For those of you really looking to binge on baseball writing, I now present you the complete pre-season, regular season, and post-season 2000 entries of my baseball journal, "Why I Like Baseball." This is the format it originally appeared in on my web site, before I had any idea it would grow to be as large as it has.
In this journal are my family's adventures in Florida for spring training this year, my recollections of life-changing games I saw as a kid, and other musings on the sport. A trip to Monument Park, and lucking out to be at the Pedro/Clemens face off Memorial Day weekend. My first trip to Fenway Park to see the Yanks and Sox battle it out is also recorded here....
If you would like to see entries coming after the 2000 World Series ended, check in the regular chronological index of all entries, or on the main page, where direct links to the three most recent entries appear.
Please let me know if you enjoyed the site, or if you had any problems loading it at ctan@circlet.com.
The Postseason
All Contents Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
I never anticipated how difficult the offseason was going to be this year. It's my first offseason since my return to baseball fanaticism, and I just had no idea it would be this hard to get through the dark months.
Oh, sure, in November there were a few tidbits, like the awards and such, that counted as "news." Trade rumors. Actual trades. A trickle here, and a trickle there. I found myself re-reading my dog-eared copy of Yankee Magazine from August '99, and watching video highlights of past games on various web sites.
As of this writing, it's February, and to get my "fix," I've been surfing the web almost every day. I've grown fond of The Sporting News site, and I also pop in to majorleaguebaseball.com, and I check the Yankees web site (which is terribly over-designed, by the way--very graphics-heavy and printed in tiny, tiny white type on a dark blue background... it's painful to look at but I have to keep going back...). I get most of my direct Yankees news from the Yankees index of The Bergen Record online. Pathetic, aren't I?
But today Spring Training officially started, and not only that, it was above freezing here in Boston! All of a sudden, real anticipation is shooting through my veins--the 2000 Season is upon us!
My boyfriend, corwin, who lives with me, thinks I'm nuts. But when he gets on my case about my obsession, I remind him of last fall. That's when he was the one who was so dejected when a Yankee game was called off due to rain, we ended up going to see the Kevin Costner movie "For the Love of the Game" that night! This after he'd had to rent "Bull Durham" and "Field of Dreams" on two other "off" nights. (Here in Red Sox Land the only way we can hear the games is to listen to them on the world wide web through Real Audio. It's not as if we missed going to an actual game...)
When I was a kid, I never missed baseball this much. Maybe because even as a young fan, I never followed the season quite that closely. Or maybe it's because there's no more zealous zealot than the born-again, eh?
In any case, the wait is almost over. And I can hardly stand it. Play Ball!
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
So, how did a young fan of Reggie Jackson, the Year of the Comeback, Bucky Dent, Ron Guidry, and Thurman Munson, a woman who still counts among one of the best days of her life witnessing Dave Righetti's Fourth of July No-Hitter live at Yankee Stadium, lose her faith in the late '80s, forget the sport of baseball entirely, and then find it again in 1999?
Let's turn the clock back to the 1970s first. There I am, a young tomboy growing up in suburban New Jersey. I have to credit my Dad with getting me hooked on baseball, though I never got hooked on any of the other sports he liked to watch on tv (golf, tennis, football...). Perhaps this is because although we watched a lot of ABC's Wide World of Sports (remember back when that was pretty much all there was?), the only sport we went to witness live and in the flesh was baseball, and the place we went was Yankee Stadium.
As a kid, I was very concerned with history and fame. How did famous people get remembered? I had this notion that I wanted to be famous someday, or at least remembered for something. I remember going to Yankee Stadium when I was about 9 or 10 years old and thinking, wow, history gets made here every day. Pretty mind-blowing for a ten year old.
There's also no doubt about it that a lot of the bonding that went on between me and my Dad happened while we were sharing a scorecard at the ballpark, or stuffed into the same armchair at home watching the games. (We were skinny back then.) He'd tickle me during the commercials. At the ballpark, we'd take turns keeping score. I still keep my scorecard the way I learned back then--it's a little less fancy than the mini-diamonds they have now. But, let's not skip ahead.
When I was eleven years old, I was at 4-H camp when Thurman Munson died in a plane crash. My parents were really worried I'd be devastated, and were fretting over how to tell me when I got back to the real world. But as it turned out, I had already found out. One kid at camp had twisted his ankle or something and gone to the emergency room, and while at the hospital had seen the news report. With a whole staff of counselors on hand they announced the sad news in the dining hall that night. When I got home, I made a little shrine on my closet door, with a poster of Munson, and fifteen pictures of him I cut out from the newspaper in the weeks following his death. Fifteen because that was his uniform number.
For either my 13th or my 14th birthday party I made my parents take not only me to the park, but all my friends, as well. Our family tradition was to pick up a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken on the way, because at Yankee Stadium you can bring in your own food (as long as you don't bring cans or bottles). Two carloads of teenage girls, plus my parents and brother--how could we not have a good time? You know, I don't even remember who they played or if they won. I suppose in my childhood memories, they always won, even though I know they didn't.
I remember sitting behind home plate once. My father and my grandfather and I had gone to the ballpark, just the three of us, and bought our tickets at the gate. Those seats must have been held in reserve for press or players' friends, and were released before the game when they went unused. That was the night I learned what grand slam was. Bobby Murcer came in to pinch hit with the bases loaded, and hit one out. I remember everyone around us jumping up and down and screaming. I was too short to actually see Murcer cross the plate what with all the adults around me standing up. But I guess you never forget your first grand slam.
And of course there was that incredible Fourth of July, thanks to Dave Righetti. It was already an incredibly exciting day for me and my brother (his name's Julian, by the way), because Chuck Mangione, who we thought was the coolest for some reason, played the national anthem, and then paratroopers came flying down into the stadium on parachutes with smoke shooting out of their shoes. Cool. Then comes young, good-looking, Dave Righetti to the mound. The opponents were the Red Sox, who we had been indoctrinated to loathe by other fans ("Boston sux! Boston sux!") so tension was high. Righetti was pitching perfectly, and after the first couple of innings the words "perfect game" were on everybody's lips.
OK, then at some point someone got walked. I can't remember who, but I'm sure if I wanted to I could find a scorecard of the game somewhere on the web or in a stats book. So then "no-hitter" became the watchword.
It was the most exciting game I've ever seen, and all because almost nothing happened!
The tension and suspense was almost too much to stand. By the eighth inning, the two strike claps were becoming one-strike claps. (They tell me two-strike clap--the audience making rhythmic claps on two strikes hoping for a strikeout, which started with Ron Guidry in Yankee Stadium-- has spread to some other ballparks as well.) The audience was going crazy and yet also subdued, holding our breath, not wanting to blow it for the young pitcher.
And he didn't blow it. He did it! And so me and my family were witnesses to history in Yankee Stadium. After the game we waited outside the clubhouse with the media, tv cameras, etc... and a lot of screaming fans. We waved to Dave Righetti as he departed the park. We were a little disappointed that you couldn't see us in the newscast that night, but so what? As if that wasn't great enough, from there we went to the East River to see the awesome fireworks, and then to Chinatown for a dinner that, as Arlo Guthrie says, couldn't be beat.
With memories and formative experiences like that, how could I leave the Yankees and baseball fandom behind?
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
When I hit about 15 years old, a couple of things happened. I was still a tomboy, yeah, but I started dating. And I started thinking about college. And I ran cross country track, and played tuba in the marching band, and was on the staff of the school literary magazine, and was in the Spanish Club, and taught mime to fourth graders, and became a professional ski instructor.... I became too busy for much baseball or many family outings.
And at that time the Yankees were entering a slump themselves. I was too busy even to watch them on TV. And many of my favorite players from the Year of the Comeback era were gone, Reggie, the Goose. And then I got accepted to college, in New England.
In 1985, I moved to Providence, RI to go to Brown University. Providence has a minor league team, the Pawtucket Red Sox, and is not that far from where the New England Patriots play. The Patriots even made a run at the Superbowl that year. But I never was into football, and, well, the Red Sox? I did try rooting for the Sox a few times--peer pressure. Shortly thereafter was the heartbreaking Mets/Sox Bill Buckner World Series, and I just didn't have the stomach for it. It seemed easier in New England to just put sports out of my mind entirely. I took up tae kwon do, and my energy went into that, college team tournaments, Olympic Style full contact. I have a few medals hanging on my wall from that era.
When I graduated college, I moved to Boston for a job. And I've been here ever since. In fact, for five years I lived two blocks from Fenway Park.
Now in 1990, when I came to Boston, trying to get any coverage of anything in baseball other than the Red Sox and the occasional Yankee losing streak, was near impossible. You couldn't get Yankee games on the radio (like you can in Connecticut). And I didn't even have a tv, much less cable. So my following the Yanks was reduced to the occasional phone call to my Dad.
But then, just two short years ago, the Sosa/McGwire home run race broke the media silence here. And with the proliferation of cable channels and other sports media, we got less isolated here. And I have to admit, the whole "history in the making" thing of the McGwire/Sosa race really got my blood pumping. While home to visit my family we watched the Home Run Derby. I started to remember things about baseball I'd forgotten. On a business trip to Toronto in August '98 I found myself glued to the set in my hotel room to watch a Blue Jays game. A Blue Jays game! Baseball fever was beginning to take hold again.
But a few things were still holding me back. One, my longtime boyfriend/partner/significant other (why don't we just say fiance, since we'll probably get married someday), wasn't a convert, and two, we still had no way to really follow the games. We don't have cable in our house--we're both self-employed and work at home, so having cable would be probably the worst thing we could do to our earning potential... and as previously mentioned, we couldn't get Yankees radio.
But that was all to change in 1999...
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
In 1999, corwin and I had been together eight years. Eight years! And now that we're both in our thirties, we've gotten on to a kind of second-childhood kick. (We also took a vacation to Disney World this year.)
I decided that, with our limited funds, we ought to take a vacation to New Jersey, and it was high time he experienced two of the things that were really formative to me as a kid. One, the Jersey Shore (Seaside Heights, specifically) and two, Yankee Stadium.
I went to two games, one with corwin and one without. On Sunday afternoon, I'd gone with my brother and his girlfriend. The Yanks had beat the Mariners that day, but the victory was bittersweet for us, because my parents were supposed to be along with us, also. But my father ended up hospitalized and in the Intensive Care Unit a few days before. (He's fine now, thanks!) So he was laid up and my mom decided to stay there with him. Ricky Ledee hit an inside the park home run, and Ken Griffey Jr. was held powerless to do anything, really... (gloat, gloat)
But then came the next night. We went with two friends, my best friend from high school, Bonnie, who was on that birthday trip to the stadium all those years ago, and her then-fiance (they're married now), Aaron. It so happens that Aaron is a huge sports fan and knows the inside scoop on all the players, even the opposing team. It's Yanks versus Oakland A's on a beautiful summer evening in New York.
We arrived early, with the traditional fried chicken in our bags, met our friends and found our seats (lower deck, third base side). corwin made an audible gasp as we came through the dark, dank, concrete corridor that leads to the seats and out into the intense green and blue open space that is Yankee Stadium. I said "you think this is cool, let's go up to the upper deck just to see the view from there!" We did, and then a cop chased us away since that section was empty.
It was the best kind of game, the come from behind victory. We got to see a little bit of everything that game. Controversial umpire calls. Home runs. Double plays. Rookies blossoming. Old hands making their comebacks. History in the making.
On the drive back to my parents house, corwin said, "That was really fun."
"Yes, dear, it was."
"No, I mean really, that was incredibly fun."
"Yeah, I know, that's why three million people are going to do it this year."
"No, Really..."
You get the idea. He was hooked.
I had no idea just how hooked, though, until the next day, when we were due to drive back to Boston in the evening. We had some errands to do in North Jersey, sort of near the George Washington Bridge.
As we were getting on the road, around 6pm or so, corwin looked across the Hudson River toward the stadium and said, "You know, we could go to the game."
But being as the errands we had done included buying a couple hundred dollars worth of furniture and stuff, it didn't seem wise to leave the car parked in the Bronx.
Then, the road we were on became blocked by a horrendous accident. It took over an hour before the cops began to re-route traffic, and we sat in the car, and sat, and sat...
"You know, we could listen the game on the radio," said corwin.
We turned to the pre-game show. And then we were happy as clams. In fact, we started to get worried when the traffic broke up. Because we were probably going to drive out of range before the game would end...
So picture this. Halfway through Connecticut hours later, we're north of New Haven, and the signal starts to go. corwin's driving.
"I'm going to pull over," he says.
We pull off the highway into an abandoned factory parking lot. The game goes to the ninth inning.
"I'm getting hungry," I say.
The game is tied up. Going to extra innings!
We suffer. We get back on the road. We search for a Hartford station. We pull off again. John Sterling's voice is being eclipsed by static. Suddenly we find a Hartford radio station carrying the game. Off we go again!
At 11:30 pm we pull into the parking lot of the Olympia Diner. The Olympia used to be open 24 hours, but now they are only open until midnight. So it is a good thing that in the bottom of the thirteenth inning (13 innings!), the Yanks were unable to make the hits they needed, and they went down in defeat. And at 11:45 pm, after sitting in the car all the way through the final out, we finally get out and went into the diner.
"I can't believe they lost," says corwin, while staring at the menu.
"Yeah, and I want a Sabrett Hot Dog," I grumble. They're just not the same if you eat them anywhere else but Yankee Stadium.
The next day I came home from teaching tae kwon do (which I do three night a week) to find corwin in the kitchen, where he was supposed to be making dinner. He had his head in a cabinet, but no food was being prepared. "Look what I did!" he announced.
He had been downloading the RealPlayer G2 to his laptop and then hooking it up to our home stereo system so we could listen to the game live while in the kitchen.
I forgave him not having dinner ready.
And you know what else? Those two friends who came to the game with us? They had the nerve to get married during Game One of the World Series. (Aaron says if he ever gets married again, he promises he'll check first...) From their wedding, we went on our Disney vacation, and one evening went to the Disney All-Star Sports Cafe to watch Game Three. It was almost like being at a game--they have a live DJ there who plays all the little fight songs and things. Earlier in the day, we had been in a restaurant at Epcot Center where they had crayons on the tble, and I drew the Yankee Top Hat logo on the placemat. I was still carrying that placemat and kept my scorecard on the back of it, with a pen I bought at Disney Wide World of Sports, a ball point pen with a baseball on the end. I don't know if it was lucky or what, but they won the game. (That was the Chad Curtis home run game.)
And yeah, I can't wait to go back for another game. And neither can he. And I've been jonesing for more baseball ever since, reading the news on the Internet every day. Checking the trades. Reading the STATS INC book over Christmas. corwin's now reading "The Physics of Baseball." Yeah, we're hooked. We'll probably even see some non-Yankees Red Sox games this year!
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
There are a lot of reasons why I like baseball. I've already talked about formative experiences of youth, bonding with my father, and so on.
But I think there's more to it than that, and this has to do with sports in general. Because in recent years I've found my interest in all sports becoming more intense.
It began with Olympic coverage in 1996--frankly, I was disgusted with it. Every bar or restaurant we went into (we had no tv then and we still have no cable or regular reception), we were glued to it. But the network had tried so hard to create a "story" around each American athlete, that it actually worked counter to the drama of the games themselves. The drama and suspense was ruined because you knew that the three people they would show you profiles of would be the three medalists, and they didn't show you enough of the actual competition and games, since they were spending so much time on the interviews and background features. I was, to say the least, annoyed. And I realized that a lot of the drama in sports is on the playing field itself. Yeah, you want to know who the players in the drama are, but it's the actual amazement you feel at their achievement, (the amazing plays, the competitive edge, the home runs), the actual thrill of victory and agony of defeat you feel at the end of the game, the heartbreak of errors or bad calls... all that is what is actually compelling about it. I remember getting up early in the morning to see matches the year the US Hockey team did the impossible and won gold. The way the Olympics are covered now, there's not time for that kind of drama to develop. The 1996 Olympics left me with a hankering for what they lacked.
Then, I read the novel INFINITE JEST by David Foster Wallace. Much of the book revolves around life at an elite tennis academy, and the inside game of tennis. This was an amazing book for reasons having nothing to do with tennis, but I suddenly got interested in tennis. I actually hated playing tennis as a kid--my mother and father basically strong-armed me and the friend who got married on the day of Game One of the World Series (see above...) into taking lessons together when we were like 11 years old. We were terrible at it. And my parents were always watching tennis on tv. Which I found boring. But I remember watching these apocalyptic showdowns between Borg and McEnroe and really being glued to the set. (no pun intended)
So anyway, inspired by reading Infinite Jest, while traveling for business we'd channel flip in our hotel, and come to ESPN2 broadcasting the Monaco Open or something, and we'd get sucked right into it. corwin and me both. Or even better, Classic Sports Network showing those selfsame Borg/McEnroe matchups. Yeah, this after about ten years of not watching any televised sports.
Add to this the fact that I write fiction for a living. I write short stories, novels, novellas. In the past I've written screenplays, tv scripts, (none produced, mind you) and to like, too. So when I see a tv show or we watch a Hollywood movie, I know what's going on in the writer's mind a lot of the time. Hollywood works on certain formulas, and, OK, this works to some degree because the movie isn't a satisfying entertainment experience for much of the audience unless certain criteria are fulfilled. I.e. in an action movie you have to have a car chase (or boat chase, or whatever 'spin' on the car chase the director decides on), a shoot out, etc. Good guys usually win, and so on.
But as we all know, plenty of bad movies come out. The formula doesn't always work. And at some point I just run out of compassion for characters who are weakly drawn or badly acted or just plain fake.
But baseball is real. Sports drama is real.
You don't have to suspend your disbelief because these are real actual guys whose job it is to go out there and compete every day. And they are amazing at what they do. Believe it. And the back story? The baseball season is like a soap opera. On any given day, nothing earth-shattering may seem to happen. But who will rise above? Who will slump? Who will have the clutch hit at the critical moment? Who will get tagged out at third to end the rally? Who will get injured? Who will recover from injury?
This is why even teams that don't have winning records have fans. Because it isn't, actually, all about winning. It's about being there. It's about not knowing what will happen. No one is scripting the happy ending for you. You never know if today will be a tragedy or a comedy.
This is why the Yankees are so compelling to me. The media have taken to calling them "the most storied" sports franchise in history, and I think that is really true. You could make a movie about a hundred different players or situations or seasons with the Yankees.
The Red Sox are pretty storied, too. But their story is so inextricably linked with the Yanks story, it's hard to be objective.
Ah, who needs objectivity anyway? When I was a kid, I was a fan of a lot of things, Star Wars, the Lord of the Rings, Duran Duran, and the Yankees. These days, I get interested in something like, oh, The X-Files, but it doesn't last. I eventually feel cheated by the writers of the series who have other concerns than being true to the characters or satisfying me, the fan. But baseball, that's real. That's something you can get into, and stay into, because it's happening live, right there, in front of you. The players you like, the teams you hate, it's all unfolding in real time.
And this season, I'll be right there for the whole thing.
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
OK, OK, I've talked before about being a Yankee fan in Red Sox Land. It's tough, let me tell you. I go into the copy shop where I do thousands of dollars in business a year wearing my Yankees cap, and they give me s**t about it. The give me the evil eye in the post office, too. And yet, I see more people wearing Yankee caps both here in Boston and in my travels around the country, than I see of any other hat.
But really, although I was ecstatic, of course, that the Yanks went all the way and won it in '99... wouldn't a Red Sox/Mets series have been an incredible sight to behold? A replay of the Bill Buckner series, but without Bill Buckner? (You know that poor sap had to move out of New England because no one would ever let him live it down? Even in New Hampshire he couldn't pump his own gas without getting booed. And I think I have it tough at the post office...) Even Sox/Braves would have had an age old rivalry to it, the Braves originally being from Boston. (And a Mets/Yanks series would have turned New York upside down!)
