With a Tear in my Eye
There are a few things about me that ponder and amuse my friends. My being a Yankees fan, an adulterated one at that, is one such point. Ions ago my Grandmother and her sister would watch Cubs games, as they lived in Hammond, IN. Cubbies fans pretty much describes that side of the family. None-the-less, back in the '80s the Yankees sucked and you didn't have the glory of the internet to make them easily accessible. Then in college there was the 1996 World Series. Any baseball fan knows the story of how the Yanks won the first title since 1978. Those same fans know the story of Jorge, Pettitte, Mo, and Jeter. I won't bore you with the history of the core four. What I will tell you is that in many ways watching the four of them fade from the game in various stages of retirement makes me wrestle with my own memories.
In 1996 I was a junior at Kentucky Wesleyan College. Imagine being a Yankees fan in Kentucky? I was. I survived, but my Yanks hat did not. Touche, as much. After college I went to grad school. The Yankees became like the soundtrack of my life. In a perverse way of nature, they kept me company on crisp autumn evenings in New Mexico and as the seasons brought on spring they pulled me from the depths of winter blues. In 2000, after two years in NM and my masters, I landed back on the east coast . . .in the Yankees backyard. As I labored through a PhD program, the Yanks provided the ideal background noise to tinker at a computer keyboard or to mark student papers. The bane of my neighbors and joy of my life has been to kick back and scream like a mother fucker at a Yanks game. On days when I've needed a break, and there have been many, my voice has bellowed down streets, blocks, and miles. Back in grad school you could still channel them via the internet for free, and away I toiled in my grad office until the wee hours with the Yankees keeping and making score. I am certain my neighbors enjoyed my late office nights more than the nights I came home to watch a game.
Years of lonely were caressed with extended Yankees seasons, one particularly bad breakup fell on a game when Pettitte pitched and Jeter performed like a god. I drank whiskey from the bottle and starred at the television. When daylight came, my heart was still broken but the Yankees had won. I can't say that that win really did anything for my psyche, but I can say that it served as a solace to me in a perverse state of nature. My first book contract fell on the start of spring training, my second book contract fell in the middle of a hot summer and right before a multi inning game against the Bo Sux with A-Rod earning the pie-in-the-face in the wee hours of the morning. I got a soft offer for my third book this summer, on the wake of Mo's last season.
I spent two years removed from the urban spectacle of NYC, locked away in the rhythms and confines of a small town I never did fit into or find a way to call home. The first year I was a visiting hire, and the second I was struggling as the economy tanked. I taught college courses inside prisons and ran a literacy council to barely cover my bills. I closed my eyes at a star riddled sky and cried wondering if I would ever make my way home again. Home to the backyard of the Yankees. I'm told that small town my parents live in is a quieter place now that I am not there to cause noise alarms when the Yanks play. I make no apologies for my love of the game. The team. The place it holds within the rhythms of my own life.
Most of my 20s involved graduate school, writing, getting articles published, and then books. Oddly, a lot of that fell alongside my favorite players cracking the bat and throwing the ball. My life is fuller now, but at the same time good byes are bittersweet. I can't say these players have lives that are mine, but I can say that they are part of mine. My buddy Burberry will always be my favorite game date. Even more so that he still squirms in fear saying that I nearly got him beat up at a Yankees game. Eh . . . I think he exaggerates. On another game, well any game we went to together, we pre-gamed with beers (holy oil) before heading into the high holy house. Sitting in section 418 with Bur . . . it's just a place and time, a feeling . . . one that those outside the space wouldn't completely comprehend anyhow. We were, in many ways, our own spectacle within the urban confines and hallowed walls of Yankees stadium.
I went to my first Yankess game (clearly not my first Yanks game), in the old stadium, with my friend Lynn in 2007. Days gone by. That was on a crisp autumn day, much like yesterday. Jeter started the at bat . . . he hasn't started the at bat in sometime now. We all age, and waatching players near our own age rings home the truth we all try to ignore. No fountain, no pill, no magic cure will bring back the fluid agility of our youth. For all but 17 games this year Jeter was out. The tides are changing.
