It began with Yogi and Paul LaPalme and 13 innings on a beautiful June Saturday afternoon in the Bronx. It was the great green grass of the Stadium and the look of that courthouse looming just outside. It was the guy who sat near us in the left field stands who had the loudest voice I think I still have ever heard virtually talking to the players on the field from hundreds of yards away. It was the frieze hanging down above us in the upper deck even though I had no idea then that it was called a frieze. And it was all of the other sights and sounds and smells of my first game at Yankee Stadium. I was already a Yankee fan, a very, very young Yankee fan but well-focused already on this team and on that guy wearing No. 7 in center field. The Triple Crown year had just passed and we Bronx boys had a hero to root for. The team had beaten the despised Dodgers in the '56 World Series. Don Larsen's perfect game was a regular topic on Bolton Street.
And then we made that first trip by subway to Yankee Stadium. It was June 22, 1957, and the Yankees and the White Sox were dancing back and forth between first and second place. The Sox began the day a half game ahead. It was Ladies Day so my mom took me and my brother Steve and her best friend's son Mark out for all of our first Yankee game.
Mickey Mantle homered in the first, Moose Skowron a few innings later. But somehow, those White Sox scored runs without seeming to get hits, walks or even base runners and we went to extra innings. We begged to stay and we did (thanks, mom) and we were there in the bottom of the 13th, probably the last inning we'd see that day no matter what. Yogi Berra led off against Paul LaPalme, a knuckleballing lefty in what was his final big league season. As if Yogi knew he had to get this game over so the kids in left field could go home happy, he swatted a pitch (memory tells me) off the bill of his cap and lined it about 297 feet down the right field line. The fence was 296 feet, the ball tucked inside the foul pole and we went home, tired, hoarse, stuffed and very, very happy.
And that's why you're reading this now--I'm a Yankee fan, now and forever. That means being a fan during the good times (not all of those ending in a World Series victory) and the bad times (not all of those ending in a loss). And while the football Giants are the team that makes me crazy (tragic, if you will) it's the Yankees that consume. Theirs is the first box score I read, the first game stories I devour, the first spring training day I care about.
How, I hear you asking, can you root for the Yankees? They spend more, they ruin things for the rest of the teams, they have an obnoxious owner, they have players who are often unpleasant, and they treat people (players, managers, ex-players, ex-managers) like crap. Yes, all true.
But still, there was Yogi and there was Paul LaPalme.
And through those early years, the Yanks were the only team in town. The Dodgers and the Giants left that fall. The Mets weren't born until 1962 and then what they played barely resembled baseball. Oh, we went to the Polo Grounds, too, to see the Mets, especially when the Giants were back in town with the magical No. 24 playing center field, or when the Dodgers arrived to give us a team to really hate. But it was the Yankees that we cared about.
We means most (but not nearly all) of my friends. Brother Steve, in fact, rooted for the faraway San Francisco Giants.
We were stunned when Bill Mazeroski's homer went over the Forbes Field wall to win the 1960 World Series for the Pirates, we reveled in Roger Maris and Mantle chasing Babe Ruth's season record in 1961; we loved the tense, rain-delayed seven game World Series victory over the Giants in '62; we were devastated in the Dodgers sweep in '63, and then we were overjoyed just to be there in '64 when the Yanks took the Cardinals to seven games, including that one won by the Mick's homer off Barney Schultz. If you saw that homer, you could never forget it.
And then the team got lousy. Not just bad but really, really lousy. But we stayed true hoping against hope, actually believing that Ralph Houk's return as manager in 1966 could save the team and the season (they finished 10th and last, a game and a half behind the Red Sox, who were merely just another team the Yankees played in those days.)
A few years later I achieved a dream and covered some Yankee baseball as a very, very young reporter for The New York Times. Houk was still the manager and he welcomed all new reporters with a post-game seat in front of him and his spittoon as he talked over the game while spraying your shoes with tobacco juice. I loved it.
That was then. This is now. The next year George Steinbrenner bought the team vowing not to interfere with running it (actual fact). The team changed, their attitudes changed, players came and went and still we rooted for the Yankees. Bad seasons, bad players, good seasons, great players, it all didn't change our minds.
When Reggie Jackson hit those three homers off the Dodgers in the last game of the ‘77 Series, it meant our first championship in 15 years (when you started as a Yankee fan that is a very long time). As soon as the final out was made, my Times colleague and great friend Ray Corio called from his home to mine to share the moment. And when the Yankees ended the next and longer championship drought in 1996, I cried along with Joe Torre as I watched the victory celebration from my daughter's house in Tucson.