The Sox deserve to have their shot at winning it all. This "Curse" business, you have to take it seriously, if only because at the very highest levels of play, it's the slight mental edge that makes the difference. The Yankees have a winning attitude, and that contributes to them winning more. The Sox, no matter how much the players say they don't think about the Curse, you know it has to pop up in the back of their minds from time to time.
The Sox are great baseball because there is always drama associated with them. They play in one of the great old parks--though of course there is talk now of building a new stadium, a bigger stadium, which would pull better profits, and allow them to increase the payroll, and pull in more Yankee-killing pitchers, and so on. Maybe a new stadium would break "the Curse" if only for a psychological fresh start. But how can you think about tearing down Fenway Park! Man, it pains me just to think about it.
Then again, they are talking about tearing down Yankee Stadium, too. Yankee Stadium and Fenway Park, though, may be the places with the most historic overall baseball significance of any of the old parks.
I tell you, if those two old ballparks go, it will be the end of an era in baseball. The end of an entire age. I suppose it may be inevitable, what with the loss already of Tiger Stadium, and many of the other beloved parks.
But I was talking about why I like the Red Sox. There's always drama. And my Yankee fandom aside, I like to root for the underdog. And the current Sox are such a likable team. I watched most of the Sox post-season games in '99, watched them battle through trying to get a crack at the Yankees. And it looked so good, too--they had a winning record against the Yanks in '99, and hopes were high...
But in the end they were ground up in the Yankees postseason juggernaut (except for Pedro Martinez, who you just gotta love), and a truly, truly incredible story did not come to pass. And hearts were broken everywhere.
And maybe that's what it takes to be a real Red Sox fan. The strength to carry on despite heartbreak. I don't think I quite have the constitution to survive Red Sox fandom. But you can be sure I've got my eye on them, and I'll be waiting for that day when they rise above.
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
So, I never really thought about the difference between female baseball fans and male baseball fans, until the whole Derek Jeter thing.
Let me explain. Growing up as a kid, I was a tomboy, and was always doing this that the "guys" did: I ran cross country track, and played the sousaphone (tuba), and I was the one girl in my fifth grade class who traded baseball cards. (Because I only cared about the Yankees, I didn't mind letting the guys bid on my other hot players who were non-Yankees... the going rate for a "trade" back then was a penny a card, or a card of equal "value" for a card... which meant someone like Reggie Jackson wouldn't go for less than 75 cents, and could get bid up to about $3. In milk money, that was a significant amount! I was also my class' treasurer... and I made a killing shedding the Dodgers, Reds, and Mets I didn't want...)
Anyway, the thing is, I didn't really think of baseball fandom as a masculine thing, particularly. And I still don't, especially not with all the women I always see when I go to games. And they're not there as tag alongs to their boyfriends or husbands.
Then again, in New York, maybe they are just there to see Derek Jeter.
I was slightly shocked when I went to a game at Yankee stadium in 1999 to find that, as the players were introduced, the decibel and pitch level of the screams for Jeter were considerably higher than for other players. Being the baseball exile I was for so many years, and not being in New York, I had missed the whole Jeter-as-Heartthrob phenomenon. I thought to myself, hmm, yeah, he's kind of cute, single, and plays shortstop, chicks dig that. But I didn't really see the attraction myself. Maybe, I thought, it's because I'm, ahem, seven years older than he is--I mean, s**t, he's the same age as my little brother.
During the post-season this year, though, I'm not sure what it was, but all of a sudden I "got" Jeter fever. This was especially weird since I haven't had that Beatle-mania kind of feeling for any athlete, movie star, or pop singer since I was, oh, a teenager. But, as Mel Stottlemeyer is fond of saying, Jeter is "special." The more I watched him play, the more fascinated I became. Who is this guy? I wondered.
Then came the offseason, and as I was surfing the Internet, I came across many great Jeter articles and interviews I'd missed while in baseball exile. Turns out, he's also the nicest, best-mannered guy in the sport. Jeez. I read features from Sports Illustrated, ESPN The Magazine, GQ (!), Time Out New York, People (!!)... Perhaps even more intriguing was that rarely did I read these interviews on their original magazine's sites. More often than not they were lovingly scanned, or perhaps painstakingly re-ryped, word for word, by dedicated fans of Mr. Jeter. I found hundreds of Jeter fan sites. And not surprisingly, most of these sites are run by young women, in their teens and twenties.
I was deeply involved with teen heartthrob fandom myself when I was young (I ran a fan club for Puerto Rican boy band Menudo, and yes, I met Ricky Martin many times back when he was thirteen--you'll have to wait for my autobiography to hear more...). So I know the turf. I was capitvated by features on the sites--the modern day equivalent of home-made fan club newsletters--like "101 Reasons I Love Derek Jeter" and the still-ongoing speculations about Jeter's relationship with Mariah Carey (despite the fact they broke up years ago).
Even more captivating was all the actual baseball talk that got tossed in with the discussions of Jeter's eating habits, social life, and eye color. Okay, granted, there were many, many messages posted on the boards with subject lines like "OMIGOD DJ IS SOOOOOO HOT!!!!!!!!" but maybe that's why it was so surprising to me to find women arguing about Chuck Knoblauch's throwing problems, for example.
Then again, think about the character of Annie in "Bull Durham." She wasn't just a dugout groupie--she knew her baseball.
No, I really shouldn't have been surprised at all, I guess. I salute baseball women, the "diamond girls," whether what thrills their blood is Jeter's smile, or his lightning throw to first. Or both. And I'm proud to be one of them.
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
It does occur to me, though, that my views on Yankee Stadium are a bit skewed by the fact that, well, I've never really been anywhere else. There was one year when the stadium was being refurbished in the seventies. I remember going to Shea for a Yankee game that time--but most of what I remember about it was that it poured rain. And I do mean poured; Niagara-like spouts of water were shooting from the upper decks. We arrived home sopping wet and wringing out our clothes. I was probably about seven years old at the time.
So, not counting that one soggy trip, I was at Shea for a concert in the 1980s (was it 1983?)--The Police, Joan Jett, and R.E.M. I don't think that counts either.
And I've been to Fenway Park only once, despite the fact that I lived a block from the place for five years, and it was to see a high school World Series game in around 1995.
Admittedly, most of what I remember from that trip to Fenway was how exciting the game was--and it was. We of course didn't know any of the players or any of the teams, but what a thrill to see a seventeen year old player blast a home run over the Green Monster! I don't know that kid's name, but I gotta wonder if he went on to the big leagues, or if he finished college somewhere and is now working a desk job somewhere...
So, this year will be the first time I really see a big league game somewhere other than Yankee Stadium.
In fact, it looks like I'll see more of the Yankees at Fenway than I will in New York. I scored tickets to June 19, June 21, and September 8 here in Boston, whereas I'll probably only see a game in April and a game in August in New York. (OK, maybe I'll see two games in August, and that will even things up.)
And then there are the five spring training games I'm going to see all over Florida: Dunedin, Clearwater, Tampa, Sarasota, Winterhaven... (and if I get really, really lucky, the Yanks/Sox game in Fort Myers. But it sold out before I could get tickets.)
But back to stadiums. Now every time I have a road trip planned, I look at the baseball calendar to see if there's a game going on nearby. I'm still kicking myself over not going to see a Yanks/Mariners game last August at Safeco Field, when I was in town there, which turned out to be the bench-clearing brawl game.... (Then again, maybe it's just as well I wasn't there.... )
If I have my way, in the next five years or so, I'll see a bunch of the other stadiums that are out there. Everyone raves about Coors Field and Camden Yards. Will the new PacBell Park be less windy than Candlestick?
And then I'll come back, and tell you that Yankee Stadium is still the canonical stadium.
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
So, today spring training gets underway in earnest. So many of the articles I've been reading have been about the players who have rehabbed from injury or surgery during the winter. Even Cal Ripken! Pitchers galore. And more.
I've been "recovering" from a back injury since 1996, so I can say something about strength, or lack thereof, and about how it takes a kind of focused mindfulness to come back from injury.
I've been practicing tae kwon do for over a decade now. And I've had my set-backs because of injuries. Doing something physical at a very high skill level, I've come to appreciate just how hard it must be for some of these players.
I injured my knee skiing in 1991, right after starting up in tae kwon do again after a three year hiatus. That time, I was stupid. I "stayed off it"--meaning I didn't work out for about a month, but I was still walking from the T station to work every morning, and working on the fourth floor of a building with no elevator. I did untold damage to the knee by not going to the doctor right away, but I was between health insurance providers at the time (my job had just switched companies and I didn't have a doctor assigned yet). Besides, it was the first time in my life that I'd ever been injured. That's right, all those years running cross country track, but I'd never sprained my ankle. Never broke a bone or needed stitches. Never dislocated my shoulder. So I had no mentality for how to deal with injury or rehab.
Then there's the fact that I was out of shape in the first place. I never would have hurt my knee in the skiing fall if I had been in shape. But after all those years of cross country track, teaching skiing professionally, and tae kwon do in college, I had no concept of what being out of shape was. never in my adult life had I been so inactive as those two years at a desk job. I didn't jog, didn't ski, didn't do anything. I even ruined my eyes at that job. (Don't get me wrong, it was a good job, an exciting and fulfilling one... but it led me to neglect my physical self.)
That's why I wanted to get back into tae kwon do so badly, and why it was particularly heartbreaking to have to stop again after only about two months of it, because of the knee.
Like I said, I "stayed off it" for a month. Then I went back to tae kwon do class, because I was bound and determined that I wasn't going to slack off.
And that's when I did the real damage. The muscles still being weak in my leg, and giving no protection to the ligaments, I blew it out again in class.
That time it was a year I was out, but that time I finally went to a doctor. Got an orthopedist. Then got a physical therapist. And started doing quad exercises.
I'll never forget the moment though, when the physical therapist said to me that I'd probably never compete again. Here I'd been going in to therapy with the mindset that I'd be as good as new when I was done. Insert Six Million Dollar Man music here..."we can rebuild her, we have the technology..." But he brought me up short with that dose of reality. I remember feeling physically ill at that moment, dizzy. To tell you the truth, I didn't have plans to win any more medals and had figured I was done with that years before. But to hear him say it was no longer an option... it was a blow to my spirit. I cried when I got home.
Later, though, I came to decide he was wrong. I look at someone like David Cone, or Kerry Wood, or Jackie Chan, for gods sake, who have not only recovered from serious injury, they have returned to form and been able to perform at a very high level. I kept doing my exercises with the thought that although some things are unlikely, they are not impossible.
I'm still doing those exercises today, nine years later, because the inherent flaws in my knees are still there, and given the noises it has been making, I think the "good" knee is going to be the one to go next. But as long as I keep doing my exercises, I have a chance to keep it together.
That's hard when my back is out. The back injury was a similar story to the knee, only this time I was in the best shape I had ever been in in my life. When I got my black belt I weighed 10 pounds less than I do now, could work out two to three hours at a time without feeling tired, and felt more or less invincible. That's the problem--I felt invincible, and thought I could lift something that I could not. And--crack--I threw out my back.
I didn't go to physical therapy this time--I didn't need machines to do the rehab really. What I needed was to do lots of stretching, lots of trunk strengthening exercises I can do at home, and I needed to stop doing a lot of things that put stress on my back.
Nothing makes a person feel old like a bad back, though. Instant old lady feeling. "Oh, my back!"
Now it's a couple years later on the back thing, and really only about three months ago did I feel like I could start trying to get back in shape. My cardiovascular system is at another all time low, my flexibility is shot, and I have a long way to go to get back to the level I was at in 1996 when the injury occurred.
But I look at guys like Cal Ripken, and the other players who are suffering through the dull winter months on their machines and doing their sit ups and their stretches and so on, and so forth... and I think maybe I can make it. Sure, they have professional trainers working with them, and sure, they get paid to get in shape, and I've just got me.
But maybe that's all I'm going to need. Me, and the inspiration those guys give me.
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
I always liked going to Yankee games as a kid, even if I didn't really understand what was going on all the time. Being with my Dad, the excitement of the crowd, having a picnic lunch in the stands or getting to stay out late, those were plenty of reasons to like going to the game without anything to do with baseball itself.
But when I really started to enjoy watching the game, was when Dad and I started keeping a scorecard. He'd score one inning, and then I'd score one inning, and we'd go like that for the whole game.
I think I must have been about ten years old when we started. We were at Yankee Stadium early--we often arrived early enough to see batting practice beforehand--and we had bought that day's program and scorecard book. We were reading it to keep from getting bored. I think we always bought one, but this was the first time we read the instructions in it on how to keep score. Or maybe that was the first time we'd seen it printed--I notice that in the scorecard I picked up in August '99, there's no description of how to keep score. Which is a bit sad, to me.
But anyway, at ten years old, I was fairly well impressed with whoever invented scorecard notation. I mean, how brilliant--each box has four corners which represent the four bases and what happened at or around each one to advance or put out the batter/runner. When I was ten this seemed like another proof that the fundamental physics of the universe made baseball the perfect sport. Or something.
To the left, the way we would have scored an inning where Knoblauch walked, then advanced to third on Jeter's single (there's a line in the upper left corner that's hard to see ont his scan), O'Neill popped up to the catcher, and then Williams hit a home run, scoring both runners. (Jeter stole second in there, too.)
I don't remember us marking things like the Strike Out Swinging vs. Looking, and I do remember the way single, double, triple and home run were scored--and it was a bit different than the way that's popular now. As I learned from talking to people at the games last summer, and from poking around--where else--the Internet.
There's a great site --The Baseball Scorecard--with tutorials, glossary, and other info about keeping scorecards. I didn't agree with all of Patrick's definitions there (i.e. it had said that on a walk, all runners advance one base, when actually if there's a guy on second and no one on first, the guy remains on second...) but most of it is pretty good. Lots of explanation of what the significance of various stats is, and how to calculate them.
Nowadays, they sometimes print a little gray diamond inside the box, and for a single, the scorekeeper draws a line showing the runner's path from home plate to the base. For a walk, same line, but BB written in the corner. If he advances to second on a play, or steals, another line, drawing his travel from first to second and a notation to mark how he got there. To the left I've scored the same inning as above, showing by the numbers of positions in the corners whose hit or play it was that advanced each runner. In Knoblach's box, you see the "2" for Jeter advancing him to third, and the "8" for Williams scoring him.
OK, the more modern method has some elegance, and is a clear evolution of the way I learned to do it. We used to just circle it whenever a runner would score. Now the trip around the bases makes its own kind of "circle." And it is in some ways easier to jot down how each base advance worked. But too many little numbers--if there's then an error on the play, the position number from the opposing team also has to be entered, and to me it's not as obvious on the glance how many runs scored. But hey, whatever works for you.
I guess I'm just a traditionalist, and like to keep doing it the way I learned. I have adopted the backwards K for Strike Out Looking, though. Because it's fascinating to watch the patterns emerge for certain batters throughout a game, the battle between pitcher and opposing lineup. Is this pitcher overpowering them with speed and heat? Or is he just keeping them guessing? I don't, however, write in the count for each at bat, and there's just no easy way (other than with a computer) to keep track of total pitches thrown. (I don't like to do too much math when I'm trying to enjoy a game...)
Another thing I've started doing is marking the difference between, say, a pop up to the first baseman ("3") and a grounder to the first baseman that he takes and then steps on the bag ("3, with a little squiggle representing the grounder...). I got this from a friend (Aaron, the husband of my friend Bonnie who got married on the day of Game One of the World Series last year), who not only records each out, but draws the trajectory of the ball on each fly, so you know if it was a high pop up, or a line drive that was miraculously caught, or what.
Did I mention I even keep score when I watch games on tv? I even do it sometimes when I listen to the radio (or Internet), if I'm not in the middle of doing something else. For televised games last year, I found myself improvising scorecards on the back of napkins, placemats, yellow legal pads. Of course, some of the improvisation was due to my being in weird places when I watched the game.
I was in Atlantic City for a convention during the final Yanks/Rangers playoff game last October, and ended up in a bar/restaurant at Caesar's Palace keeping my score on the back of a Caesar's napkin, which turned out to be just about the right size. The maitre'd was a nice old guy, Yankee fan, too, who kept stopping by to find out what had happened while he was away from the big screen tv, seating high rollers who had gotten meal tickets and what have you. And because I had the scorecard I could give him a really good recap...
Then there's the Game Three of last year's World Series, when corwin and I were in Disneyworld, and I used the placemat from the fancy french restaurant in Epcot Center that night when we went to the All Star Sports Cafe to see the game. Did I mention there were no Braves fans left in the place by the seventh inning? Kind of strange since the Disney Wide World of Sports Complex is the Braves' spring training home. We had thought maybe we'd be on enemy territory there. But well, Florida's actually full of retired New Yorkers, and of course Disneyworld is just a planet all its own. So in the end it was us and a couple of other guys from New York cheering. (They were pretty shocked to find out we're from Boston.)
Now, of course, in the long cold nights of the off season, I've made up a scorecard template for myself in Quark Xpress that I can print out at will. And corwin's wondering if there's a scorecard for the Palm Pilot (and if there is, if he actually wants it). If anyone out there wants a copy of the Quark file, or an EPS of it, email me and I'll send it. Or, even better, here's the EPS of it now. (The file is about 137 K, not too bad.) I'll try to create a PDF for Adobe Acrobat one of these days, too.
Remember, mine doesn't have the dinky baseball diamond in every box. At least, not this year.
Then there's the whole question of whether to KEEP old scorecards or not. I think my policy will be: I'll keep the ones in the souvenir magazine from the games, because I don't actually get to go to that many games. And I'm keeping my Caesar's napkin, for instance. But day to day regular season televised games? No. After all, that's what the Sporting News is for.
Pencil or pen? Pencil. I can actually write smaller with a sharp pencil--and of course erase if I need to. Do you write down the time of the first pitch and of the final out? The weather? Total playing time? Attendance at the game?
Then of course there are the times when, no matter how closely you're trying to follow the game, you just don't know what happened. The story goes that one day Fran Healy leaned over to Phil Rizzuto in the Yankee broadcast booth, glanced down at Phil's scorecard, and said, "Scooter, what's 'WW" mean?"
Rizzuto: "Wasn't Watching."
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
I've said before how I "can't wait" for the season to start. (Or even for Spring training to start!)
But now I know I have it bad. Well, not that I didn't know before, but yesterday I went to new extremes for my baseball fix. I knew that Mariano Rivera, Yankees closer, had his arbitration hearing Thursday, and that the answer would be delayed until Saturday. Yesterday I diligently checked my usual spots, several times, The Sporting News online, majorleaguebaseball.com, etc... and still no posting of the story. Many of the stories that run on these sites come from the Associated Press. So I went straight to the AP site, and voila, not one but three articles about it...! Ahhhh, at last.
(In case you don't know, Rivera lost, and as a result will only make $7.25 million dollars next year, be the highest paid closer in baseball, and has the highest salary ever awarded in arbitration, even though he lost. His agent wanted $9.25 million. Rivera's was the last deal the Yankees needed to wrap up in core players--everything else from here on out is what non-roster and minor league guys will make the team during Spring Training. But that's not important right now.)
Anyway, teams are working out on sunny fields across Florida and Arizona, and there's snow on the ground in Boston. It's fourteen days until I leave for Tampa!
Going to see games at Spring Training is something that, when I was a kid, I never thought I would get to do. We would see little news bits about it on tv, and for some reason I had it in my head that only a few really special people ever went to Spring Training. Now I realize it's the special few who either live in Florida, or who can surf the Internet for tickets months in advance, take time off to fly down there, and, as the Nike commercial says, "Just Do It." There are serious advantages to being an adult and not a kid anymore...
Here's what I'm going to do over the next fourteen days:
Oh, sure, before I go, I'm also going to put in about 140 hours at my desk, plus some 20-25 hours working at the tae kwon do school. And I'll probably sleep about 100 hours, too. Nothing important, in the fanatics' scheme of things.
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
The news is fairly well-plastered these days with two types of negative articles about baseball. Those about Darryl Strawberry's relapse into cocaine use, and those on John Rocker's December Sports Illustrated interview, where he offended just about everyone with his racist, homophobic, and generally ass-headed comments.