In many ways I feel like I am saying goodbye to my own past. Those years of uncertainty, those years of wonder . . . now I'm entering a so-called more stable period. At 37 I'm not so sure. It seems that my own path is the opposite of the Yankees. Now, the team is on an uncertain path with no new talent coming up the vine . . . the bleak days of the '80s are looming ahead like a rewind button for bad fashion and bad standings. Metaphorically that is.
The patterns of life change, the standbys that we watched rise and capture national fame in our 20s (the same ages as us) are stepping off the plate now. Leaving us to continue on, continue loving the game, and remembering eating the first hot dog in 20 years while our friend (Lynn) starred in horror knowing I don't eat meat, the first time I sat in the rain at Yankees stadium, the whiskey laden night from a lost lover, the wine laced phone call with a friend on the other coast as we watched the Angels and the Yanks go at it. Burberry eating ballpark sushi at the new stadium, while I ate some veggie dish, to later see him eat peppers and sausage and want to kill me when in my thicker accent at the time I told him that pulled pork was an oxymoron in NYC. Ok, that might be why he thinks I almost got him killed. An inter-league game in DC, where I sat in Nats stadium sunburned to hell and back again, as the Yanks lost it in the final moments. My first Opening Day, and my first Yanks v BoSux game to boot. My husband almost did get beat up by firefighters from Queens because, well, he was in Bo Sux garb while his pretty little wife sported a Jeter Jersey.
With that, I teared up a little. The stadium had an air of festivity, calm, and wake. An odd mixture, but a truthful one. There is something to be said for chanting Andy Pettitte one last time, with 40000+ others who all paid high prices for tickets for a seemingly priceless moment. And Mo . .. "Enter Sandman" may never be the same, but perhaps in thirty years some young kid will ask me, "You were there when Pettitte and Mo retired?" And then . . . then I will regain the spry, crazy, coolness of my 20s as I relieve the dynasty years. All dynasties fall and rebuild. The Yanks . . . they are in that in-between nether region, the one no one wants but everyone has to endure.
At 37 I teared up a little. Judge me later. I know it is only a game, but it is a game that beats away in the background of the mundane and extravagant moments of life.
In 1996 I was a junior at Kentucky Wesleyan College. Imagine being a Yankees fan in Kentucky? I was. I survived, but my Yanks hat did not. Touche, as much. After college I went to grad school. The Yankees became like the soundtrack of my life. In a perverse way of nature, they kept me company on crisp autumn evenings in New Mexico and as the seasons brought on spring they pulled me from the depths of winter blues. In 2000, after two years in NM and my masters, I landed back on the east coast . . .in the Yankees backyard. As I labored through a PhD program, the Yanks provided the ideal background noise to tinker at a computer keyboard or to mark student papers. The bane of my neighbors and joy of my life has been to kick back and scream like a mother fucker at a Yanks game. On days when I've needed a break, and there have been many, my voice has bellowed down streets, blocks, and miles. Back in grad school you could still channel them via the internet for free, and away I toiled in my grad office until the wee hours with the Yankees keeping and making score. I am certain my neighbors enjoyed my late office nights more than the nights I came home to watch a game.
Years of lonely were caressed with extended Yankees seasons, one particularly bad breakup fell on a game when Pettitte pitched and Jeter performed like a god. I drank whiskey from the bottle and starred at the television. When daylight came, my heart was still broken but the Yankees had won. I can't say that that win really did anything for my psyche, but I can say that it served as a solace to me in a perverse state of nature. My first book contract fell on the start of spring training, my second book contract fell in the middle of a hot summer and right before a multi inning game against the Bo Sux with A-Rod earning the pie-in-the-face in the wee hours of the morning. I got a soft offer for my third book this summer, on the wake of Mo's last season.