The "season" begins this week and the real season in another month. The news from Tampa is filled with players declaring or undeclaring their friendship for each other with tales of sleepovers past, with questions about the ultimate Yankee fate of two of our longtime favorites--Mariano Rivera, who is still a Yankee, and Bernie Williams, whose days seem done. It's all more than we might need to know and there is really no reason to care. But we do need to know and it sure feels good to care.
Anna Trebunskaya
Dominique Piek
Ghanian Boxing Greats
Fantasy Baseball: Top 15 Second Basemen
Comments (21) Add A Comment
Anyone that bleeds for any team...even the Yankees...get's my eternal respect.
Josh
Total Comments (5870)
The Yankees have always stood for fascism. Art probably thought Mussolini was a righteous dude, too.
I do confess, however, to spending a week during my childhood manning the hot corner tucking my hair behind my ears like Celerino Sanchez.
Howard Camerik
Weston, FL
Total Comments (123)
Jeez Howard. I think someone hijacked your password and posted a truly ignorant and offensive comment using your name.
Arthur Pincus
Total Comments (783)
Wait. Isn't anybody on this site who posts a homage to the Yankees EXPECTING a fusillade from the Red Sox corner? I thought that's what FanNation was all about ... throwdowns and all. I took it as a responsibility.
Yankees = fascism. That goes back to what my father taught me. [he was a Dodgers fan].
Howard Camerik
Weston, FL
Total Comments (123)
One follow-up about intense rivalries.
Nothing has the capacity to mess up your loyalties more than fantasy/roto. A few years ago, in desperate need of saves, I acquired Mariano at mid-season. Well, when you need a save from your rival team's closer, my friends, let me tell you, there's only one way that's going to happen. To quote John Sterling, "Thuuu-uuu Ya-aaa-aaa-aaankess win!" It was a wierd few months.
[Digression: I was a big John Sterling fan way, way back when he announced for the ABA's Nets on WMCA (570 AM?) ... "Super John Williamson ... bullllls - eye!"]
Howard Camerik
Weston, FL
Total Comments (123)
That WAS your comment? Sure expected a fusillade just not quite so ignorant or offensive.
Oh, John Sterling? P.U.
Arthur Pincus
Total Comments (783)
Before Art extradites me from FanNation, perhaps I should clear up that I accidentally referenced Mussolini when I really meant Mussina.
Howard Camerik
Weston, FL
Total Comments (123)
We tried to extradite you but no one would take you. It's as if you were Hyman Roth.
Arthur Pincus
Total Comments (783)
Hyman Roth! Now there's an appropriate personification of the Yankees mystique. Remember what he said: "Michael, we're bigger than U.S. Steel." He also exploited Cuba, just like the Yanks did with El Duque (OK, a little historical license taken, there).
Howard Camerik
Weston, FL
Total Comments (123)
Nobody can even begin to compare the Yankees to a facist government. Just because the Dodgers left Brooklyn, don't blame the Yankees. Last I checked there's another team that plays in New York right now that is rather successful. The Dodgers could have stayed, but there options were much better. If anything that's much worse then anything the Yankees have ever done. Lets just get up and move to LA, leave our entire fan base in a city of 7 million people. Don't hate the Yankees for that and please don't refer to them as a facist government because the Dodgers crushed the lives of many. If anything that makes the Dodgers like a monopoly, and monopolies happen often in facist societies.
Sportsguy24/7
Slippery Rock, PA
Total Comments (19)
Big deal the Yankees spend way more each season. They go buy the best players. Why? They do it because they want to win, they want to be successful. Last I checked isn't that everyone's goal to be succesful? Shouldn't that be every franchises goal, maybe someone should metion that to teams like my Pirates and the Royals. When they wanted to contract teams, I was against it. Now I am not really sure. Screw a salary cap, there should be a minimum for how much money each owner should have to spend, like buying a luxury suite and having to buy so much in food for it. If you want to win, you have to spend money, you don't always have to spend as much as the Yankees and the Red Sox, but you need to spend more then the Pirates and the Royals, that's for sure. What's wrong with winning and being successful. Arthur I totally agree with Josh on this one, you bleed for your team so you have my full respect. They examplify winning and success and I only wish my teams would do the same.