It has been interesting to see how few people have come out in support of Rocker, at least in the mainstream press (I don't read the KKK's newspaper so I wouldn't know...) -- Ted Turner, media giant and owner of the Braves, who has been in controversies over his own foot-in-mouth statements, basically said, well you have to give the guy another chance. Several ballplayers have also come out saying that we can give Rocker at least a little benefit of the doubt for being dumb enough to act like a tough guy the only way he knew how, even if he doesn't really feel that way "in his heart"--as Rocker said in his statement of apology. Hank Aaron didn't exactly embrace Rocker, but cited his youth and inexperience with the spotlight of fame. So, if you want to give the guy the widest possible leeway, he appears redeemable. If you want to take his comments at face value, though, you have to pretty much believe that white militias everywhere will soon be carrying flags with his face on them. Where will John Rocker be in ten years, mentally, and ethically? Will anything change?
I'm asking myself those same questions about Strawberry. Talk about widest possible leeway... Straw has lots of people on his side. His teammates, coaches, former teammates, they've all come out in support, saying they know he has a problem and they hope he beats it. But they're sad. Strawberry doesn't have the benefit of the doubt, because nobody doubts what is going on. He is still fighting his cocaine addiction, and losing. Everyone wishes him well, but no one knows how to help him. Strawberry is not the young superstar blinded by the lights of fame, unaware of how to act and of the consequences. In this case when we ask "will anything change?" we're asking for a miracle, perhaps.
And what does this all have to do with baseball? Everything. Because who the players are has as much to do with the story of the game as the actual plays that happen on the field. Otherwise we could just sit around and watch video-game baseball year-round. We don't go to see robots hit, run, catch, and throw. We're watching people, personalities, in action, as much as plays.
On the one hand, a team is something more than its players. Players come and go, but the team is still loved (or reviled) by its fans (or enemies). But that doesn't mean that who the players are and what their personalities are doesn't matter to us. On the contrary, they matter more, sometimes, because they may not be around for that long, because their impact on the story, the soap opera, that is a baseball season, can be great even with only a short contribution.
Last year, one of the great stories was Strawberry's comeback from cancer and then his drug suspension. He came back not broken and bedraggled, but with a bat that was on fire. It was inspiring to watch. As season-long hero Chili Davis began to tire and feel the end of his career approaching, Darryl was the hero that came from the wings to keep the Yankee championship drive going.
But now it's a new season, and I feel almost a little like I do when, on the X-Files, something seems all resolved and finally going right for Fox Mulder, and then in the next season it all turns out to have been a hoax. Strawberry's recovery wasn't a hoax, so to speak, but it was short-lived.
And what about Rocker? Will he get on the comeback trail? Will the Braves trade him away? What will he say when he finally meets with his teammates and they vent their feelings at him?
I think he should come to play in New York. Here's why. Ultimately, for all I've said about how we love personalities and people here, we do still love the plays they make as well. I think this may be especially true of Yankee fans. Would we be so sympathetic to Straw if he hadn't made a terrific comeback last year? I think we are much more willing to like him and to give him a place in our hearts because he did so well. A lot of my friends here in Boston hate Roger Clemens, but they hated him when he was here, too. "He's a jerk," they say. But you know what? I think if he can pitch the way he pitched in Game Four of the World Series, New York will keep loving him. (If he doesn't, it's "ya bum!" "Get rid of da bum!")
(It's a little like Bill Clinton, in some ways. OK, maybe he's an adulterous boob, but as long as he keeps going to bat for the things I believe in when it comes to governing the country, I give him a thumbs up. Of course, he hasn't batted a thousand for me, so I do have my gripes, but that's for another essay...)
If Rocker came to New York, made nice with his teammates and the community (starting a foundation to help minority kids get baseball scholarships or something along those lines would be a really nice gesture, don't you think?), and pitched like an unbeatable bat out of hell, I think he'd do okay. I think people would warm to him and give him another chance. He might even become a can-you-believe-it comeback story of his own.
Stay tuned...
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
You know what has never made sense to me? Baseball is for boys and softball is for girls. This doesn't make sense because boys have much, much bigger hands than girls. I have such tiny hands that I have trouble keeping a softball in my hand. A baseball, on the other hand, fits alright. I can even juggle three baseballs pretty well.
But I didn't play baseball or softball as a kid, and here's why.
I started to go to games with my dad when I was, what, about five? But I only really started to appreciate what the rules of the game were when I was ten, and started keeping a scorecard (see above). Part of the reason I got so hot to learn the rules that summer was when I was nine years old, we moved from Englewood, NJ to Clark, NJ, where the physical education curriculum was quite different from what I had been used to.
Englewood had been a very progressive school system in the '70s, extremely racially mixed, with black, asian, latino, and white kids, poor, lower middle class and upper middle class all jumbled together. Smarter kids were given advanced instruction, slower kids were given special attention. And our gym class, below fourth grade, was all "skills building" exercises and games, running, jumping, etc... but not real sports. In fourth grade you were supposed to start learning real sports, but before that it was three-legged races and other funky games. A lot of track and field.
I started fourth grade, nine years old, in Clark, though, and was in for a shock. Not only was everyone in the entire school system white and solidly middle class (the all-whiteness of Clark having since been reported in the news as a conspiracy of the town fathers and the real estate agents... when a black family finally moved in, a burning cross appeared on the lawn), the kids all already knew how to play real games like soccer and football and basketball. I was at a distinct disadvantage.
Now, soccer is easy to fake your way through. You run up and down the field, kicking the ball, and try to get it in the goal. If you're not anywhere near the ball, you don't have much to worry about.
But baseball. I suppose you could say I had a classic childhood experience in being picked last for the team. I was a popular kid, but seen as a "Brainiac" and as the "new kid" as well, no one knew if I could play. The gym teacher at this school was the drill sergeant type, too, real gruff, who never seemed to explain anything and basically yelled a lot. He favored two junior jocks in the class, who I think he coached in a kiddie baseball league anyway. He'd make these two kids captains, and then they would take turns picking people to divide the class into two teams--this process would take about ten to fifteen minutes as it was, and the gym period was an hour at most.
Then the game would begin, and we'd sit on the bench in the order we were picked. I seem to recall that I never had to field, because only kids who had brought their own gloves were sent out to the field. And usually the game would take long enough that most days, I never got up to bat, because we'd run out of time before making to the bottom of the order.
But then there was that day when I did get up there. I realized I didn't know if I was left-handed or right-handed. I decided to bat lefty since then I'd be at least two feet closer to first base, and increase my chances of making it there. I remember very clearly the moment of getting up there, the sun hot, the lawn mowers buzzing in the background, and everyone looking at me.
I swung at the first pitch, cracked it into the grass and then stood there stunned for a moment. I'm not sure if I forgot I was supposed to run, or if I was just so surprised I had hit it. Then the team captain started screaming to run, so I ran to first base.
Fortunately, I was out. Because I really wouldn't have known what to do after that.
I got up one more time that spring, before we switched to basketball because it was getting too hot to go outside every day, and that time I batted righty. Same exact result, only I didn't stand there quite as long before trying to run.
It only occurred to me just now that the coach probably pitched a little slower and easier for me (he pitched for both sides), and maybe that's why I was able to connect with the first pitch both times, whereas there were other kids that struck out. (If so, it was the one nice thing he did for me.) Or maybe, ust maybe, I didn't completely suck, or I wouldn't have, if anyone had shown me what to do or encouraged me in any way.
That summer, my parents moved again, just to the town over (and at least partly to escape the strange silent racism of that all-white town...), and I sat down to learn the real rules of baseball. I remember dragging my dad to Herman's Sporting Goods in the Woodbridge Mall to pick out a glove. I never knew how many kinds of gloves there were, or what the difference was. In the end I think I bought an infielder's glove because all my favorite players were infielders (Bucky Dent, Graig Nettles)--in fact, I'm pretty sure it was the signature glove of someone on the Yankees, but I don't remember now, who.
My father, remember, grew up in the Philippines during World War II. They didn't have baseball gloves or go out and play catch in the evenings. In fact, to hear him tell it, their main sport was riding a pig bareback through the house (until the Japanese soldiers killed it for bacon) and picking the leeches off their legs from wading through the swamps. So my Dad couldn't really mentor me in playing baseball. And besides, no one had any expectation that a father and daughter would go out and play catch on summer nights before dinner. Not even me.
What my father did know, though, was that to soften up a glove you should put neatsfoot oil on it. And as I've said before, my Dad is a world class spectator. So the most use I got out of my glove was rubbing neatsfoot oil into it while sitting in front of the tv watching games, and bringing it to Yankee Stadium on the lookout for the occasional foul or home run ball. Never even came near one, but the glove was nice to beat a fist into while cheering.
I wonder whatever happened to that glove. It doesn't appear to be anywhere in evidence at my folks' house. The last time my brother and I looked, the only one we could find was a right-handed glove he had bought back when he was thinking he should try catching with his right hand, because he wasn't any good with his left. (My brother didn't really grow into a baseball prodigy either...)
And when I started in my new school system, a more racially diverse, but also much more racially divided school, I found out they didn't play baseball or football or any real sports there. They played kickball on the blacktop playground--all the rules of baseball except you can bean the runner with the ball instead of tagging him/her out. This was not a joy in a class where the black kids and white kids were often at war with each other, and where I was the only Asian kid (OK, half-Asian), the new kid, and not "fitting in". I looked forward to kickball about as much as a trip to the dentist.
We played a lot of other "rubber ball" games, like dodgeball (a kind of missile war played indoors with about twenty balls), and weird combo games like baseball-basketball-volleyball: this one is really hilarious. One team is in the "field" of the basketball court, where there are bases set up. The "batter" takes a volleyball, and volleys it into the field and then starts running the bases. The fielder nearest the ball grabs it, and then runs to the nearest basketball hoop, and starts shooting until he or she makes a basket. If the runner makes it all the way home before the basket is made, that's one run. If I remember it right, the runner could actually lap the bases several times before getting called out, and accrue a point for each lap...
When I got to high school a few years later, we were allowed to pick which gym class we wanted to take: volleyball, Ultimate frisbee, archery, basketball, deck hockey... By this time I had begun to fit in, and also to discover my own competitiveness in sports. I always picked what looked like would be the toughest group of competitors. If a bunch of black girls were all going to do basketball that marking period, I went with them. If a bunch of popular white upper class boys where going to play deck hockey, I went with them. I didn't go with my friends. I wanted to do what was tough.
Ultimately, though, where I found my niche was in individual, not team, sports. I had started running track in junior high at the urging of a friend, and was terrible at it. I just wasn't fast, not like the top sprinters who could do the hundred meters in under 11 seconds. (I think I did it in more like 14.5...) In high school I changed to distance running, which was even worse in a lot of ways, but I persevered. Four years I pushed through cross country track, even though me and my best friend Bonnie (she the one who got married on the day of Game One of the 1999 World Series, see above) were always the slowest ones on the team. (When Bonnie sprained her ankle and was on crutches, we earned the nicknames "Hop-a-long" and "Droop-a-long" from our teammates. It was a fun team, quite a group of misfits--the "star" athletes didn't go out for it.)
It took me until my very last race, when I was a senior, to learn the lesson I had been trying to learn for four years. It was an away meet, in Irvington, NJ (not a nice neighborhood then) in a park we didn't know. So I had no familiar landmarks to tell me how I was doing, or how far I had left to go in the race. I was never near the pack, because they always ran so much faster than I did. I was feeling terrible as I ran, like I was going to die, and I was certain that I was doing terribly. I couldn't bear the thought that on my last race I was going to do poorly, and yet I was ready to keel over...
When I crossed the finish line my coach stared at his watch in disbelief. I had lopped a huge portion off my personal best. I had gone from running the five kilometer at a true snail's pace (like 35 minutes in my early races) to something like 24 minutes. (I wish I remembered the exact time, now, and for many years I did, like a lucky number...). He couldn't believe it and he said "Why weren't you running like that all along!"
It struck me all at once that maybe I had been operating under a fallacy all along. In the back of my mind I had believed that if you felt good about what you were doing, you were doing well, and if you felt bad about what you were doing, you were doing poorly. Running, more than any other sport, is about pure effort (not strategy, not skills, not luck)--pure effort, meaning that the worse you feel, the better you are probably doing, because you are pushing yourself to your limit, or beyond it. It was an epiphany.
That winter I started skiing professionally, as a ski instructor at a Pennsylvania ski mountain. And I learned to push myself in a lot of ways. To jump from heights I never would have considered before. To go faster than I'd ever gone before. To do some of the craziest-ass s**t I'd ever heard of, just in friendly competition among the instructors. Just to see if we could.
Once I started college, I started in tae kwon do. And the kid who was afraid to get hit with the kickball started doing full contact tournaments. And, as you know, I've never looked back. My excellence has always come in the individual sports, not the team sports.
I think it might have been different. I think if that Clark, NJ gym teacher had encouraged everybody to play, if he'd actually coached us instead of just letting the already-good jock kids have their way, or if my next school hadn't been so full of fight and spite that came out in the games, or if that junior high friend hadn't dragged me to track practice and had taken me to field hockey--or softball--instead... how might things have been different?
I find myself wondering if there's a sandlot around somewhere where I might jump into some games this summer. There's some Japanese ex-pats, sushi-chefs mostly, who get together on Sundays... There's a gay community softball league... Hmmm...
But I'll have to buy a glove first.
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
I know I don't leave for Tampa for another seven days, but you know what I did last night instead of my taxes? I packed for my trip. Unbelievable, I know. But there's a fully packed suitcase sitting in my room right now, full of shorts and tank tops and other hot weather clothing that I just am not going to need this week (even if it was 61 degrees in Boston today...)
I've been thinking about this trip to Spring Training so much that the other night, I was thinking about it as I drifted off to sleep, and had a dream about it. In the dream, my brother, my Dad, and me, are walking through the concrete hallways of a stadium, not quite sure where we're going. We're fairly running from one thing to the next, a hot dog stand, a souvenir vendor... not in a hurry, really, just excited, laughing, and having a good time. A few tantalizing glimpses of green field can be seen through doorways as we go along... I woke up before I could dream any actual baseball, though. I just can't even imagine what it will be like.
Hey, anyone out there know if Spring training games are broadcast on the radio? Or, more specifically, on the World Wide Web?
The Yankees are set to play intra-squad games tomorrow and Tuesday. When I told corwin this, he said "I wonder how they pick teams?" Now, I'm sure Joe Torre makes up a list of who he wants to see play, and where, and how much, but we were kind of tickled imagining it like a sand lot game. Cone and Clemens picking their teams off the bench: "You want Bernie, eh? Well, give me O'Neill..." Man, what fun. In reality, none of the five starters are scheduled to pitch. Still, it's fun to imagine.
Here's a wild idea for a screenplay. The Yankees (or it could be any team, really...) are on their way to play an exhibition game in 2001 in Puerto Rico when their plane crash lands on a deserted island in the Bermuda Triangle. Injured in the crash are their tough-as-shoe-leather manager and their aging star pitcher who is probably on his last season. In Act One they remain hopeful of rescue, but are unable to raise anyone on radio, and as they brave bad weather and establish shelter on the island, we learn of various rivalries and tensions within the team. In Act Two, the team divides into two main groups. One group thinks their only chance is to explore the island further and settle in for a long stay. The other group thinks they need to build a boat and try getting into the shipping lanes or something. (Perhaps the Cuban defector on the team advocates this--or perhaps speaking from experience, he tells them they're crazy.) These plans are quickly shown to be foolhardy and near impossible for a bunch of guys whose main skills are making round bits of cowskin fly.
To keep themselves busy, then, what do these guys do? They play ball. Many scenes here of them moving a coconut tree for a foul pole, making bases out of palm leaves, etc... Meanwhile, though, tensions get worse as the health of the injured manager and pitcher declines.
When things come to a head, the two groups of players end up duking it out on the field. As the game wears on, the pitcher rallies his strength to give advice to the young rookie pitching against the team veterans...
To give it a really Hollywood ending, of course, we have to come up with some way for them to not only resolve their conflict, but use baseball as part of their rescue--Maybe they get the attention of a passing plane by batting 500 foot bombs of flaming coconuts...
(Kevin Costner, if you're reading this, I'd be glad to develop it further...!)
Okay, maybe not. Clearly the only thing that will keep me from such fevered imaginings is real baseball....
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
So my brother Julian calls today, and we're talking about our trip to Tampa next week. "I'm thinking about bringing some baseballs," he says.
For a moment I'm thinking, will we need gloves and bats, too? Then I realize, oh, for autographs...
"But there's a problem," he tells me. "If we want these to be the kind of baseballs that we can leave in our wills, if they are going to be worth anything, they have to be the official Major League Baseball."
Leave in our wills? I think, but I say: "What's the problem with that?"
The problem is, he can't find them anywhere. All he can find are last year's balls, which were back when the National and American leagues were not united under the office of the commissioner, and had separate baseballs signed by their league presidents. The new balls are all signed by the commissioner, and they aint' got 'em yet at most of the sporting goods stores.
"I can mail order the new balls from the majorleaguebaseball.com web site, but they say it takes a week to ship." By which time we will have been in Florida several days already, and if they are late, we'll miss them entirely.
I should have guessed, I guess, that even the simplest thing like an autograph has to be an involved, vetted, tradition-bound thing in baseball.
"Maybe I should get some of last year's balls, anyway," he concludes. "But then, how many American League and how many National League balls...?"
"Or," he says, "am I thinking about this too much?"
I think the season better start soon, so we'll have something ... more substantive... to think about.
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
OK, I just had to send this to the Sporting News "Fan's View" column today:
So, John Rocker's suspension has been trimmed in half, and his fine cut from a whopping $20,000 to a paltry $500. But just because Rocker's official penalty has been lightened, doesn't mean his road to respectability is any easier.
I was going to say "road BACK TO respectability," but let's face it, Rocker was not a respectable character before this. If he was, then he wouldn't have been in the situation of having batteries and harsh words thrown at him by New York fans. The question now is, can Rocker survive without his "bad boy" image? Was the pumped-up snorting bull act necessary for those 95 mph fastballs? Or can Rocker still deliver the goods on the field even while changing his attitude off it? Just imagine Rocker as an elder statesman of baseball, able to look back on a long and storied career and maybe even comment intelligently on the "mistakes" of his youth. Think it will happen? Only if John Rocker can change "in his heart"--and in the minds of those watching.
If Rocker wants to gain respectability now, there are three places he needs to repair relations.
1) With his teammates, who have supposedly asked for a meeting to air their views and who, I would guess, are expecting Rocker to take his lumps like a man, eat crow, and apologize.
2) With Braves fans, not all of whom are white. Perhaps the only real way for him to prove himself to the fans will be to keep his mouth shut and pitch 200% every day. It's easier to forgive an athlete his human failings if he contiually commits superhuman feats (see Darryl Strawberry...).
3) With the community at large. If Rocker wants to make a gesture that would carry some actual meaning, how about putting the $20,000 he was supposed to pay in the fine and donating it to an inner city Little League team?
Let's raise the stakes even higher, how about founding a scholarship program to help minority athletes reach the major leagues? That would really be something, wouldn't it? It would be more than a gesture, it would be helping to remake baseball. Even while helping John Rocker to remake himself.
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
I don't even know where to start. It's Monday, March 13th today, and I'm in denial about the fact that I am in my office in Boston, it's 39 degrees outside, and I'm not going to see another baseball game until April 13th.
More specifically, I'm finding it hard to believe that today I'm not going to sit in the warm sun, watch Derek Jeter stretch his legs with a giant rubber band, or play catch with my brother on the beach. This trip to Spring Training was less like a vacation and more like an immersion into a different way of life. ("Florida is a state of mind" perhaps?) Yesterday Julian (my brother), corwin (my significant other), and I were playing catch on the grass above the beach, while the sun set behind us, and I thought: I can't imagine that tomorrow we're going to do anything other than get up, eat breakfast, load film into the camera, drive to another miniscule ballfield, get autographs from Yankees, watch a carefree game, and play catch on the beach before having a delicious dinner somewhere. Because that's pretty much what our routine had been for the previous week.