I spent two years removed from the urban spectacle of NYC, locked away in the rhythms and confines of a small town I never did fit into or find a way to call home. The first year I was a visiting hire, and the second I was struggling as the economy tanked. I taught college courses inside prisons and ran a literacy council to barely cover my bills. I closed my eyes at a star riddled sky and cried wondering if I would ever make my way home again. Home to the backyard of the Yankees. I'm told that small town my parents live in is a quieter place now that I am not there to cause noise alarms when the Yanks play. I make no apologies for my love of the game. The team. The place it holds within the rhythms of my own life.
Most of my 20s involved graduate school, writing, getting articles published, and then books. Oddly, a lot of that fell alongside my favorite players cracking the bat and throwing the ball. My life is fuller now, but at the same time good byes are bittersweet. I can't say these players have lives that are mine, but I can say that they are part of mine. My buddy Burberry will always be my favorite game date. Even more so that he still squirms in fear saying that I nearly got him beat up at a Yankees game. Eh . . . I think he exaggerates. On another game, well any game we went to together, we pre-gamed with beers (holy oil) before heading into the high holy house. Sitting in section 418 with Bur . . . it's just a place and time, a feeling . . . one that those outside the space wouldn't completely comprehend anyhow. We were, in many ways, our own spectacle within the urban confines and hallowed walls of Yankees stadium.
I went to my first Yankess game (clearly not my first Yanks game), in the old stadium, with my friend Lynn in 2007. Days gone by. That was on a crisp autumn day, much like yesterday. Jeter started the at bat . . . he hasn't started the at bat in sometime now. We all age, and waatching players near our own age rings home the truth we all try to ignore. No fountain, no pill, no magic cure will bring back the fluid agility of our youth. For all but 17 games this year Jeter was out. The tides are changing.
In many ways I feel like I am saying goodbye to my own past. Those years of uncertainty, those years of wonder . . . now I'm entering a so-called more stable period. At 37 I'm not so sure. It seems that my own path is the opposite of the Yankees. Now, the team is on an uncertain path with no new talent coming up the vine . . . the bleak days of the '80s are looming ahead like a rewind button for bad fashion and bad standings. Metaphorically that is.
The patterns of life change, the standbys that we watched rise and capture national fame in our 20s (the same ages as us) are stepping off the plate now. Leaving us to continue on, continue loving the game, and remembering eating the first hot dog in 20 years while our friend (Lynn) starred in horror knowing I don't eat meat, the first time I sat in the rain at Yankees stadium, the whiskey laden night from a lost lover, the wine laced phone call with a friend on the other coast as we watched the Angels and the Yanks go at it. Burberry eating ballpark sushi at the new stadium, while I ate some veggie dish, to later see him eat peppers and sausage and want to kill me when in my thicker accent at the time I told him that pulled pork was an oxymoron in NYC. Ok, that might be why he thinks I almost got him killed. An inter-league game in DC, where I sat in Nats stadium sunburned to hell and back again, as the Yanks lost it in the final moments. My first Opening Day, and my first Yanks v BoSux game to boot. My husband almost did get beat up by firefighters from Queens because, well, he was in Bo Sux garb while his pretty little wife sported a Jeter Jersey.
With that, I teared up a little. The stadium had an air of festivity, calm, and wake. An odd mixture, but a truthful one. There is something to be said for chanting Andy Pettitte one last time, with 40000+ others who all paid high prices for tickets for a seemingly priceless moment. And Mo . .. "Enter Sandman" may never be the same, but perhaps in thirty years some young kid will ask me, "You were there when Pettitte and Mo retired?" And then . . . then I will regain the spry, crazy, coolness of my 20s as I relieve the dynasty years. All dynasties fall and rebuild. The Yanks . . . they are in that in-between nether region, the one no one wants but everyone has to endure.
At 37 I teared up a little. Judge me later. I know it is only a game, but it is a game that beats away in the background of the mundane and extravagant moments of life.
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