Sportsguy24/7
Slippery Rock, PA
Total Comments (19)
With the revenue sharing and the luxury tax incomes, some of these lousy teams (your Pirates for sure 24/7) are doing better by losing, developing players, selling them off and hoping that a few suckers, er, fans show up for the games.
The Yankees won those Series in the 90s (and 2000) led by players they developed themselves. Along with a few free agent purchases, of course.
Arthur Pincus
Total Comments (783)
Sportsguy, both views have their foundation in history. While my father may have regarded the Yankees as the sports embodiment of fascism (I'm sure he was just referring to the "corporatist" character of the franchise ... the ruthless dictator, Steinbrenner, wasn't even on the scene,yet), he also ranked Walter O'Malley as among the most sinister characters the world has ever known.
I'm pretty much a baseball free marketeer, myself. What I used to think simply went too far (for the good of the game) is that the Yankees, seperate from all the other big spenders, seemed to suffer no consequences for their bad signings. They would just toss them aside and keep signing. The money seemed limitless. Over the last couple of years, however, it seems as if even the Yankees have actually found a ceiling. So now they're just the team with the MOST resources. That's fine. Somebody has to be. That's fundamentally different than having seemingly infinite resources.
Howard Camerik
Weston, FL
Total Comments (123)
Sportsguy, both views have historical foundations. While my father may have believed that the Yankees were the sports embodiment of fascism (I'm sure he meant the "corporatist" element of the -ism ... the ruthless dictator Steinbrenner wasn't even on the scene, yet), he also regarded Walter O'Malley as among the most sinister monsters that has ever walked this earth.
My problem with the Yankees is now largely obsolete. What used to bother me is that they never seemed to suffer a consequence for a bad signing. They just cast out the tuna net, threw away the millions that didn't work out, and cast again. There are spenders and non-spenders, to be sure, but the Yankees seemed to have limitless resources, which kind of reduced the rest of the sport to a sideshow (I was going to say the "Washington Nationals" to their Harlam Globetrotters, but since there is a real baseball Nats, now, I chose not to confuse).
Alas, it seems that in the last few years, even the Yankees have found something of a spending ceiling (allowing their rival to get Matsuzaka while they took Igawa would have NEVER happened 5 or so years ago). So this just means they have the MOST resources. That's fine. Somebody has to. That's fundamentally different, and more healthy, than having infinite resources.
So we're good now. Let's play ball.
Howard Camerik
Weston, FL
Total Comments (123)
Sorry about the pseudo-duplication, above. I thought the first iteration had disappeared into the ether, so I drafted it again. So you get similar thoughts, twice.
Howard Camerik
Weston, FL
Total Comments (123)
They always had resources. Sometimes they used them well and very often they used them badly--Dave Collins, Eddie Whitson, Fat Toad all come quickly to mind.
BTW, Howard: Washington Generals were the Globies foils, not the Nats.
Arthur Pincus
Total Comments (783)
I remember that game well and the excitement of that Berra home run in the 13th. Perhaps that is why baseball is the one sport that this total non-sports fan likes to see in person.
To this day I get a great thrill as I leave the tunnel getting to the seats and see that great expanse of green, the red clay of the field and those players in their bright white pinstripes and yes, the remains of thold facade too. I may not be a big Yankee fan but I am still a big Yankee Stadium fan.
I hope the new stadium, when it opens, will have that same feeling for me and my son Matt but I know I'll miss the "House that Ruth Built"..
spincus2000
Total Comments (1)
Becareful, whenever they replace a stadium, things are never the same. When the White Sox got New Comiskey...gone were a lot of great things...the wooden green seats...the old murals of players...the feeling of history in the place. It's one of the things that I love about old stadiums...you walk in, and not only do you have a ton of memories...but you have the knowledge that the place is just full of history...Yankee Stadium, Fenway, Wrigely...those are the only truly great old parks left...once their gone, a large chunk of the game dies with them.
Josh
Total Comments (5870)
To me, except for that great green field, the current Yankee Stadium hardly matches the ballpark that we went to in '57. I hope they get it right and better with the new park. The new stadiums in Baltimore, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Cincinnati produced something better than what went before.
Arthur Pincus
Total Comments (783)
Hey unc,
good stuff somehow stumbled on your blog.........let's catch a a game this spring.
Ben
BPINCUS
West Palm Beach, FL
Total Comments (1)
Comment
Remember to keep your posts clean. Profanity will get filtered, and offensive comments will be removed.