There's too much to tell in a single installment. Our pilgrimage to Legends Field. How Julian finally bought baseballs. How we sold one. Getting El Duque's autograph. Being unimpressed by Ken Griffey, Jr. What happened to my tongue while I was in the Yankee dugout. (Yeah, the dugout.) And so much more.
I guess I'll start at the beginning, and our March 6th hike to Winter Haven to see the Yanks trouncedby the Cleveland Indians.
My adventure starts in Orlando, where my Dad was playing golf with his buddies, and where I rented a car to be our transport to and from the many games we'd see spread around the Gulf Coast and Central Florida. Drove two hours from there through Tampa to Crystal Beach, where Mom and Dad recently bought their retirement home. Being as they ain't retired yet, we used it as a vacation home instead. Dad and I had a nice dinner at a local restaurant and hit the sack early. The plan for the next day was to snag my brother at the Tampa airport and then head directly to Winter Haven for the Indians game, which started at 1pm.
Now, according to the Sporting News' Spring Training Guide, it takes one hour to go from Legends Field (which is right by the Tampa airport) to Chain of Lakes Park where the Indians play. According to Mapquest, it should take an hour and forty five minutes. Often Mapquest estimates are way off, usually by overestimating. But not this time. After rendezvousing with Julian, and futzing around with the rental car people to add him as a driver, and then driving to the middle of nowhere Florida... it was close to half past noon by the time we got stopped dead in traffic about a half mile from the field.
At twenty minutes before the first pitch, the anxiety level in the car began to hit critical levels. We jockeyed in the traffic trying to determine if there was a better lane to be in. But everyone on that road was trying to get to the same place. We flipped the radio dial to see if by chance the game was being broadcast. It wasn't, as far as we could tell. I vaguely contemplated pretending the car was broken down and just walking the rest of the way... So close, and yet so far!
I turned to Julian then, and said "Here it is, the first baseball we're going to see in months and we're all afraid we're going to miss it."
"Yeah, I can't believe we're getting all greedy about it," Julian laughed.
"I mean," I went on, "really we should be ecstatic about any baseball, right?"
This would turn out to be true, given how badly we lost, and yet how happy we were.
The traffic mishegoss, as it turned out, was due to lack of parking at Chain of Lakes Park itself, which just didn't have the capacity for the sold out crowd, and we ended up at the roller rink across the highway, where they gladly charged each overflow car $3.
Even having bought our tickets months in advance, the best tickets we were able to get were in the bleachers. but did we mind? Heck no! We were sitting about ten feet from a three foot high brick wall. On the other side of the wall, in folding chairs, sat the entire Yankee bullpen.
By the time we sat down, it was the top of the third, and David Cone was on the mound. He was approaching his 45 pitch limit, though, and after walking Omar Vizquel, went to 3-1 on Roberto Alomar... then Alomar rocked a home run out of the little ballpark, and Coney had had enough. Really that wasn't so bad compared to the fifth inning though, when Jeff Juden got up to pitch. At least, we're pretty sure it was Juden, since the Indians' scorecard rosters were not 100% accurate... Juden walked Vizquel again, Alomar hit a single, then he walked Ramirez to load the bases...
A lot of Yankee fans were in the bleachers with us, and we got all excited when Allen Watson began to throw in the bullpen. Really, it's a euphemism to call it a bullpen--it was a lump of dirt in front of the wall with a worn out spot about 60 feet away where a catcher could squat on the grass. Watson was so close to us while he was warming up that you could hear the air hiss as he threw his fastball.
We figured that if Watson could pitch out of a bases loaded situation in October, he could do it in March. He went to the mound. Then big Jim Thome came to the plate. Watson went up on him 0-2. The Yanks fans around us began to buzz, though none of us were organized enough to start a two-strike clap.
Then Watson worked a full count, and then, walked in a run. What!
In a regular season game, you never would have seen the kind of bloodbath that followed, because Stottlemeyer or Torre would have been out there to the mound and pulling pitchers out of there long before they'd get socked for five, six, seven runs... But not in the spring. With the bases still loaded, Sexson whipped a double. Then Fryman walked. Then Whiten hit a double. Then Diaz hit a double. At some point Watson was out and Jay Tessmer came in, but you know, it really didn't matter. 8 of 9 Indians in the lineup scored that inning.
Normally, that type of situation can induce apoplexy in Yankee fans. But not in Florida, and not in Spring training. What seemed to matter most was that we were there, sitting at a field smaller than a lot of high school stadiums, enjoying the sun and watching Jeter and Knoblauch and Cone and Posada walk right past us on the way to the bus after they turned the field over to the rookies and prospects for the final innings of the rout. No one ever went out to visit Darrell Einertson on the mound when he was in trouble--they just let 'em play, see what happens.
In the top of the ninth, the Yanks had their last at bats--which really confused those of us who have never seen the Yanks in an "away" setting. In fact, it was generally confusing to us not to clap when the majority of the crowd clapped. Fortunately, we weren't completely surrounded by the enemy--there were a lot of blue #2 shirts in our section. Felix Jose, an outfield prospect, came up first in the 9th and singled. Our section went wild, starting the "Lets-go, Yan-kees" cheer/clap. Went through about eight rounds of it. Then someone behind us, Indians fan or Yankee fan we don't know, shouted out "Wake-up, Yan-kees" and we al laughed. It was about the loudest we, or any of the crowd, had been all day. There were times when it was so quiet, it was like watching a tennis match. Quiet enough to hear the fielders actually calling for the ball.
We walked back to the roller rink suntanned, relaxed, sanguine about baseball and the state of the world, even despite the Yanks "perfect" 0-5 record. After the game, Joe Torre signed autographs for a bevy of kids under the age of twelve before getting on the bus. Between the tininess of the field (seats 6000), the closeness to the field, the quietness of the crowd, and the game's complete lack of intensity, it was about the furthest thing from a big league game I had ever experienced.
The next day (March 7), though, we'd go to Legends Field, and it would be, as they say, a whole new ballgame. (Tune in tomorrow for the next installment, starring El Duque, Goose Gossage, and Regis Philbin. Yes, that Regis Philbin.)
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
On March 7th we got up early with the intention of getting to Legends Field in time to see morning batting practice. We really didn't know what to expect, only that we'd heard that practice started 3 hours prior to games. So we pulled our rental car on the gargantuan parking field adjacent to Raymond James Stadium (they tell me they play pro football there) at the bright and early hour of ten a.m.
We went up the pedestrian bridge to cross to the Legends Field side and caught our first sight of the Yankees winter home. "It's a mini-Yankee Stadium!" I exclaimed, and it is: same blue seats, same old-time facade along the roof, only it's one fifth the size. After the dusty, low-rent digs of the Cleveland Indians, the 10,000 seat concrete coliseum in front of us looked quite impressive. Legends Field is also surrounded by beautiful landscaping ("xeriscaping" using native plants and watered with an ecologically sound water-reclamation system...), two practice fields that looked nicer than some big league fields, a large Yankee souvenir shop, and a mini-monument park: a "field of legends" showing all the retired numbers with plaques.
Two of the retired numbers, 44 and 23, we'd see again later in the day, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
We were also happy to find a large, clean, public restroom by the practice fields. Other Yanks fans wandered around and in and out of the shop. Aha--the shop. Julian resolved his baseball dilemma (see a few entries back) by buying New York Yankees commemorative baseballs--they bear the American League Prez's name and the Yankee red, white, and blue tophat logo. I continued to be astounded at how expensive the items like name jerseys and sweatshirts are ($70! As the Scooter would say, Holy Cow!).
After killing time in the shop, and wandering around a bit, Julian went up to the ticket window to ask what time the gate opened. "Five fifteen," he was told. "Five fifteen?" "Yeah, the game is at 7:15pm."
Oh. Well, we wanted to arrive early, but not eight hours early...! We promptly turned around and headed for the beach for a lovely afternoon in Dunedin, figuring to return around 4:30 and try to catch practice then.
As we were packing up our stuff on the beach to leave, some of our napkins blew away in the wind. I chased them over to the blanket of the couple next to us. They looked up and saw the three of us, all wearing our Yankee caps, and said "You guys Yankee fans?"
"Could you tell?" I replied.
"Going to see some games this week?" the guy asked.
"Yeah, we're going to Legends Field tonight, in fact."
"Oh, you're going to love it," the wife enthused. "It's just like a mini-Yankee stadium. And they practice right out on the field--you're like ten feet from them. Go early and get autographs."
We assured them that was exactly what we were on our way to do.
She was not wrong. We pulled into the parking field, this time manned by a small army of Adidas-shirted staff (I wondered if they were volunteers?) and crossed the pedestrian bridge once again. At the end of the bridge, a vendor was just setting up his boxes to sell the program. Only two bucks! We bought two, so both Julian and I could have one. It's a very nice program, too, four color glossy printing, perfect bound, featuring color photos of all the players and their career stats. Way nicer than any of the other programs we'd acquire on the trip, and cheaper, too.
Below the walkway on the right was the seven-mound wide bullpen. On the left, a patch of grass fenced off from a walkway and the main practice field. About two dozen fans were already there along the walkway, balls and Sharpies in their hands. It looked like we had come to the right place.
About five minutes later, players started to make their way along the walkway to the field. Some of them walked behind a taller fence, about two feet further away. It looked like mostly rookies and prospects coming out first. Some of the savvier fans also knew the names of the rookies--or, more importantly, were able to recognize them by face. (As they walked toward us, we couldn't see the numbers on their backs.) Clay Bellinger, who played utility infielder last year, was the first player I recognized. He crossed to the field first, and then came to the high fence and began to autograph. Julian and I both got his autograph on our programs, and then went back to the low fence.
Then the players we knew better began to come out. There went Andy Pettitte. Mariano Rivera. Goose Gossage. Goose Gossage! There's more gray in that handlebar moustache, but he was still the Goose. Scott Brosius. Jeter and Knoblauch. Roger Clemens. Fans were yelling things to them--several of the guys waved back or yelled back answers as they went by. I took a number of photos of the guys walking by, but my hands were shaking so much from the excitement (and fans jostling me) that most of them came out blurry.
Then came El Duque, Orlando Hernandez, who came right along the low fence and signed autographs. There were quickly fifty or sixty people at the fence, and he couldn't sign for everyone. At first he signed a few balls, but then appeared to be picking out the more unique items in the crowd. He signed a photo for a man a few elbows down from me. I held out my program and he signed it right at his photo/stats page. I mumbled a few awed words to him in Spanish --basically, thanks, and good luck in the season this year--and he smiled and then went to join his teammates already on the field.
Yogi Berra went zipping by in a golf cart. Yogi Berra! Then Reggie Jackson! And Don Mattingly! There's three retired numbers right there. Julian got the Goose's autograph while I watched the players start their warm ups.
The whole team, including all the non-roster invitees and so forth, comes to about sixty guys. They split into two circles on the field, the group closer to the fan's patch of grass being the "name" players. Nearest to us were Jorge Posada, Shane Spencer, Knoblauch, Jeter, and El Duque. Each player followed the instructions of a conditioning coach in the center of the circle. They did back stretches, windmilled their arms--Dad did the exercises along with them. Then they got down in the grass and each player used a giant rubber band to help stretch his legs. (Note: Chuck Knoblauch looks like he's a good sight more flexible than any other guy on the team.) When they were done, Roger Clemens was the first one to lie on his back, stretch the rubber band over the soles of his feet, and shoot the thing into the center of the circle. Several other Yankees followed. El Duque didn't release both hands at the same time and the rubber band flopped at his feet. The guys around him kidded him about it.
The next order of business in the warmups was a massive game of catch. Thirty pairs of guys go their gloves and started throwing back and forth. Knoblauch and Brosius were partners and it was obvious they were having a good time, laughing and smiling even when they got too far apart to hear what each other were saying anymore. They made being baseball players look like the absolute best thing in the world, which maybe it is.
Then the first group went to the cage to take batting practice, infielders Knoblauch, Jeter, Spencer, and Brosius. We followed.
On the practice field, unlike the main field, there's only about ten yards separating the batting cage from the fence/edge of the field. We stood at the fence, close enough to hear what the guys were saying to each other as they stood around waiting their turn in the cage.
I had to keep putting Lifesavers into my mouth to keep it from hanging open. Jeter pulled five rocketing shots in a row to the opposite field, then started turning on the ball and laying line drives into the left field gap. He and Knoblauch were like line drive machines, spraying uncatchable balls all over the field. In the next group we had Tino Martinez, Paul I'Neill, Jorge Posda, and Jim Leyritz. Posada batted lefty. Leyritz was taking DH swings and sending balls into the parking lot.
Then came an outfielders group, Ricky Ledee, Bernie Williams... I can't remember who else. Bernie warmed up hitting a ball off a tee into a net right at the fence, facing the crowd. I went to try to get a picture, but with the sun setting my flash came on, and I figured the last thing he wanted was blue flash spots in his eyes while trying to hit the ball. (No sooner had I returned to my spot on the first base side of the fence than I saw someone else do exactly that...)
Reggie Jackson and Chris Chambliss put heir heads together, giving Posada advice. Then along came Joe Torre, accompanied by a short, gray-haired guy in pinstripes, not a practice uniform. The fact that they were followed by a swarm of reporters and photographers seemed to indicate this was someone famous, but who? Not Yogi Berra, not Don Larsen... it was, Regis Philbin! (click here to see a photo of Regis, Joe Torre, and Bernie Williams) That was obvious as soon as he said something to the crowd. "I'm here to save the Yankees!" he said. People began yelling to him about wanting a million dollars...
As the next group came up, and Willie Randolph took over pitching BP, Regis borrowed a batting helmet from someone (Shane Spencer, I think) and got in the cage. People were fairly impressed with the fact that he could hit the ball at all! Willie didn't look like he was soft-tossing either. Reege hit a few out of the infield.
Later, he would be introduced at the game to throw out the first pitch. And he threw from the mound. Who'dda thunk it? Garth Brooks, eat your heart out.
As BP was beginning to wind down, we went to get our seats in the stadium. We were stopped by security guards at the top of the steps: no outside food allowed in Legends Field. What! I said to the security guard: "You know, they let us bring our own food into YANKEE STADIUM..."
"I don't make the rules, ma'am," he replied.
So we sent Julian back to the car with our bag of munchies. Dad and I stood at the top of the steps and waited for him. And waited. And waited. "Do you think he's getting autographs?" I said, thinking that was the only thing that could have been taking him so long.
As it turned out, he'd come very close to getting Derek Jeter's autograph along that same walkway as the players left the field. But he didn't get picked. Julian's theory now is that the optimal number of people to have at the fence with you is four, as the players often seem to go to about every fourth person. Also, women and kids are more likely to get picked (not just by Jeter).
Anyway, we returned empty-handed, and into the stadium we went. We'd have more adventures in autograph hounding later in the week.
My impression up to that point was sort of contradictory. On the one hand, it seemed like the players were really relaxed, having fun, but on the other hand the whole practice set-up also had the feel of a produced entertainment experience. There's a reason they call the big leagues "The Show." Maybe my conclusion is that the Yankees are the most comfortable when they are on stage. The psychology of the team is such that they perform better when there's pressure and spectators. Maybe.
Once we were inside Legends Field it was clear this was The Show. Mini-Yankee Stadium featured a mini-Diamond Vision monitor in center field, and many other features of a big league game at Yankee Stadium. From pre-programmed game music to the intro songs they played for each player as he came up to bat, from the 'shell game' between innings to the "YMCA" dance the ground crew does after the sixth inning. Actually, the ground crew for the Indians (and later in the week, the Reds) also did the YMCA dance while dragging the infield. But they didn't do it very well (a little out of sync, etc...). All this made me wonder, do groundskeepers, like umpires, start in the minors and work their way up to the majors?
It's clear why Steinbrenner would like to build a revamped Yankee Stadium, though, since I'm sure he thinks it would be more like Legends (only bigger). But the truth of the matter is that one of the reasons Legends is so pristine and clean is that they only play a dozen or so games there. Also, it's only five years old. We also couldn't help but notice that the crowd was overwhelmingly white, which is quite different from the Bronx experience of Yankee Stadium. I would have thought there would be more Floridian latinos there, at least. But the crowd seemed mostly like families on vacation, like ours, and "ex-patriate" New Yorkers now living in Florida.
After the day before's 15 run debacle (and all the other losses of the spring), this also felt much more like a real game. There were no bases-loaded rallies or other humiliations, and also no errors in the game. If you don't care about what actually happened in the game skip the next paragraph.
The Twins got off to a hot start, when Jacque Jones hit a triple to lead off the first. Cristian Guzman scored him with a sac fly. Matt Lawton then went to first with a walk, to second on a passed ball, and to third when Butch Huskey singled. Corey Koskie scored him with another single, while Huskey was forced out at second. Hot rookie pitching stud Jake Westbrook (who pitched the spring opener when El Duque and Ed Yarnall went down with back spasms) then got himself out of the inning getting Javier Valentin called out on strikes. The Yanks responded with two runs of their own, hitting four singles in row, Jeter, O'Neill, Williams, and Leyritz. The Twins scored twice in the second, Midre Cummings got on with a double, and then Jacque Jones hit another triple! Guzman scored him with a single. The Yanks needed a rally now, but Roberto Kelly went down looking, and Tom Pagnozzi went down swinging. Fortunately, Scott Brosius homered for a single run shot. the game remained close, with no pitcher facing more than 5 batters in an inning, and no more than 2 runs being scored in an inning. After 3 innings, Westbrook was relieved by Mendoza (coming back from bronchitis) who pitched for two, then Todd Erdos took two, Ryan Bradley took one, and Mr. Automatic, Mariano Rivera took the ninth. What a treat to see him strike out the last two Twins he faced. Unfortunately, despite a ninth inning leadoff homer by catcher prospect Chris Turner, the Yanks came up short, 7 runs to 5.
But who cares if they lost? It was a pretty exciting game, and we were on "home turf" once again, cheering familiar cheers and talking with the fans around us. George Steinbrenner sat on the "porch" of his luxury box a few yards from us and talked with the fans in our section. One guy yelled "Hey George, how come we didn't get Griffey?" "'Cause I'm broke!" Steinbrenner yelled back. Regis Philbin joined him in the cool Tampa air and also joked with the crowd.
At the end of the game, we wondered if they would play "New York, New York." "No," Julian said, "they play 'Tampa, Tampa.'" As it turned out, the game ended with a fireworks show in centerfield, and they did play New York, New York (the Sinatra version, as usual). We left the stadium singing it, as usual, with other fans, as we walked to our cars. "The Show" was over for another day.
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
Among the games we did NOT see in our week in Florida were the Red Sox game in Fort Myers and the Braves game at Legends Field. Despite my best and earliest efforts, both games were sold out before I could get tickets. So technically, Day Three of our vacation was a Day Without Baseball, as the team went to Fort Myers and we didn't. Dad played golf--Julian and I explored the sun coast searching for a water park, didn't find one, and played mini-golf and went to the beach instead.
The next day, though, we were scheduled to see the game in Clearwater, where my mom went to high school (graduated in 1960). Now, if any of you have read the rest of my web site, you know I'm a professional writer. Most of what I do is fiction, but I do the occasional journalistic endeavor, like interviewing author Octavia Butler for Sojourner, or writing a feature for Publishers Weekly magazine. What you probably don't know is I started my freelance writing career when I was still in high school, writing for teen magazines like Superteen and Teen Machine. It would take a long time to explain how all of that came about, but suffice to say for now that I did a lot of celebrity hounding in those days,and got to meet and interact with a lot of pop stars who I (and teen girls across America) idolized. (I mentioned Menudo and Ricky Martin many entries ago, and I worked at radio stations, too.)
If you haven't figured it out by now, I got bitten by the Derek Jeter bug back in 1999, and I thought, well, if I'm going all the way to Florida, what is the chance that I might be able to do some journalism regarding the Yankees and Jeter, and possibly meet him?
