographies and as a child I had read several books about baseball players, including Stan Musial and Leo Durocher. My favorites, however, were those about Babe Ruth and, especially, Lou Gehrig. Just about every American alive knows the story of Lou Gehrig so I won't go into it here except to say, Yankee fan or not, it's almost impossible not to venerate that man. In fact, that's my trump card in an argument with any Red Sox lover - God must be a Yankee fan because he gave us Lou Gehrig.

As I learned about the players I also learned about the game and started joining my father for weekend afternoon Yankee telecasts. As I mentioned in my earlier post, the Yankees were struggling to win games in the early seventies. By the mid seventies they were starting to play respectable baseball and I remember following their triumphs in 1977 and 1978 from afar since I was out west in college by the time the World Series was played. By then so much else competed for my attention that baseball was definitely a peripheral interest. I didn't even watch the 1978 playoff game between the Yankees and the Red Sox, which has been dubbed "The Greatest Game" by author Richard Bradley (How do I know that? I read - no, inhaled - the book, naturally!).

During the busy new-career, new-marriage and new-parent phase of life it's hard for any adult, especially a female adult, to devote the kind of time to the game that baseball requires. When we were first married my husband and I would watch the league championship games and the World Series - none of which involved the Yankees at that time - but after our son came along in late October 1987 we didn't go back to baseball until the World Series of 2001. During those years I was only vaguely aware of the Yankees' success, or lack thereof. I heard of Yankee stars such as Don Mattingly, David Cone and Paul O'Neil but, unlike the players on my kids' soccer teams, I wouldn't have known them if I passed them on the street.

Anyone who follows baseball knows the last World Championship won by the Yankees was in 2000 so when I started watching baseball again it surely wasn't to latch on to the winning team. We started watching the World Series in 2001 because the World Trade Center had been attacked just weeks before and everyone was worried that another such attack might take place during the first championship series game, when President Bush threw out the first pitch.

President Bush and all the fans, of course, survived that game, but the Yankees did not - they were annihilated by the Arizona Diamondbacks by a score of 9-1. Maybe it was the lopsided loss that took me back to my childhood, or maybe it was the thrill of watching a game after all those years, but whatever it was, my love of baseball was reignited. With my daughters and husband joining me (my son has never been a big fan), we suffered the inevitable highs and lows of a World Series that goes seven games, a couple of them won or lost in extra innings. When Mariano Rivera gave up two runs in the bottom of the ninth in the seventh game I had no idea he was one of the greatest closers in modern baseball history. I thought he was a bum.

I've since learned to appreciate Mariano and all of the other Yankee greats. I'm a huge Jeter fan and I also love Jorge Posada and Melky Cabrera. I'm rooting hard for Joba Chamberlain, Phil Hughes, Ian Kennedy and, now, Darryl Rasner, to become the great pitchers it is thought they can be (we really need good pitching - really). And though I'm not a huge A-Rod fan, I'd love to see him break the home run record as a Yankee.

Such is the life of one of a fan. When the Yankee game was rained out on Mother's Day I took it as a personal offense (and it was supposed to be televised, darn it). I'm pining for one of those cool Yankee wristbands I saw in Olympia Sports the other day. And, like countless others, I'll try to work my schedule for the next five months so that I'm able to watch or listen to every inning of every game. Then comes the dark and cold winter, which I will pass crossing days off the calendar, waiting for April.