New York, New York (2)

Part 2



“When did you start to hate the Yankees?” I ask.



“Didn’t take long,” my father answers. “Probably shortly after I became a fan and they won all the time. Every World Series, I rooted for whoever played them. After World War II and until ’64 the Yankees just ruled, and that’s a long time.”

My father is rather unique among sports fans, because he does not closely tie his allegiance to any one team in any given sport. He likes the White Sox most I think, and also the Cubs, but also lots of other teams, and more than anything he likes going to professional games and then he’ll cheer for the home team if nothing else. He just really likes the game. Except, he hates the Yankees. We both do. I think he dislikes the Yankees more than he likes any one team.

Their fans are part of it. I wrote last time about how New Yorkers have earned their stripes by living where they do, but the more I think about it the more I think they could be gracious about being America’s #1 city, and Yankee fans are not gracious. They are foul.

“I started following for real in ’51," my dad continues. “I can honestly remember the ’51 playoff with the Giants and the Dodgers, when I was 10. The first game I saw was in ’52 or ’53, the Reds and the Dodgers at Crosley Field.”

“Didn’t the Yankees win in ’51, ’52 & ’53?” I ask.

“I think they won in ’49, ’50, ’51, ’52 and ’53 if you want to go back.”

After being in New York, I tried to see if I could get into a Yankee mindset, to see if I can try being open-minded. I thought that with how prices are inflated so much in New York ($7 for a scorecard!), maybe they are just used to paying more for stuff, and that includes baseball players. There’s also the rich history of winning, and the pressure that must bring with it in trying to live up to those that preceded you. In turn, maybe signing high profile free agents for expensive contracts should slide that pressure down to the players, spurring them to play their best.

Still, I can’t get past my own dislike for the Yankees, which rests mostly in their mercenary mindset. The economics of it all doesn’t bother me as much as how no one in their lineup or starting rotation was scouted and developed by the club other than Jeter or Posada. Other teams are in this situation, but the baseball gods generally punish them with losing seasons. Not the Yankees.

We rode the A train from Penn Station to the B train south of Central Park, which took us up to the Bronx, and Yankee Stadium. It opened in April of 1923, but it was renovated in the ‘70s I think, and so it will probably be around for a bit longer. The subway exit comes up right behind the outfield, and we walked in through the centerfield entrance. The first thing I saw was that the American flag was still at half mast. Second, we walked over to Monument Park, a Yankees tribute behind the centerfield wall where they have stones for retired numbers and plaques for all of the Yankee greats over the years. It’s both neat and aggravating at the same time, because these are some of the best players in all of baseball history, but there are just so many of them.

Yankee Stadium still has an organ, and I respect this. We walked up a series of ramps to the top level, and made our way to our seats: first base side, looking almost directly across the imaginary line from first to third, 9 rows up. The seats are old and narrow, and there are a lot of tall square buildings that crowd the stadium that we can see over the center and right field walls. The Yankees were closing in on the first place Red Sox, so this game was important to them. Baltimore, on the other hand, was just rounding out the season, as they were a few days ago when we saw them against Tampa Bay, although here they could at least try to be a spoiler. New York started Chien-Ming Wang, and Baltimore started Bedard.

My father was not familiar with the famous right field bleacher chants that follow the first pitch, but I had heard about them before. The right field bleacher fans chant for each Yankees player on the field in succession, starting with left field and moving across the outfield, and then starting at third base and moving across the infield. They continue to chant until the player acknowledges them with a wave or a tip of his cap. I think this is a neat tradition, and should not be stolen, like the Cameron Crazies at Duke jumping all game long -- it’s just not cool to impersonate something so clever.

Yankee Stadium was nearly sold out but not full, probably owing to the Giants home game on Monday Night Football. The weather was almost cool, but not quite. Early into the game, I thought that the stadium just feels different, more like the old Tiger Stadium than anywhere else I’ve been, except without the posts obstructing anyone’s view. The similarity rests in a feeling that descends when you’re sitting there, the sense there has been baseball here as long as anyone can remember and there will always be baseball here as long as anyone can guess. Obviously Tiger Stadium is no longer in use, but that’s how it felt to me when it was, and that’s how Yankee Stadium felt as well: Baseball is assumed.

On the other hand, there are booths for Dewar’s Scotch throughout Yankee Stadium, so while baseball is assumed it is obviously not entirely a middlebrow-only phenomenon.

It occurs to me that there was hardly anyone using their cellphone at Yankee Stadium, which would score the Yankees fans points except that actually hardly anyone has been doing this all trip. This surprises me, because there is such a problem with this at Wrigley Field and I thought it was nationwide. Maybe it is during the peak summer months and we’re just fortunate to be traveling in September, but I’m glad because I don’t think I could have taken 8 straight games of people asking their friends, “Can you see me?!?”

By the fifth inning, the game was tied 2-2, as each team had scored twice via fielder’s choice and a single. The game stayed tense into the 9th. Then, in the bottom of the final inning, the 9th hitter in the Yankees lineup, a right fielder named Bubba Crosby, hit his first homerun of the season to leadoff and win the game. The Yankees fans cheered wildly, and then we joined the throngs of people trying to exit the stadium. “I have never felt such a rush of body heat so fast,” my father told me later about the exit ramps down from the upper deck. And it wasn’t just body heat: it was heat from profane Yankee fans who were celebrating a victory, roughly equivalent to Dante’s fifth circle of hell, the last circle in upper hell bordering the River Styx and reserved for the wrathful and sullen. Plus, Dante might have had an easier time crossing the Styx with Virgil than we had fighting the people to get back down to the subway B train.

My father has one disappointment with Yankee Stadium: “There is no sense of anticipation. You come up from the subway and you’re there at the gate. Even Wrigley and Fenway [neighborhood parks], you see them from a block or two ahead.” He’s right. You literally exit the subway next to the stadium, which is bordered closely by tall buildings and a parking garage. Even heading to Shea Stadium you are on an above-ground train, and you can see it as you roll into the stop. He concludes, “That’s unusual, that you don’t at least have that visual anticipation. It’s ‘Oh, I’m here.’”

I asked my father if, after going to Yankee Stadium, he hates the Yankees any less.

“No.”

Right on.