I won't go into all the details here, but I got in touch with my old magazine, Superteen, about whether they would be interested. The editor is now working on a new magazine, special feature on teen health and fitness, and she LOVED the idea of a Q&A with Jeter, his fitness regimen, and so on, for that magazine. I had been faxing the Yankee Media Relations office for weeks about it, but had not been able to confirm anything, and was getting quite anxious, as you can probably guess.
What ended up happening was, in Clearwater, which is another tiny high-school size stadium (in fact, the parking fee went to benefit the C.H.S. marching band boosters...), I met up with the media relations director for the Yankees. No, I still didn't get the interview, but they had me sit in the dugout for about an hour during BP, and take all the candid photos I could.
As it turned out, that wasn't as many photos as I would have liked, because something happened to me that has never happened to me before. Not backstage at Madison Square Garden, not in the air studio of WPLJ, not backstage at MTV, or any of the many other places my reporting has taken me. What happened was: I was starstruck. At first, I was OK, talking with Don Zimmer about his knee operation and a nice fellow named Arthur, who had started his journalistic career as a copy boy in the 1940s for $11 per week, and now works for the Yankees. I was sitting next to the rack of bats as Bernie Williams, Chuck Knoblauch, and a lot of other players came in and out. Bernie smiled and said hi and I said hi back.
Then Jeter came in from the field, and it became impossible to speak.
I'd never felt anything like it before. My heart was pounding so hard, that I felt like if I opened my mouth my tongue was going to swell up like a balloon. I had several opportunities when I could have stood up, held out my hand and introduced myself. But I couldn't even move. I managed to squeeze off a few shots with my camera, but with the bright sky behind him and the dark dugout around me, they didn't come out very well. Plus, my hands shook. (Click here to see one of the Jeter closeups. I retouched the glare with Photoshop a bit.)
Wow.
When I told this story to my mother she couldn't believe it. "After all you've been though, you got starstruck?"
Yup. Now I'm trying to follow up and do the teen fitness interview, which they wouldn't have let me do that day anyway, by phone. Professionally speaking, I still haven't fulfilled my obligation to the editor. But speaking as a fan, what an incredible privilege it was to sit there and watch the greats walk by. No, I didn't ask for autographs, and I didn't really take many other pictures, though I have a nice one of Joe Torre and Don Zimmer conspiring about something, and two good candids of Jeter getting a cup of water and picking out a bat. I got a not too bad one of Reggie Jackson coming in to the dugout as well. (Follow the links to see them.) Then BP was over, and I went back to the stands to sit with Dad and Julian.
I'd heard the details of the Yanks win over the Sox in Fort Myers while I was in the dugout. Pettitte retired ten batters in a row, apparently. At last! Th-e-e-e-e-e Yankees win! But we hadn't been there to see it. Could they do it to the Phillies, too?
Apparently not. Although El Duque pitched two shutout innings (one walk, two strikeouts) and the Yanks had scattered hits throughout the game, the only Yankees to cross the plate were in the fourth, Bernie Williams tripled and then came in when first base prospect Nick Johnson doubled immediately after. Johnson went to third on a wild pitch and scored on a sac fly (I think it was Posada who batted, but it might have been Pagnozzi--I forgot to note when they changed the lineup. See, it's spring training for spectators, too--each successive game the scorecard got neater and more organized...). With the game now 2-0 Yanks, the Phillies woke up, and hammered poor Darrell Einertson for five earned runs--a double, a single, another single, then a home run from Rob Ducey. Still, he didn't look as bad as Jeff Juden had the other day--we'd heard by then that Juden was being released from his major league contract. Jeff Nelson, Mariano Rivera (again!), and Domingo Jean combined to keep the Phillies scoreless the rest of the game, but the Yanks offense was never able to come alive. Ricky Ledee went 0 for 4--Jeter was the only batter to get more than one hit. Ah well, it's only the spring.
What it looked like to us was that the Yanks weren't really playing as a team. With each guy working on his own individual stuff, getting ready, learning new skills, et cetera, the team doesn't really pull together. Also it looked like when you mixed stars and prospects together on the field, there were various miscues. The rookies looked a lot better when they all played together, as they would show us the following night in Sarasota and held Ken Griffey, Jr. 0 for 3. But you'll have to wait to hear that story tomorrow.
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
After the game in Clearwater, we dropped Dad off at the airport and he went back to New Jersey (he'd already been on vacation when we met him, playing golf in Orlando, so we had to let him get back to work). That evening we were supposed to pick up corwin (my significant other) and Heather (Julian's), but as things turned out, Heather's flight to Atlanta was delayed, meaning she'd miss her connection. Instead, the airline switched her to a flight the next day, but that wouldn't get in to Tampa until five in the afternoon--about the time we hoped to arrive in Sarasota to see BP. At least corwin came in, but a bit delayed also, meaning our only food choices by the time he arrived were Denny's or Bennigan's. (We chose Bennigan's.)
Heather's mom is a travel agent, so, savvy to the ways of airlines, she went early to the airport and got herself on a flight to Orlando. Julian was then to drive out there to pick her up at like 10am. It was a split squad day for the Yanks, with another game against the Phillies, this one at Legends, and then that night in Sarasota against the Ken Griffey Jr. Reds. Joe Torre was going to manage both games, I knew from overhearing him discussing it with a staffer in the dugout yesterday. corwin was dead asleep, having not been able to get to sleep until the wee hours of the morning. So at 8am, Julian and I set off toward Tampa--he dropped me off at Legends Field to try to pursue the interview further, and off he went to Orlando to get Heather.
It was a brilliant, sunny morning, in the 70s -- in fact, if I haven't pointed it out before, the weather was perfect every day we were there. Florida was having a drought, so bright sun, low humidity, comfortable temperatures (in the 50s at night) every single day. I am so brown right now.
I tried calling in to Media Relations to tell them I was there and didn't get anywhere on the interview. So I went back out to that patch of grass between the clubhouse and the practice field, and spent the next two hours having fun with Yankee fans. If they did what they had done the night before, I'd probably snag an autograph or two, maybe some photos. The fellow standing next to me at the fence was from Springfield, MA and we commiserated over how tough it is to be a Yankee fan in Massachusetts. He had a batting helmet on with about twenty autographs already on it in silver outliner pen. A guy and his kid nephew came over and bought a baseball from him--two actually, one for autographs, and one to play catch with while waiting. Two women from New York wearing Derek Jeter and Paul O'Neill t-shirts came and showed us the great photos they had taken at the victory parade in 1998, with disposable cameras, no less. ("It was all about getting up at six o'clock in the morning," one of them said. "And about being tall.")
But the best baseball player we saw that morning was a three year old playing with his dad. This kid was amazing. His dad would stand with a small size souvenir bat about ten yards away. The kid would then go through a routine and pitch to him--he'd throw the ball into his glove, scratch his crotch, set, look at the batter, wind up, and throw. He had picked up all these mannerisms of big league pitchers! It was quite amazing to watch, and if he was old enough to write his name, I bet someone there would have had him sign a ball, just to see where he'd be in twenty years...
The Yankees, though, they had faked us out. They practiced inside the stadium that day--we could see them in the outfield--and the Phillies did their warmups on the far side practice field. The field where we'd seen Regis Philbin and the jaw-dropping BP remained empty. At about 11:15, when the main gates into Legends opened for seating, a staffer came and locked the gate to that practice field, and we all gave up.
Julian wasn't due back from Orlando to get me until noon at the earliest, so I poked around the souvenir shop some more (now crowded with fans and doing a very brisk business, with every register manned), and listened to the steel drummer they had outside to entertain the crowd. The Show was on. I could have bought a $10 ticket and gone inside to look around and try to get autographs over the dugout, but by that time I was tired of standing around. That guy and his nephew had the right idea, I decided, playing catch... While I was sitting there, the nice couple we'd met on the beach recognized me and came and said hi. Did I mention we made friends with Yankee fans pretty much everywhere we went all week?
Eventually Julian navigated his way back to the stadium and picked me up. We went back to the house and collected corwin, and by 3pm in the afternoon (when the Yankee bus was due to leave Tampa), we were on the road to Sarasota.
When we got to Ed Smith Stadium, they weren't letting people in yet, and we'd beat the Yankees there. Some Reds were on a practice field outside the stadium, but not knowing their numbers and not being able to see their faces (we were behind the outfield fence) we couldn't really tell who was out there. Ed Smith Stadium, it turns out, also doesn't allow outside food or drink in, and so we had a little tailgate in the parking lot and ate our beef jerky and hard boiled eggs. The crime of not being allowed to bring our own food in was that the concession options inside were rather meager. Hot dogs, cotton candy, snow cones, and lemonade, basically. At least at Legends, there was cuban food, and an Outback Steakhouse stand, among other things. Fortunately, we planned to eat dinner after the game...
Then in came the Yankee bus. If you think rookies are hard to recognize in uniform, how about in street clothes with no numbers? We knew most of the regulars had played that day at Legends, but Bernie Williams, Jorge Posada, Shane Spencer and Ricky Ledee were there, as was our now favorite utility infielder, Clay Bellinger (for signing those autographs). Ramiro Mendoza was the starter, and provided us with the incredibly weird sight of seeing him take BP. (Even weirder, Don Mattingly pitched BP!)
The Reds, meanwhile, started their big guns: Barry Larkin, Ken Griffey Jr., Dante Bichette, et cetera. We were prepared for another bloodbath like Winter Haven. Especially when the reds led off the bottom of the first with back to back doubles, and then after Griffey struck out (ha ha!) two more doubles!
But no.
The rookie Yankees, not overshadowed by too many stars, rose to the occasion and played well as a team. Posada was looking impressive behind the plate, too: you could see he'd really worked on throwing off the mask and intimidating baserunners. I still miss Joe Girardi, I have to say, but Posada may have the stuff... And Mendoza seemed to go up 0-1 on every batter, sneaking that first strike in every time.
The Yanks tied it in the second with a single from Felix Jose, and then Nick Johnson was hit by a pitch. Rafael Bournigal hit a double to score them. The Reds came back and scored two more in the fourth, on two more doubles, Sean Casey and Eddie Taubensee. But the Yanks again responded in kind in the top of the fifth, when Alfonso Soriano walked, and then Bernie Williams hit a two run homer. It was a beautiful shot. From our incredibly great seats right behind home plate, you could see from the moment the ball left the bat that it had the right angle and power to be outta there. (Or, as corwin later said, as soon as the ball left the pitcher's hand...) So, tied again. There was a tense moment in the sixth, when Felix Jose, playing left, made an incredible play for a ball and seemed to injure himself. He was slow in getting up and Bernie Williams ran over from center to see if he was okay. The trainer then came out and they made Felix and Bernie do a little catch before leaving him in the game. Felix made the next out, too, and also the first out of the seventh--the other two were strikeouts by pitcher Brandon Knight.
In fact the Yanks pitchers held the Reds there, combining for six strikeouts and only three earned runs (one unearned on a fielding error). Excited as we were to get to see Ken Griffey Jr., we were even more excited to see he was held hitless: struck out, grounded out, and flied out. The Yanks would win it when Donzell McDonald came up in the eighth, singled, then stole second, and was scored when Felix Jose, the real hero of the game after that play, hit a double, or maybe it was a fielding error by the Reds left fielder Dmitri Young. (Just a touch of irony there, for the guy in Jose's position to not be able to make the same amazing play Jose had...). Either way, that put the Yanks up 5-4, and although Reds pitcher Danny Graves got everyone to ground out in the ninth, Todd Erdos kept the Reds scoreless in the ninth. For a moment we were afraid that Chris Stynes long ball was a home run, but no, it was the final out, caught in right field by Ricky Ledee.
We'd finally seen a win!
After the game we watched a strange Ed Smith Stadium ritual, but one that was really charming, too. They let kids of all ages line up during the ninth inning near the first base dugout, and after the field was clear, they had them run the bases. Everything from toddlers who could barely run to young little league studs (and girls, too) took rounds of the bases. One kid coming in pretty fast was encouraged by the crowd to "Slide! Slide!" but he slid about 45 feet too early and had to get up and run the rest of the way to home plate. We were too distracted by this spectacle to do any autograph hounding, and when it was done, we went into downtown Sarasota for an incredibly great meal at the famous Columbia Restaurant. Good food, good friends, good wine, good sport. We could have stayed there forever.
Still to come, Heather meets George Steinbrenner, Cecilia plays her first game of catch in twenty years (twenty years!), and Ed Yarnall gets torpedoed.
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
So, as mentioned above, we couldn't get Braves tickets. And as with the Red Sox game we missd,the Yanks creamed 'em (this time like 24 to 7 or something). Apparently, the Braves had a split squad day, and sent all their rookies to Legends Field. Steinbrenner reportedly went "ballistic" over the dis, but hey, the poor Braves. Smoltz is out for the year with a torn elbow, and they're still smarting from the four game sweep in October that had Yankee fans doing the "tomahawk chop" with brooms at Yankee Stadium. Ouch.
Instead, we slept late (aaaaaah! mmmmm! the luxury...) and then went to Clearwater Beach, where the sand is pure white soft, and the water is, as the name would imply, clear. I brought my glove with me, and one of our still-not-yet-autographed Yankee baseballs. (Oops, rewind--I forgot to mention at the beginning of the week I finally got a baseball glove. We had to make several trips to Wal-Mart with my Dad to get things for the house, lightbulbs, a frying pan, fire extinguisher, sun block, etc.... and one day while in there I noticed last year's gloves on "Clearance" sale. And there was one small enough for me--in fact, all they had left were small gloves and lefty gloves. So Dad bought me one for only $14!) corwin and I wanted to play catch, I think almost to see if we could. We had been watching the Yanks practice last night in Sarasota, and I described to him earlier in the week seeing Jeter and Knoblauch playing a game of long toss in which they tried not to move at all. Knobby could hold his glove in the middle of his chest, and Jeter could toss it from quite far away (Knoblauch standing sort of near the plate and Jeter way beyond third base along the left field foul line) right into Knoblauch's glove. Knoblauch could do the same, which left us wondering why they weren't working on short toss, i.e. from second base to first, which is what Chuck seems to have trouble with...
Anyway, with only one glove, and a hard baseball, we could only stand about thirty yards apart at most, and toss. I discovered I catch better (with the glove on) across my body on the right than I do on the left, where I have trouble with depth perception. When corwin was wearing the glove, I caught like an egg toss I remember seeing once, with soft hands, easing the ball down out of the air. I had to or it would sting like the dickens on my bare palms! I discovered I could throw left or right at that distance, which was kind of weird to discover. corwin didn't even notice when I threw with my left until I pointed it out.
We would go for sometimes eight or nine catches in a row before one of us would throw the ball away, or miss a catch and go running in the sand for it. "They make it look so easy," corwin said at one point. But I didn't actually feel like we sucked at it. Considering that was the first time in twenty years that I caught a ball in a glove, or threw one to be caught, I was pretty pleased with the fact that I am a lot better at it now than I was when I was twelve. Years of martial arts has improved eye-hand coordination, and my arm is stronger. In fact, my arm didn't even hurt. (Typing all these journal entries, that's what hurts my arm...)
So the day without baseball wasn't entirely without baseball. That night we had dinner reservations at a fancy restaurant in town (Mise En Place), and had another extremely delicious meal that couldn't be beat. It was hard to believe that our last day of baseball was coming up--in fact, we weren't even thinking of it at all as we rolled home giddy with pleasure and happiness.
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
Dunedin's stadium (Grant Field) was the closest to the house of all the places we went. It was about seven miles, actually, so even though we went early to the game to see BP and fielding practice, we didn't have to leave very early. We did our best to eat up the food in the house for breakfast (since we couldn't leave any perishables), and thus fortified by scrambled eggs and bacon and toast, we went to the park at around ten a.m.
When we arrived, they weren't letting people in yet, but we could stand at a high fence (ten feet high I would guess) along where the Yankees would walk from the clubhouse to the field. I can't even remember now who we saw go along there, besides our pal Clay Bellinger, and all the coaches. A fairly old fella (I'd guess late sixties?) with a camera around his neck came up behind us and asked if we thought it was a good spot for autographs. At the time, Chambliss and a few other coaches were standing there, trying out some kind of new-fangled weight attached to a kind of bat-like handle... apparently the two guys on our side of the fence were trying to convince them to buy them or start using them with the team. A few fans asked Chambliss for an autograph and he said "Not now." We passed this word on to our elderly friend--not now, but we suspected we'd have chances inside. Julian had been to Dunedin before and had gotten something signed then.
They started letting the crowd in shortly thereafter, and we joined the then thin group at the top of the Yankee dugout to watch BP and hound for autographs. I took a ton of pictures of Jeter stretching for the teen fitness article, since they were right there along the first base line. My hands didn't shake this time.
Heather, it turned out, was the most successful at getting autographs. Where we were standing, right above the bat rack in the dugout, we could see the players up close as they came in and out. Jimmy Leyritz signed one of our balls and a whole bunch of others when he finished BP. Tim Raines, also, signed the same ball: we started calling it the "DH" ball. On the other ball, Heather got Joe Torre. Then the announcers, Michael Kaye and John Sterling (the "the-e-e-e-e-e-e Yankees win!" guy) came out, and we got them on that ball, too. Then George Steinbrenner came down to take his prime seat in the first row, and Heather ran down and got his, too, on that ball. (By the way, I've got to say Steinbrenner looked like he was in great shape. Television really isn't flattering to him at all--he looks much better in person.) Heather's was the last one he signed before saying he wanted to sit down and enjoy eating a hot dog. People seemed to respect that.
The most excitement for the fans though came when Jeter finished BP. Before he'd started, a young boy (twelve years old?) took a black bat out of a souvenir case and handed it to Jeter. Jeter took BP with the bat, and then brought it back to the kid. Talk about something special! Then one of the fans next to us told a story about how one of the Yankee coaches--I forget now if it was Don Zimmer or Mel Stottlemeyer--had Babe Ruth's autograph on his glove, and he played with that glove till it fell apart. An autograph is a talisman that proves the player is real, and maybe rubs off some of that player's magic on us. We were all pretty much in agreement that the value and worth of the autographs we got had nothing to do with the "resale value" of the items, and everything to do with how important the Yankees and these players were to us personally.
Which brings me to what happened to our third ball, which we had played catch with and scuffed up the day before. Our elderly friend from outside jokingly said he was going to stick with us, and squeezed off a lot of film there at the dugout behind us. Then he decided he wanted to try for autographs as well, after we'd gotten Torre and Leyritz. "Well, we do have this one scuffed ball..."
"I'll buy it from you, I don't care if it's scuffed," he said. "How much do you want for it?"
Now, we'd paid $6 for it at Legends Field, and we told him so. I was going to suggest five, but then he said "Here, ten dollars, that's good, right?" Sure! Julian pocketed the ten and gave him the ball. (It wasn't too badly scuffed, just a few brown streaks from the new glove.)
"Authentic Yankee fans played catch with this ball," I said to him seriously. "Yesterday, on Clearwater Beach." He beamed back at me. I lost track of him after that and don't know if he ever did get a name onto the ball, but hey, real Yankee fans put love into that ball and that's worth something.
Meanwhile, a little girl, really young, sing-songed "Mis-ter Je-ter!" and he went to her and signed for her. This started a flurry of requests. "One at a time," he said. He signed about four more things, some balls tossed to him over the top of the dugout, and so on, before someone -- I never saw exactly who in the throng -- got overeager and threw a ball when he wasn't ready and hit him with it. At that point he walked away. I happened to be taking a picture at the moment--click here to see it.
The shit that fan took for having ruined it for everybody was quite intense. "You don't deserve to be a Yankee fan!" someone shouted. "You're giving new Yorkers a bad name!" said someone else (though it prompted laughs from the rest of us). "You don't deserve to be from New York!" came another. The ball that had been thrown had rolled onto the field--we could see the Yankee logo on it. "Jeter's great, he would have signed for everybody!" said another fan, who had caught Jeter before the exhibition games had started, during one of those afternoons when he really did sign for everybody hanging around Legends Field. I think they were probably a bit optimistic about how many he could have done that day--he went out to fielding practice after that--but still, the bitterness was in the air. When John Sterling came out, someone asked for the ball laying on the field. Sterling went to pick it up and other fans yelled at him to leave it there. "Folks, I can't get in the middle of this," he said, and gave the ball to some girls on the side (not the fans who threw it, I think--maybe just Jeter fans who wanted it because it had touched him.)
Then the people whose seats we were actually standing in (Blue Jays fans by the acrimonious attitude they gave us) came, and the party at the dugout was essentially broken up.
The game itself would have been a close game, if you toss out the first inning, when ten runs scored, all off poor Ed Yarnall. Here he is, already has two major league wins under his belt from last year, and they want him to take Hideki Irabu's spot in the rotation, and he has already been scratched from a start for a back spasm. It's spring training, they want to see what he'll do, so they left him in for the whole inning, even after a three run homer by Segui and then a two run homer by Cruz. Raul Mondesi, in his second time up in the inning hit a grand slam. Yarnall struck out none and walked one. I saw in an Associated Press report later that he said "I stunk." Yarnall threw fifty two pitches. And to think that in Cone's perfect game it only took 88 pitches... (Meanwhile, in another game, star pitcher Randy Johnson faced eleven batters and didn't retire any of them, apparently, before being pulled from the mound. So cheer up, Ed, it could be even worse, and he's a big league pitcher!)
After that, rising star Jake Westbrook came up again, and pitched four innings. Knoblauch and Jeter were doing their jobs as the #1 and #2 hitters, hitting singles and doubles in both the first and third, but our possible future DHs weren't cleaning up. In the first Raines struck out and the Leyritz hit into a double play. In the third there were already two ground outs before Knobby got on and Jeter scored him with an RBI double, but then Raines grounded out. Blue Jays pitching was fairly solid-- David "Boomer" Wells pitched only the first (just to razz the Yanks a little, I think), and Halladay struck out four over three innings, holding the Yanks to only one hit. So really nothing of note happened until the 9th, when Ricky Ledee walked (for the second time that game), and scored when Luke Wilcox singled. Then Julio Mosquera reached first when Wilcox was out at second on a fielder's choice, and went home when Clay Bellinger (who we really root for now) hit an RBI double. Still, three runs didn't match the Phillies fourteen, and we were back in Winter Haven mode again. The Yanks brought Mike Stanton in to stanch the bleeding and he struck out two of three in the ninth.
If you're wondering who Luke Wilcox is we don't know, only that he seems like a very nice guy. When I had been in the dugout in Clearwater, he'd come in from the field, and Joe Torre called him over and asked him if that was a can of smokeless tobacco in his back pocket. Wilcox allowed as how it was. Torre discouraged him from taking a pinch while on the field and told him to "Keep it pushed down in there. We don't want to send the kids the wrong message." "It won't happen again, Mr. Torre," Wilcox said. Boy, times sure have changed, haven't they?
On the way out, we joined the throng of fans at the fence once again. Tony Cloninger, bullpen coach--who holds the distinction of being the only pitcher to have hit for 9 RBIs in a single game, including two grand slams, back in 1966 when he was with the Braves--signed my program. Several rookies and prospects signed for people also, though I didn't catch any of them, and Clay Bellinger was friendly again. We waved to the buses as they pulled out.
After we left Dunedin, we went to Wal-Mart to buy gloves for Julian and corwin, and an actual non-commemorative baseball to play with. "You know what I like about being an adult?" corwin said, as we were in line to pay for the gloves. "If I want a baseball glove, I don't have to ask anyone's permission for one. I can just buy one for myself." He bought the Andy Pettitte model, but given how many times he threw the ball away, we started calling him "Chuck."
We went from there to the beach near the house, really just a strip of sand and a grassy park maintained by the small town we were in. A sign on the beach said "This is our front yard, please treat it like it's yours." A wedding was just letting out of the little chapel there, the wedding party posing for photos in the late afternoon light.
We began to toss the ball. The two guys stood facing me on the strip of grass and I alternated who I threw to. Seagulls cried and the Gulf of Mexico lapped at the shore. We stood further apart than the day before, and threw harder now that everyone had gloves. We missed more often as a result, but it didn't matter. It turns out I don't "throw like a girl." Julian and I switched places then. Cars began to pull up along the edge of the park where people come to watch the sun set every night. The sun dipped lower toward the horizon.
"Who are they playing tomorrow?" Julian asked.
"I don't know," I admitted. "Jul, you do realize we're going home tomorrow."
He tossed the ball back without saying anything.
I caught it and heaved it back. "I know, I can't believe we're not going to just get up tomorrow and drive to another ball park and do it all over again."
corwin caught the next one. "They say it was thirty degrees in Boston on Saturday night, and it sleeted."
We all shivered, corwin threw the ball away, and as Julian ran to catch it, Heather pulled up in the rental car to get us. We had another delicious gourmet meal ahead of us that night, but less than twelve hours later, the sky still dark, we'd be on the way to the airport. But let's not talk about that. The sky was still blue, the sun was setting like a ball of fire into the Gulf, and our arms were finally getting tired. As we walked to the car corwin said "okay, maybe you've convinced me." Of what? I asked him. "That maybe it would be fun to play in a baseball league of some kind." An idea I'd planted back in the deepest darkest winter, when our baseball withdrawal had been the worst. I guess it took the sun to make the seed sprout...
And now I'm back in Boston, and it's cold here (today it's snowing again and wet and miserable...), and it seems impossible that down there, games are going on without us to watch. That if we got on a plane right now, we could be back in that baseball equivalent of Margaritaville within three hours. You know, I'm tempted. But there are bills to be paid, deadlines to be met... and there's always next year.
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
Alright, if you're one of those people who doesn't understand baseball, who thinks it's boring and nothing ever happens, here's what you need to know if you're ever kidnapped and forced to watch a game and would like to at least try to enjoy it. George Carlin aside, if what you need to get hooked into the drama of the game is a more aggressive, war-like interpretation, here it is.
1. Think of it as a drama. Remember what you're watching is a drama, but it's only one episode of a long-running tv show. If you're watching the game on tv, turn it off and put on the radio to hear the play by play. The radio announcers tend to explain more of what they see, rather than assuming you saw it, too, and will give more backstory. Listen on a small radio even if you're at the game, and/or have a friend with you who knows the teams and can tell you the background on each player. You will want to know who the characters are and what's happened before and your friend will fill you in during the commercials.
2. Follow the game. There are patterns that emerge in every game, that you can see if you keep a scorecard. Look at what a particular batter has done, how his story develops over the course of the game... as well as what particular fielders have done.
3. Understand the duel. Think of each at-bat as a duel between the pitcher and the batter. It may look like nothing is happening, but have you ever watched kick boxing? Same thing here, a lot of dancing around each other, then suddenly, wham! Two warriors face off against each other, each with different weapons and skills, feinting, feeling each other out.
In this case, the batter goes alone to face the pitcher, who has his whole posse behind him (the fielders) to back him up if he makes a mistake. Think of the lone hero going out at high noon to face the bad guy and his gang (that is, if the team you are rooting for is up to bat). Each face off is a man to man battle between two champions.
The pitcher would love to knock the batter out with a strike out. The batter can knock the pitcher out with a home run or hurt him with a hit. The more pitches are thrown, the greater the suspense.
The first pitch is important. If it comes in as a strike, the pitcher is ahead, and taking charge of the batter. But if the first pitch is a ball (and the batter didn't swing and miss), the pitcher has lost his advantage.
When a batter has two strikes on him, he may try to do what they call "protecting the plate," where he'll just try to get the bat on the ball, rather than be called out on strikes. He may foul off pitches into the seats, or may get overmatched and miss, striking out. Or he may get the ball in play.
When the pitcher has three balls on a batter, sometimes the batter will be given the "green light" to swing, because you can be pretty sure the ball will be in the strike zone. Especially if the batter is a home run hitter and there are men on base--because if he hammers a home run out of the park, it counts for a lot. On the other hand, if the batter isn't a power hitter, or if the pitcher hasn't got great control, they may signal the batter to just hang on, and see if ball four comes. (On four balls, the batter 'walks' to first base.)
And sometimes the pitching goes to a "full count," where it is both 3 balls and 2 strikes. Neither the pitcher nor the batter can afford to make a mistake. Who will win the face off?
The three main weapons the pitcher uses on the batter are speed, location, and movement. There are tons of names for pitches, and you don't need to know them all right now. The important thing to watch is how the pitcher tricks the batter. Speed can work two ways. Sometimes a fastball comes in so fast, the batter swings too late to hit it well. Other times, what looks like a fastball comes, but it's actually a slower pitch (this one called a change up), causing the batter to swing too early. Or maybe he thinks the ball is coming to a certain spot, but it curves, dips, or moves while in flight, fooling the batter into swinging at empty air. (Curve ball, slider, sinker ball, cutter, breaking ball, etc...) Or maybe the pitcher has such good location that he can get the ball right on the edges of the strike zone, where the pitches are called strikes, but aren't sweet to hit or where they look like balls. Most pitchers use a combination of these techniques.
4. The baserunner is both spy and hostage. If each at bat is a two-man duel between pitcher and batter, when there are men on base, it becomes more complicated. Now it's a combination of a hostage situation and a spy infiltration. The diamond is the HQ of the team on the field. Once a man is on base, it's like he's a spy who has broken into their stronghold. His goal is to get deeper and deeper in, and then ultimately return "home" safely. His teammates are going to do what they can to advance his mission and keep him safe, but the guy is also potentially like a hostage. A wrong move by the subsequent batters can kill the runner. As the number of outs goes up, so does the suspense. Can they get him out alive, before it's too late?
Having a runner on base cramps the pitcher's style, because now instead of just facing his one duel opponent, he's got to keep track of another guy. If he takes too long with his wind-up, the runner will steal second base, so he has to "pitch from the stretch" (using a short wind up) which may mess up his accuracy.
The batter who is up may take a different tack now than he would if he were first up. For example, if he hits a fly ball to a certain spot, the runner can advance. That's why it's called a "sacrifice fly"--he gives himself up to further the cause. But as usual, things are stacked against the batter: the runner needs to advance three bases, but you get only three outs. Maybe he bunts (bops the ball into a slow roll on the grass the infielders will have to scramble to pick up), or maybe he's a power hitter and tries for the home run. It depends on the player and the pitcher.
The pitcher, with his team behind him, is probably hoping for a ground ball to the shortstop, so he can get both runners out with a double play. Kill two birds with one stone, as it were. But he's doing more than just hoping, he's throwing pitches that should lead to that situation, low, but not so low as to walk the batter. Some pitchers are called "ground ball pitchers" because they are good at this.
The pitcher is also allowed to do other things to try to erase the runner, like the "pick off." If the runner is edging toward second base, the pitcher can throw the ball to the first baseman, and catch the runner off the base. If the runner is trying to steal second, or realizes he is being picked off, he can try to run to second, but then the first baseman will usually throw to the second baseman who tags the runner out.
5. Predict what will happen. Make bets with your friends about what will happen. The more you watch and get to know the players, even in the course of a game, the better you will be able to guess what they'll do. And the better you understand the strategy going on underneath all those tossed balls, the better you can predict what should happen. You already know to look for the batter to protect the plate when there's a full count, but to challenge the pitcher when it's 3 balls and no strikes.
Take what they call the "hit and run." You can be pretty sure the runner is going to run no matter what happens if it's two outs, and the batter has a full count. If he swings and misses, the inning is over, so there's no reason to stay on first base. If he pops it up and it's caught, same thing. If he walks, you're going to second anyway. And if he gets a piece of it and it stays fair, then you can make it all the way to third, or even to home, if you get a good head start. So as soon as the pitcher releases the ball, the runner will be going. The fielders will know that, too, but they want to be in the best position to end the inning--are they playing shallow or deep? Is the batter a righty or a lefty? It's a high stakes situation for the pitcher, who doesn't want to walk the batter and then have two men on base, but who doesn't want to throw a strike right in the middle of the plate and suffer a home run. He has to either overpower the batter with speed, fool him with movement, or fool him with an off-speed change up. But if the batter expects the change up, it could be as bad as the fastball. So it comes back down to the duel--the chess match, where each man is trying to outguess the other. It should keep you guessing, too.
6. Decide who to root for. You'll have much more fun if you know who you're pulling for. Did you bet money on a team? Do you always root for the underdog? Do you want to root for the home team so you can get into all the cheers and crowd participation stuff? Who are the good guys, and who are the bad guys for you?
7. Ignore the previous statement. Or don't root for one side over the other. Sometimes, the best thing about baseball really is seeing the plays, not in who ultimately accumulated the most points that day. As in a kung fu movie, for example, you can appreciate the moves of both fighters, hero and villain. Only in baseball, the devastating moves come in the form of a fine-tuned pitch, an incredible leaping catch, pure speed and chutzpah on the basepaths, a sweet swing that sends a ball four hundred feet from where it started. Ultimately, for me, baseball is a competition of skills, both mental and physical, but not a fight. (Football though, as George Carlin used to say, now that's a war.) But there you have it. If you need the battle analogy, now you've got one!
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
So I learned about an amazing thing today. Women's Major League Baseball.
Right here in New England there's the WNEBL, Women's New England Baseball League, and according to American Women's Baseball League there are women's leagues/teams in fourteen states, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, New Jersey, Ohio, and Virginia.
Hmmm.
Now, you know I'm not seriously considering dropping everything in my already too-busy life (teaching tae kwon do three nights a week, running my own publishing company, community volunteering, etc...) to start training to play women's baseball. You know I'm not in any kind of shape to play a really physically demanding sport--I'm only just getting back into fighting shape for tae kwon do after my back injury. And you know (if you've been reading these journal entries), that the first time in twenty years I even wore a glove, threw a ball, or caught, was just a few weeks ago. You KNOW I'm not thinking of playing baseball.
But you know that I am.
Does every fan long to be in the game, somewhere deep in his or her heart? Or is it just me? On the one hand, you accrue all this baseball knowledge through spectation and reading the articles and all that... why not be something other than an armchair quarterback? (Sorry, wrong sport, but you know what I mean.)
But on the other hand, maybe it's better to live vicariously through the superstars we idolize. That way we can keep our illusions about our own abilities?
I am NOT thinking about trying to play baseball in a women's league. I am thirty two years old. Heck, Pat Kelly, who played for the Yanks 1991-1997 is thirty two, and he announced today he's retiring. I never played in little league or even softball. I don't even know if I CAN play.
And yet it's so tempting to go and find out. There's a clinic/pre-tryout indoors in Danvers, MA this Sunday, at a place where they have an indoor clay field, and batting cages. Wouldn't it be neat just to go and see...?
Since finding the site I have these little daydreams, a kind of montage plays in my head with locker room camaraderie, cheering from the dugout bench, making the catch at first (don't ask me why I see myself at first base--it's a mystery to me too), running out a grounder at first...
I can't. Not without turning my life upside down. I don't even have time or the physical stamina currently to consider getting into a local inter-business softball league. But it's fun to dream, isn't it?
And I want to keep my eye on the women's league. It wasn't too long ago people were pooh-poohing the idea of pro-women's basketball. But now the WNBA has taken off. Could WMLB do the same? I'll be watching.
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
Autograph Hounding 101
Well, there's one sure fire way to get an autograph, and that's to buy something pre-signed. But where's the fun in that? The point is not to have the autograph, so much as to have the record of having been there, in the same place at the same time, as the player himself. That's why people sign contracts--to verify their existence and agreement. Ok, sure, you could just take a lot of photos--which I did while I could--but the autograph is a special kind of juju that passes from player to fan. It is the validation of the relationship, player to fan, in some ways: the player is basically writing "I was here" on something the fan values and keeps. (Hmm, think about those people who get the player to sign right on their arm...)
Anyway, based on everything I saw this past month, here are all the tips I got from other fans, and what worked for me, to get autographs during Spring training, when the players are at their most accessible.
Autograph Hound Checklist
Where and When to Go During Spring Training
Strategies
What NOT To Do
That's everything I can think of right now. If you can't make it to Spring Training, some players do card shows and appearances during the off season. The Yankees have an annual "fan fest" mass autographing session at Madison Square Garden, which I've never been to but I hear is wild. Some people have been able to get autographs from players near the dugouts at major league games, before the games. I imagine I'll find out about all these options as time goes on...
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
Spring has come to Boston, and I don't just mean the temperature got warm. We've had some 65 degree days here and there since February, but this weekend people really started taking it seriously. Or, maybe seriously isn't the right word, because damn it looked like people were having fun. The first thing I noticed when going out for a motorcycle ride was there were a lot of other motorcycles on the road.
The second thing I noticed was all the ballfields in use. When you ride a motorcycle you sit up higher than you do in a car (though not as high as you do in a van or SUV). I could see into parks and fields that, when I am in the car, are invisible to me. Today every single one was inhabited by either a father and son just throwing a ball around, or a couple of neighborhood kids playing a game, or a maintenance guy with a rake, raking out a huge mound of orange-ish infield dirt. I didn't see people playing Frisbee along the river--that's a summer thing, I guess. What I did see was people whizzing a small white sphere into each other's leather-covered hands. It's spring, it's time for baseball.
Seeing all those kids out there got me thinking about Little League and about the Little League World Series. Last summer, it so happened that during the week of my baseball renaissance, the Little League World Series was being played. If you've read the journal entries above (Born Again in Baseball), then you know I spent a week in New Jersey and went to Yankee Stadium for the first time in over a decade (getting close to two). That week was the week of the Little League World Series, which ESPN televised. (One of the bonuses of staying at my parents house is--they have cable tv.)
I was totally captivated by the games I saw. One of the teams was from my neck of the woods, Toms River, New Jersey, a town we drove through often to get to Seaside Heights, a town where some relatives lived, and you know, I think I even almost dated a guy from there. (He played tuba and I played tuba in rival marching bands. If either of us had been a little more socially ept, I think we would have asked each other out. But we were kind of shy geeks.) I was completely won over by the sportsmanship and the athleticism of the kids, too.
At eleven and twelve years old, none of them looks yet like he will when he's a man. They were baby-faced and short-legged, and they played their hearts out. The announcers did a good job of illuminating the backstory on the kids and teams, and, as if they knew Little Leaguers the world over were watching the broadcast, which of course they were, they announced in a very educational way, too, stressing fundamentals, good fielding decisions, and so on. What a tutorial for an out of the loop adult like me, who at that point hadn't yet remembered how to keep a scorecard...
You know me, fan of the drama of baseball, how could I resist this one? The Toms River team, called "The Beast of the East," had won it all the year before, and were back to try to hold on to their title. They were ahead in the semi-final game 2-0, the "United States" championship game, and it looked like they were going to steamroll right over their competition, Phenix City, Alabama, who they had beat already once in tournament play.
But then the tide turned, when the semi-final game had to be called on account of rain. The next day, the game resumed under sun, but the momentum had been lost. Their star pitcher, Casey Gaynor, who was also the manager's son, was put back into the game, but his curve wasn't curving and the other team was hitting it. He got hammered when a Phenix City player, William Gaston, III, hit his second homer in his life (two days after Gaston's birthday, to boot). Phenix City scored 3 runs that inning, to take the lead 3-2. The player who came in to pitch after Casey (Eric?) made a heroic effort, pitched great and gave up no runs, but those Little League games are short... I was completely on the edge of my seat.
Oh, sure, I worried that all the tv exposure and fame would go to the kids' heads. That it would harden them or ruin them somehow. I felt a little... voyeuristic watching the young kid from Toms River (was his name Mike?) come to his final at bat, as they were on the verge of losing the game, swing at a third strike and then burst into tears.
But that just proved they were kids after all. The experience hadn't turned them into mini versions of adult pro ballplayers. Phenix City went on to play Osaka, Japan for the World Championship, and the Toms River crew came home to a huge hometown parade. I saw some of the follow up coverage on the local news. What a pack of little troopers. Their parents expressed pride for what they'd done, even if they didn't ultimately win it all (You think it's tough for the Yanks to make the postseason? How about playing in a league with 200,000 teams and close to three million players?) Maybe it was selective news coverage, but I didn't see any of the "stereotypical" bad pushy-parent stuff. Coach Gaynor, a shoe store manager, who had led three teams to the championship, decided to retire.
In the end, Osaka beat Phenix City, and the day after their championship, I was sitting in the upper deck of Yankee Stadium with my brother and his girlfriend, and there were both teams, Osaka as World Champions, and Phenix City as US Champions, out on the field with the Yankees! I've never been so excited to see players whose names i didn't know. Each of the young players ran out the their respective positions as the Yankees took the field, and stood with his cap over his heart while the national anthem played. Can you imagine the thrill that must have been? First to have won a championship, and then to be standing there with the current baseball World Champions, in Yankee Stadium?
Steinbrenner apparently invited the teams, and they had to get on a bus at 7 a.m. that morning to get to the Stadium from Williamsport, PA (where the Little League World Series is held every year). I'm sure the kids thought it was worth the trip. It's yet another one of those episodes about the wonder of baseball and Yankee magic that never cease to put a lump in my throat.
(For more info about Little League: www.littleleague.org The Little League World Series will be played August 20-26, 2000, in Williamsport, PA.)
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
Tom Pagnozzi announced his retirement today. About a week ago Tim Raines did the same. You may not know who both these guys are, but their stories are similar.
Both were players who were sidelined by injury or illness last year (Raines by the immune system disease lupus, Pagnozzi by a shoulder injury that required surgery). Both were experienced veterans who have made significant contributions to teams. Both were invited to spring training with the New York Yankees, baseball's current World Champions, and one of the teams that many guys dream of playing for. (Carl Everett, now with the Yankee rival Red Sox, was almost a Yankee at the start of his career, and has harbored sour grapes about it ever since.)
Both Pagnozzi and Raines came into camp with something to prove, both to themselves and to Yankee manager Joe Torre, namely, that they could still play. Raines had played for the Yanks before, a couple of years back, and Pagnozzi had played for Torre before, six years with the Cardinals. Joe gave them a chance to play again, and play both did, though not well enough to make it onto a team well-stocked with veterans.
Raines had originally said, weeks ago, that he would play in the minors until he could make it back to the big leagues, but chose to retire before being "sent down," once he realized he had proved his point. Pagnozzi hung in until the last out, as it were, and after being cut from the major league roster today, he announced his retirement as well.
Two guys, almost the same story: the almost-comeback.
We, as fans, love comeback stories. Even we Yankee fans love rooting for the underdog. Isn't every sports movie, in some measure, the story of the come from behind victory or the lovable losers who finally get it together? From the "Bad News Bears" to Jackie Chan's "Drunken Master", we want to root for the little guy to make it. It's inherent in sports and the drama of sports. It's the best reason to root for the Mets or Red Sox.
But as with the Mets and Sox so often, in the end there's heartbreak.
Although, for Raines, his retirement was not a tearful affair. He proved what he had meant to prove, that he could beat his disease, and get back into shape. He said he felt the "alarm clock" ring, though, telling him his time was over. It was a nice dream, but it was time to wake up. Raines wakes up to a reality of a son in the minor leagues, and a loving family he'll get to spend more time with. And maybe someday he'll be back with the Yanks as a coach.
What went through Pagnozzi's mind when he found out his one shot at making it back into the majors was with the Yankees? I don't know squat about Tom Pagnozzi, but I am completely ready to cast him as a wholesome, hard-working guy, who was suddenly handed a chance at a dream. Did he imagine himself being in the on-field pile up when the Yanks win the ALCS? Did he wonder if he might someday wear a World Series ring?
Apparently, he did. I just checked the AP Wire, which carried the following quote: "This is it for me,'' Pagnozzi said. "The whole thing was to come and try to get a world championship ring. You'd like to go out on better terms--spraying people with champagne--it just didn't work out. I saw it coming and fully expected it.''
And so ends Tom Pagnozzi's tantalizing brush with Yankee greatness, with his own comeback story, with what-could-have-been. According to AP, he'll go back to Arizona, where he has season tickets for the Arizona Diamondbacks.
I guess it's important that we have our failed comebacks as well as our genuine rise-from-the-ashes stories. I shouldn't use the word "failed," because these guys are heroes, who battled back, and although they missed out on the Hollywood ending, they did achieve something. But every story can't turn out with champagne and fireworks. We need a little heartbreak to raise the stakes, so when the next one comes along, we'll once again be on the edge of our seats, holding our breath, wondering if the guy (or the team) we're pulling for is going to make it.
And sometimes, they will.
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
Here it is, my first Opening Day in years and years. Maybe it's that baseball itself is so much more popular this year than it was during some of the doldrum years (the strike, etc...) or maybe it's that I'm just so much more aware of it... or maybe it is both... but Baseball Is Everywhere. I was in Washington, DC this weekend, and the Washington Post, one of this great nation's papers of record, has its Baseball Preview Section. Washington, DC doesn't even have a baseball team. While in Union Station, waiting to get on the train back to Boston, I couldn't help but notice the prominent, front window display of baseball books in the B. Dalton bookstore there. Turned on the radio this afternoon and they were "talkin' baseball" on Talk of The Nation on National Public Radio. The Three Shortstops are on the cover of GQ again this week., not a coincidence in timing, I'm sure.
Seems I'm not the only one who couldn't wait for the season to get here, and now, here it is! It's our last chance to stop and reflect on last year's glories, to make our predictions and picks for this year, and to make our final good luck wishes on before the starting gun goes off.
Of course, the question paramount in my mind is, will Yankee magic work again? The bench is not as strong as it used to be (no Chili Davis or Darryl Strawberry), several star players are aging and injury prone (Cone, Clemens, O'Neill, and what is up with Bernie Williams' shoulders?), we've got doubts about some of the youngsters rising to the occasion (Ledee, Posada, Spencer). If it's going to work, it's going to be because the whole will turn out to be greater than the sum of its parts. This is true, too, of the Red Sox. I'm looking forward to an interesting saga with the battle between these two teams in the AL East.
Last year, the Sox were able to get the jump on the Yanks several times during regular season play. Was 1999 they'd finally field a better team than the Yanks? It looked possible for a while, didn't it. But while the Sox scrabbled and fought their way through the Indians, the Yanks were gelling into their post-season juggernaut, steamrolling the Texas Rangers with brutal efficiency. It was almost the same story when they met the Braves, who had had to beat down the resurrected Mets again and again, until finally emerging bloody and victorious to face the cool, uncrackable Yanks.
Right now, on Opening Day, you can look back over Spring training and see the Yanks beginning that gelling process again. After the messy, loose start to the grapefruit season, the Yanks went on a tear of wins at the end, as the pieces fell into place. Even as each player began to find his groove, the team began to find their winning rhythm. Oh, they didn't win them all, breaking the win streak by dropping to the Houston Astros in the first two games ever played in the new Enron Field, 6-5 and again 6-5 the next night. But they clobbered the Giants in the new PacBell Park. And tonight, it's on to Anaheim.
So, the Yanks look crackable on paper, for the abovementioned flaws and deficiencies, for the potential disasters that lurk. But if they carry the momentum they built up at the end of the spring, if they can continually remake the team in their minds, every time a new challenge arises, then they will win it. They won't be unbeatable--but no team is unbeatable on any given day. I mean, even in the year they won 125 games, they still lost, what, 62? You're always going to lose at least 1 out of 3.
The Sox, and others, have to hope it's the right 1 out of 3.
I don't like to make predictions about division winners and individual performances, because I'm afraid of jinxing. No, really. And also because I know I'm going to be caught up in whatever happens, whether the season is suspenseful or supreme, whether as predicted or a complete surprise, whether good or bad.
Play Ball!
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
So, last night the Yanks opened their season with a night game against the Anaheim Angels. The national anthem featured a giant American flag that covered the outfield, red rockets shot their glare out of center, and a bald eagle flew down into the stadium to a trainer on the pitchers mound. A friend (whose tv and cable system we were borrowing) said "Damn, when did baseball get so... produced?" We reminded her it was Opening Day, and therefore, exceptional. Aha.
So, to set the stage. The Yankees had El Duque, Orlando Hernandez, on the mound. This is the fella who pitched game one of the Division series last year, the American League Championship Series, and the World Series. And won them all, I suppose I should add. The Angels put up Ken Hill, a ground all pitcher with decent statistics, though he pitched only 128 innings last year (about half what El Duque pitched, for comparison).
And, at first glance, the game looks like a pitchers duel, with El Duque and the Hill pitching five innings of shut-out ball... well, except for that one homer Tim Salmon got off El Duque. How many times did we see that last year? Orlando would pitch what was essentially a shut-out, a two-hitter, or something like that, but that one hit would be a home run? They say he beats himself up about it, that one "bad pitch." But with the normal Yankee offense, one home run is surmountable.
And it was. Because the real battle heroes in the game were two sluggers, the aging but extremely formidable Mo Vaughn, and the Yanks young, eternally fresh-faced Shane Spencer, to whom the Designated Hitter's baton has been passed by the now-retired Chili Davis and the now-back-in-rehab Darryl Strawberry (suspended for the entire year for cocaine infractions). Mo Vaughn, who could break the game open at any time with a mighty swing. Shane Spencer, who had a terrible spring, and had a lot of people worried about whether he can actually become a true slugger.
On this night, Spencer actually wasn't the DH. Bernie Williams was, as they took him out of the field to rest his sore throwing arm. So Spencer took left field and Ricky Ledee took center. Early in the game, Spencer made an incredible catch, sprinting across the grass to grab the ball, and rob the Angels of a base hit. But then later in the game, as the Angels were threatening, Spencer and Shortstop Derek Jeter had a near collision where it looked like Jeter had a bead on the ball, but then at the last second he turned away as if Spencer had called him off... but then didn't catch it. It's hard to tell what exactly happened, but the ball dropped for a base hit. You figure the kid couldn't have been feeling too good about that, no matter what.
Meanwhile, Mo Vaughn had been having a tough game. El Duque struck him out on a slow curve ball to end the first. Struck him out on a change up to end the third. And in the top of the fifth got charged with a throwing error when he threw the ball too high and pulled pitcher ken Hill off the bag to let... you guessed it... Shane Spencer get on base.
Bottom of the fifth came then, and El Duque got into hot water. Scott Spiezio led off the inning with a single. Bengie Molina popped out, but then Gary DiSarcina hit another single. Then Darin Erstad hit ANOTHER single. Bases Loaded. Adam Kennedy popped out to the infield so the runners held. Two out. And here comes Mo Vaughn.
Now, Mo's hot under the collar about the two previous strikeouts, and about the error. And right here, he connects with one, it'll be a grand slam, Angels will be up 5-0, and well, I don't have to tell you that would be very good for the Angels. He's now seen all of El Duque's pitches, as he's worked him deep into the count on the previous two strikeouts. I remarked to another friend in the room that this was the turning point of the game.
And it was. Would Mo be a hero? No. El Duque struck him out for a third time, on that change up. And the Yanks, now all fired up from getting out of the bases loaded jam, came in, Jeter hit a single, and Paul O'Neill hammered one into the seats for two RBI. The tide was turned because of that strikeout. 2-1 Yanks. And the next inning, after El Duque held the Angels hitless again, Shane Spencer was the first man up. Kent Mercker was now pitching. And Spencer, our baby-faced DH to be, took him deep for a home run. 3-1 Yanks. Which is not a huge lead... would it be enough?
Mo would get one more crack at El Duque in the seventh. For the fourth time, now, facing him with two outs. A man on first. A home run ties it up. But no. Mo didn't strike out, he did get the bat on the ball, finally, but it was a weak grounder to first and Tino Martinez took it back to the bag himself.
Let's go now to the bottom of the ninth, and in comes Mariano Rivera, "Mr. Automatic," who has not been scored on since last July. He strikes out Bengie Molina, who just about spins around and falls down. But DiSarcina gets on with a single, and then Darin Erstad, doing a good job as a leadoff hitter, worked a deep count and walked. Kennedy flied out. And here comes Mo Vaughn.
This is Mo's last chance to draw blood. Here again, he could be the hero. A home run now, and the Angels would win it, 4-3. A solid base hit, even, could even the score and send the game to extra innings.
He didn't work a deep count this time. He wasn't going to give Rivera a chance to get ahead in the count. So on the second or third pitch, he just reached out and chopped a shot into the gap for a single, scoring DiSarcina. Sorry, Mariano (who Yanks fans also affectionately call Mo...), your scoreless inning record was the casualty, the sacrifice taken by Mo Vaughn in his to-the-last battle in the game.
In the end, it wasn't enough, as Tim Salmon, who had looked like a hero in the second with his home run, flied out to Paul O'Neill in right. The Yanks won it 3-2. And if Spencer hadn't hit that home run, it would have been tied. And if Spencer hadn't beat out that error throw at first (the replay showed he might have been a fraction of a second too late actually) Ken Hill wouldn't have gotten rattled. And if Spencer hadn't made those two fabulous catches in left (one later that definitely redeemed the time he and Jeter let the ball drop), the Angels probably would have gotten on the board at least once more.
So, Shane Spencer was the hero of the game. And Mo Vaughn, who had not one but two chances to win it all for the Angels, was not.
If you want to get all mystical about it, you could say that Shane Spencer picked up some of Mo's slugger juju last night. If you don't, you gotta admit, the kid did alright.
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
So, Charles Krauthammer recently opined in a column for TIME Magazine that baseball is dying, at least partly because of its love for nostalgia, and how we fans, supposedly, look back on the past as brighter and better than the present or future. Of course, the real point of the essay seemed to be that it was Mr. Krauthammer's own nostalgia that makes him think that the current game is dying, but he wouldn't come out and say that...
But the essay got me to thinking. Today I was posting some reminiscence in the Yankee web site Fan Forum, and found myself reflexively starting to joke about my age, a la "yeah, yeah, there I go again about the old days." But I stopped myself, because I realized that I really didn't have to. We live in a youth-obsessed culture, where "nostalgia" is being recycled after five years or less on MTV, where generations have less to do with decades and more to do with minutes. So the reflex, now that I am over thirty, is to always self-deprecate about being over thirty, about having been alive during the groovy seventies and surviving the Reagan 80s and so on...
But, in baseball, first of all, I'm far from being the oldest fan in the forum. I don't even think I'm close to the average age, actually. Second of all, baseball culture respects nostalgia in a very unique way. We want to hear the stories of "I was there" and re-live great moments in a non-ironic, completely sincere fashion. We aren't trying to be "retro" (though all the new ballparks are...) when we look up to heroes like Mickey Mantle or Willie Mays. Those of us who were too young to know those greats don't snicker when those older than we are start talking about them. We listen, and we expect that when we get old, we'll be talking about Cal Ripken and Derek Jeter and whoever comes next down the pike, and the younger generations of fans will sit around our feet saying "wow."
This is a startling thing to realize. Is there anywhere in American culture, especially in entertainment and media (which spectator sports fall into), where the past is respected? Where age is respected? With our continually emerging genres of music, cutting edge fashion, and the immense value we put on innovation of any kind, we are one of those cultures that Margaret Mead described so long ago, one where the knowledge runs not from the old to the young, but from the young to the old. The youth dictate what we will listen to, eat, buy, see, drive, etc...
But not in baseball. Baseball is a grand old game, ain't it? But it isn't just that it is old, and it isn't smothered by its own nostalgia, because the current game respects the old game, and the current fans respect the old fans. And we think it's going to continue that way for a long time. Oh sure, there have been potholes and chasms along the way. Strikes, free agency, the designated hitter, and yet something remains basically unchanged about the game. Commissioner Selig has designs on restructuring the leagues again and once again reshaping the post-season. Will it be too much change?
I don't know. But you can bet fans of all ages will sit around saying "I remember when..."
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
April 14th finally arrived, the day of my first pilgrimage this year to the national temple of baseball, Yankee Stadium. (I was tickled to hear Michael Kay call it "baseball's cathedral" on the radio the other day--seems I'm not the only one who holds the House That Ruth Built in such regard.)
Originally I had hoped to get tickets for Opening Day, and had scheduled myself to do a reading at Columbia University on Thursday the 13th. But I couldn't get tickets to Opening Day, and I decided to try to go Friday, the day after the reading, rather than Wednesday, the day before. And a lucky thing I chose Friday, too, since Opening Day was postponed from Tuesday to Wednesday afternoon because of imminent rain and snow, and Wednesday night's game was then put off to August some time...
The day of the game, I went into Manhattan to meet a film producer, who interviewed me on camera for an MSNBC documentary about tattoos (I have a couple of small ones I did for commemorative reasons -- no, none of them are the Yankee logo!) Then headed for the Bronx around 3pm. Traffic on the West Side Higway and the Deegan was terrible, so it took me an hour to get from midtown up to 161st Street, but I can't say that mattered to me much, since the gate didn't open until 5pm, or so I thought.
When I arrived, I bundled up in my NY Yankees blue turtleneck (with interlocking NY tastefully embroidered on the neck). It was already down to 50 degrees, and windy. I wandered over to the press gate, where about twenty fans were standing behind a barrier exactly like the one at Legends Field along the walkway to the practice field. It's that kind of waist-high, gray metal fence that looks a bit like a bicycle rack. "Seen anyone?" I asked a guy standing there. "Just got here," he replied.
Another fan commented she thought the Yankees usually came in earlier, and she was right. Still, if we were going to stand around for an hour, might as well do it there, where we were out of the wind, in the sun, and might see something. I chatted with a Dad and his ten year old son--the son just flown in from California, and about to see his first major league game, as well as his first game in Yankee Stadium. The kid had on a Yankee hat that was so faded, he must have been wearing it every day since he was eight. I assured him he was going to have a great time.
About a half hour later, a bus pulled up and about a dozen Kansas City Royals came out. No one knew them by face, so they just went straight in.
I decided to take a walk around at that point, and came to the employee entrance, where a crowd of people waiting to get assignments as vendors that night were standing. I wonder how that works? There were already guys set up at the front with those rolling, multi-tier souvenir stands, about six of them. How did they assign staff to walk-around vendor jobs inside? The crowd at the door was about seventy five people, mostly black with a few hispanics, in their twenties, about half men and half women. They were laughing and joking with one another while they waited to be called.
I walked a few yards further around, to the left field gate, and decided I'd go in there, so I could see Monument Park once I went in. But as it turned out my surmise about gate time was wrong--they now open at 5:30 on weeknights when there is a 7 o'clock game. (But they open two hours before game time on Saturdays and Sunday, apparently.) Music started to come out of the sound system at about five, though, like a party host cranking up the stereo before the first guest arrives.
So I sat myself down next to a ticket booth, sheltered from the cold wind and where the setting sun could still shine on me, and got out a book to read. I'd picked it up the night before at my parent's house. Graig Nettles' tell-all book, BALLS. (I'll let you know what I think of it after I'm done with it.)
The music suddenly stopped, and Bob Sheppard's voice came on with a pre-recorded announcement about stadium rules and reminding everyone that there is no smoking anywhere inside the stadium. They don't come out and say it, but I think it's meant to be a polite reminder, so nicotine fiends can light up and smoke one before the gates open. A few minutes later, up went the gates, and we went in. The ticket-takers were giving something out, but only to the 14 and under crowd--I think they were packs of baseball cards, but I'm not sure. I may still be wearing the same clothes I wore when I was 14, but they weren't fooled.
I bought a scorecard once inside, and was delighted to find that with it they gave me a blue golf pencil that says New York Yankees on it. It's pretty easy to make me happy, I guess. I also noticed, as I walked around, that it seemed like all the "Hey, scorecard here" guys were forties-ish and older white men. The concession stands were mostly worked by slightly older black women. The guys who had been working the souvenir carts out in front had all been 25-35 year old black men. I gotta wonder what's up with that--is it like on a cruise ship, where the Vietnamese are the laundry workers, the Greeks are the officers, etc? On the other hand the security guards and carrying vendors seemed pretty evenly mixed by race and gender.
I joined the line going down the steps to Monument Park. It's a steep set of concrete stairs, down to a kind of back alley between the stands and the left field bleachers, where a couple of small forklifts were parked. And then you emerge along a brick walkway where the retired numbers are. Why look, they look exactly like the plaques they have at Legends Field--I'm sure this is no coincidence.
Then, as you pass the retired numbers, you come to the monuments. Some of them are slabs of stone, much bigger than a gravestone, with a plaque showing the player's likeness, name, description, and who dedicated the monument, while for others the plaques built into the wall. Not everyone who is memorialized in Monument Park is deceased--there's a plaque to Phil Rizzuto, for example, which I think went up the year he was inducted into the Hall of Fame. But I am just guessing at that.
The one monument that really put a lump in my throat was the one to Lou Gehrig, dedicated by his teammates within weeks of his death.
A mustached guy in a World Series Yankee hat was telling his son, who looked to be about ten or eleven years old, about how the monuments used to be on the field in the old days.
When I came up from Monument Park, the Yanks were still at batting practice, and a lot of fans were standing along the walls in the outfield hoping to snag homeruns and fouls. I saw one fly within about twenty feet of me--no idea who hit it though, since we could barely make out the guy in the cage. He was the last batter, though, and then the Royals started batting.
I stood there about a half hour with my glove on, but not a single Royal was able to put one into the seats on that side (two or three did go over the right field fence though--always on a bounce...). Oh well.
I got a hot chocolate to warm myself up then, and as the last of the sun was retreating from the outfield, climbed up to my seat in the upper deck behind home plate. I have to say I really liked sitting in section U3. You can see everything and have a great view of the strike zone, except it's hard to tell if the ball is too high or too low.
By that time, more fans were coming in, and I flicked on my transistor radio (bought that day in one of those ubiquitous mid-town electronics shops) and listened to the pregame show, filled in my scorecard, and waited for the rest of my party to arrive.
I was waiting for my brother Julian and for my friends Bonnie and Aaron (they of the Game One day wedding), and Bonnie's brother Frank. corwin stayed home because of his business meetings, and my parents went to Bermuda, and I swapped their tickets for hot dog money. Meanhwile, I chatted with the guys in my section--one had bought a stuffed dog for his girlfriend's kid, a Beanie-Baby-style white puppy, wearing a little blue t-shirt with an interlocking white NY on it. Talk about cute.
The stuffed dog wasn't the only one wearing Yankee gear, though. It seems to me that fans are a lot more decked out than I remembered them being in the 70s and 80s. Maybe it's just that with the World Series wins, people are getting more and more into it, or giving more Yankee paraphrenalia as gifts, or maybe the Yanks just market their stuff better now. But I'd say well over half the people I saw sported either t-shirts, sweat shirts, Yankee field jackets, or non-baseball style hats. Maybe a lot of the stuff was giveaway stuff (a lot of Yankee tote bags and gym bags, too), but not those nice-looking jackets! (Side note: this year's model of the field jacket has a red piping on it that I really don't like. They say the red is historical from the DiMaggio era, but I think it makes them look like the Texas Rangers or something. Bring back the plain blue and white, please.)
Bonnie, Aaron and Frank came up the steps just as the first pitch was being thrown. Aaron just flew in yesterday after a month-long business trip to Hong Kong, and was quite jet-lagged. Julian, meanwhile, was coming straight from Orlando, Fla. where he was on a last minute business trip for his new job, and expected to make it from the airport by about the second inning. He was right, for while he fought traffic across the Macombs Dam bridge, both Roger Clemens and the Royals' Jay Witasick were pitching as slow as molasses, and the hitters on both teams were going deep into the counts. The game clocked in at almost four hours long in the end, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
OK, so I really am not going to try to recap the whole game here--you can get a better description off the Yankees' web site or The Sporting News. The main source of drama was the way Kansas City had won their last four games straight with ninth inning heroics. Three in a row on walk of home runs, and the fourth on a an RBI single. They're a young team, and very hot, but what would happen when their unstoppable force met the immovable object of Mariano Rivera?
Clemens was having a day typical of his outings thus far this year, where he finds himself having to pay for his mistakes. He hit a batter in the second and walked one, and both those guys ended up crossing the plate to make it 2-0 Royals. The rival pitcher, Witasick, reinvented himself as s strikeout pitcher during the game, too, getting all three outs in the bottom of the second via the K, and striking out two in the third and two in the fourth. Unfortunately for him, he also gave up five runs in his 3 and two thirds, so I guess we can say... he's no Roger Clemens.
The rest of the Yanks started to look more like themselves, with Knoblauch and Jeter each getting on seven times between the two of them, and Jeter stealing twice. At the rate he's going he'll steal 60 bases this year... though maybe he'll be happy if he just beats A-rod's career high of 41 in '98...
And in the ninth, Mariano prevailed, retiring three straight.
The game ended at about eleven pm (long game!) and I was on the road soon after, making the 250 mile drive to Boston. The game was so long, it took a long time to be been archived at broadcast.com, and then corwin began listening to it. When I arrived home at about 3am, he was still listening to it! I wanted to talk to him about the game, but I couldn't, since he hadn't heard it all yet! I hid my scorecard from him and went to sleep.
The next time I'll be at the stadium will be May 28th, for the Boston Red Sox. Luck works in strange ways. I was supposed to go to Wisconsin that weekend to speak at a conference. But my cousin is getting married in Philly, so I cancelled my Wisconsin plans. corwin and I are going down for the wedding on Saturday, and staying over with my parents. Which means that we can all go to the game the next day. Funny how these things work out.
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
Friday night I was sitting in the upper deck of Yankee Stadium with my friends and family, having an absolutely great time, despite the freezing cold wind that had us bundled in winter coats, gloves and earmuffs. It was not a large crowd for Yankee Stadium--the outfield decks blue and empty, the box seats checkered with gaps as people either huddled in the warm corridors, or watched the game from home instead of sitting in their seats.
But it wasn't a quiet crowd, and it wasn't a dull crowd. Jorge Posada has been on a hot streak, hitting well, driving in runs, and gunning down baserunners trying to steal second. The fans responded to his heroics of Thursday by chanting his name when he came into the on deck circle for his first at bat Friday. Posada, incidentally, then slammed a two run homer into the seats, insuring that an entire section near us kept up the "Jor-HEY! Jor-HEY!" every time he came up again. This crowd even sounded good singing "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" in the seventh inning stretch.
Maybe it was partly that it was so cold, and cheering was the only way to really keep warm, or maybe it was the contrast to the placid spring training crowds we got used to in March that made everything seem so lively, but I prefer to think it was just one of those times when the crowd comes alive. It doesn't always happen. Sometimes you've got thousands of individuals, and that's what they stay. I've been to some rock concerts like that, and it must be frustrating to the performers not to be able to overcome an audience's own self-consciousness.
Fortunately, it's a bit easier with baseball fans, but even still, sometimes the New York crowd can be standoffish and cold. It isn't that the individual fans don't care, but the crowd itself is an animal all its own.
It's a kind of simple animal, when you think about it. Its a stimulus-response organism. Whenever the crowd sees something good, cheers. Something bad, boos. That includes things off the field--a pop foul goes into the stands and a fan snags it out of the air--yeah! But if he drops it? Ya bum! You suck!
And how about the little games they show on the DiamondVision between innings? If you've never been to the stadium, you have no idea what I'm talking about. To amuse the fans as the sides change and people at home see tv commercials, they show various animated clips. For example, they have a "subway race," where they show three cartoon trains racing to the Bronx, and the fans pick which one they think will win. Law of averages says a third of the fans are going to be cheering at the end of that little segment. There's also the Adidas "sneaker race," where each section of the stands (bleachers, upper deck, lower deck, and loge) is assigned one of four animated sneakers, which race like drag cars around the bases. And there's the ever-popular "find the baseball" shell game, played with baseball hats and a ball.
I'm psyched to report that I went 3 for 3 on between-inning scoreboard games on Friday. Yeah! (And the Yanks, won, too.)
I'm sure the players know this about the crowd, and about how the crowd reacts. Yesterday's game, Ramiro Mendoza pitched a perfect game into the seventh inning. That was a crowd that was united in intensity from the third inning on, cheering on every pitch, and roaring for every out. Everyone likes Mendoza, an incredibly nice, quiet pitcher, who wants to be a starter, but who keeps getting sent back to the bullpen because 1) he's a great bullpen pitcher, and 2) the Yanks have brought in another starter every time Mendoza gets a chance (one year El Duque and one year Hideki Irabu). So here he is, getting a start because of Ed Yarnall's failure to rise to the occasion in spring training, and he's pitching not just well, he's pitching a perfect game.
In the Yankees Fan Forum a perennial topic is whether the Yankees can do the impossible, and have three perfect games in three years. As announcer Michael Kay commented in the play by play, these fans know the drill. They were right there in the drama by the end of the third inning, with the excitement building with each pitch throughout the fourth, fifth and sixth innings. To hear the crowd roar when Mendoza got the first batter in the seventh to fly out, you would have thought it was the World Series.
Then the twentieth batter (Carlos Febles, who is on a hitting streak) really lined one--Clay Bellinger dove in the air, came completely off his feet and flew--but the ball went out of his glove. It was not an error, it was a near-impossible play, that--as it turned out--was impossible.
But Bellinger was booed the next time he came to bat. He didn't take it personally. He was as disappointed that the perfect game and the no-hitter were quashed as the fans were. "They wanted to see a no-hitter, a perfect game, and so did I," he told reporters after the game. "It's just one of those things."
I felt bad for Clay, getting booed in Yankee Stadium, especially when he's playing third because Scott Brosius, a fan favorite, is injured. Bellinger has been nothing but a workhorse for the Yanks, plugging holes in the infield, outfield, and he can catch. He's never going to be a superstar, but he's a smart baserunner, does get important hits sometimes, and really doesn't deserve to be booed. Hey Clay, console yourself with the fact that DiMaggio got booed in Yankee Stadium in 1940 when the Yanks were dropping out of the pennant race, even though DiMag was on track to win the batting title that year!
If I had been sitting there in the crowd yesterday, would I have booed? I really like Clay Bellinger, actually. I think he's my favorite non-star player. I of course have a soft spot for him because he was so nice signing autographs in spring training. But would I have booed? I have to admit I probably would have made a noise when the ball went off his glove, or maybe shouted "Oh no!" But when the guy came to bat? I probably would have yelled "Come on, Clay! You gotta redeem yourself!" As it was, I was lying in bed, listening to the game, and kept my comments to myself.
But I can't be sure. Because when you're part of the crowd, you can forget yourself. Self-consciousness goes out the window, and you just scream, you're just part of that big animal that is the crowd, the animal that gets restless on two out and scents blood on two strikes...
By the way, redeem himself Clay did, with a hit, crossing the plate later that inning, and making some other good plays. So the crowd was back to cheering him by the next time he appeared.
I'm listening to today's game as I write this, and Jeff Nelson was just booed off the mound in the seventh. He walked two in a row, then gave up two singles that scored both of those runners, tying the score. He finished the inning, but gave up the lead, so.... ya bum!
But I don't think Nelly let's the crowd get him down. He just finished the eighth, and he struck out the side. Whoo-ee!
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
Okay, putting cup holders on the seats, like they have in all the big multiplex movie theaters, wouldn't be that hard, would it? (Are you listening, stadium planners?)
For the radio, I need to either come up with a way to strap it to myself or find a piece of clothing with a correct size pocket. Sadly, the radio--though I just bought it the day of the Yanks/KC game--is fritzy, and needs to be whacked every couple of minutes to get the signal to come back in. Hmm. Maybe I should have gone for a radio Walkman. But sometimes other people next to me might want to hear it, y'know? Either way, though, I need a way to attach the radio to myself, so when I jump up to catch a foul ball, or stand to let someone through the aisle, it doesn't fall and hit the concrete. (Though maybe that would fix it.)
Now, the scorecard itself. I've continued printing out my own scorecard sheet for each game, but I also need the rosters, as well as a pencil. My friend Rich, who is a very smart dude (even if he is a Sox fan), who loves to build stuff and play with tools, has an idea for a scorecard holder he wants to build. The style scorecard he uses puts each team on a separate page, so he currently clips them to a board with binder clips. He puts one on each side, and flips the board over each half-inning. He'd like to build one, though, with a pencil holder on each side, eraser holder, and a way to attach the radio.
If he starts building 'em, I may try it. In the meantime, though, I'm prepping for my next live game (May 28th, Red Sox at Yankee Stadium), and will try to jerrry-rig something of my own. I've started keeping my scorecards from previous games in a three-ring binder, but I don't want to bring that to the park, because what if it rains? Or if I dump my soda? I wouldn't want to get all those scorecards wet. Still, a three-ring binder might be good--there are pockets in the back to stick the rosters in, it's nice and firm for writing on, and it can be put in a tote bag easily without curling the corners of the page. So maybe a binder.
Of course, there's still the unsolvable problem of how to eat a hot dog while keeping my glove on.
In my dream setup, of course, I have an actual desk in front of me, plenty of room, a cup holder, place for my pencil (and some colored markers, too), my radio, rosters, ketchup, reference books... as well as no loudmouth behind me spilling his beer down my back. Hmm. Sounds like I actually want to sit in the press box, doesn't it. But well, the hot dog vendors don't come around in there, you can't catch foul balls in there, and you know the rule: "no cheering in the press box."
No cheering!? That wouldn't be any fun at all, now would it? I guess I'll have to stick with the crowd.
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
What do you mean you haven't read Ball Four, the original baseball "tell-all" book by Jim Bouton?
Okay, okay, I hadn't read it either, until recently. I was a kid when it came out, young enough that I still had to be held by he hand by my Dad as we walked through Yankee Stadium. I don't even think my brother was even born yet when the book was first published. But he's the one who found a dog-eared old paperback in the basement of my parents' house, and appropriated it to read.
He brought it with him to Spring Training to pass on to me. I started reading it while we were on our trip to Florida, but I was too tried most nights to read more than a few pages before we conked out.
After returning to the frozen north (today's April 26th as I write this and we had SNOW in Boston today... not kidding), I zipped through it in a matter of days. At first, all I could say was: Wow.
This is a book that has it all. An observant and funny narrator (Bouton), a fascinating milieu (major league baseball), and a suspenseful plot (as Bouton tries to make a comeback to the bigs after ruining his arm by turning to the knuckleball). And the New York Yankees.
Now you would think as a Yankee fan, that I would find the book sacrilegious. Bouton reams Ralph Houk and the Yankee management for ruining his health with bad coaching, exposes Mickey Mantle as a mean-hearted drunk, and harbors fantasies of beating his former team in a pennant matchup. But it's yet more proof that the Yankees are the sun around which the baseball universe rotates, or has since the days of Ruth, anyway.
I found every page of the book to be enjoyable. I suppose the book was a serious shock when it first came out. For example, Bouton details major league player hijinks like the regular and constant practice of trying to see up women's dresses ("beaver hunting"), rampant drug use/abuse, groupie sex, and cruel pranks played on rookies. For those fans who had believed baseball players to be squeaky clean model citizens, the book must have hit like a mud pie in the face.
Then again, look at how many people get their righteous indignation up whenever a player doesn't live up to that image today. John Rocker is a racist ignoramus? Say it ain't so! Yeah, we have to try to 'rehabilitate' Rocker, help him change and grow, but are we really shocked that he's in ML baseball the first place? We oughtn't be. Sticking with the Braves now, how about Chipper Jones' adultery, admitted in late 1998? Lotta people just don't want to hear about it. Fans have stuck by him mostly by trying to ignore it, while restaurant chain Wendy's revoked their endorsement deal with him. When the question of Bernie Williams' off-field relationships with the ladies was raised in the Yankee Fan Forum at yankees.com, many fans expressed sadness and anger at the gossip and rumors, saying they wish they had never even looked into the topic. They didn't want to hear it at all.
Yes, we do want our heroes heroic, moral, righteous, and clean. The same could be said of the soldiers and generals who fight in a war, or of the leaders we respect. But this is the year 2000. Knowing of their excesses in love, drugs, or life haven't really diminished the legends of Elvis, John F. Kennedy, or many other figures. Why should baseball players be any different? Babe Ruth was not a squeaky clean fella.
One of the true charms of "Ball Four" is that Bouton exposes it all from the inside, from the perspective of a player who isn't out to smear the game, but who wants to tell it like it is. Readers are treated to Bouton's insights into the strategy of the game, the experience of pitching, the camaraderie of a team, the tough realities of the life on the road, being traded, and negotiating contracts before free agency, a strong players union, or other "modern" innovations players have today. It's not all dirty jokes and complaining. Bouton has a biting wit but also real affection for the people around him.
Yankee fans will be tickled to see cameos in the book by the rookie Lou Piniella, Joe Torre, Mel Stottlemyre, and others who cross Bouton's path as he recounts the season from trying to make the team in spring training camp with the expansion Seattle Pilots, through the long season. Many other greats also appear.
In 1990, a 20th anniversary edition of the book was published, and is still in print, plus old copies of the original bestselling book can be had anywhere from $3 to $25 at used bookstores (check out www.bibliofind.com to mail order it through the site from a used bookstore at the price you prefer...). There was also a second edition, called "Ball Four, Plus Ball Five: 1970-1980" but I haven't read that. Bouton's adventures did continue beyond the end of the book, though, including some interesting factoids:
Anyway, you won't be sorry you read this book. Even if you're one of those people who likes to keep illusions, just remember it was all a long time ago, and keep telling yourself it's not like that now. But I wouldn't miss this extremely funny, often touching, story of the human beings in baseball and the inside of the game. After twenty years, it's still worth reading.
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
So, the other night, while sitting in the stands in the freezing cold wind of Yankee Stadium's upper deck, my brother gave me my birthday present, lovingly wrapped in a page of the sports section of the local paper with Ken Griffey, Jr. photo large on it. (I couldn't help but say, as I ripped the paper to shreds: "Omigod, I killed Kenny!") It was just a coincidence that that night's game was near my birthday and that I happened to be in NYC.
Julian, ever the thoughtful brother, bought me a copy of the Major League Rule Book, which I have already used twice, and also another baseball-related book, "Slouching Toward Fargo" by Neal Karlen. The subtitle of the book tells it all: "A Two-Year Saga of Sinners and St. Paul Saints at the Bottom of the Bush Leagues With Bill Murray, Darryl Strawberry, Dakota Sadie, and Me."
You see, there's this kinda zany baseball promoter named Mike Veeck, son of the late, esteemed Bill Veeck, who had once owned the St. Louis Browns, among other teams, and who was called "the greatest showman in baseball." The younger Veeck got blackballed from the game when both Veecks were with the Chicago White Sox, and Mike arranged the infamous "Disco Demolition Night"--which resulted in a riot, torn up field, and a forfeited game. Veeck's only route back to The Show, like the many desperate, end-of-the-line players he would hire, was through the independent bush leagues, not part of "organized baseball."
Veeck, the promotion genius, followed the credo "Fun Is Good," and turned the St. Paul Saints of St. Paul Minnesota into not only a winning team, but a team that sold out its 6300+ stadium for every single game for years with wacky promotions and a cast of characters including Bill Murray (of Saturday Night Live fame), a benedictine nun who gave backrubs and advice for broken hearts in the stands, a blind radio announcer, the first woman to pitch professional men's baseball (Ila Borders), and Darryl Strawberry, who in 1996 was suffering his own first blackball from organized baseball.
We Yankee fans already know how the Strawberry saga turned, how Straw kept his hopes up while playing with the Saints, kept in shape, and then got a ticket back to the Show courtesy of George Steinbrenner, how he then grew into a team leader and helped the team win its first World Series in many years. And we also know how, in 2000, he's back on the skids. But it was an inspiring story while it lasted.
"Slouching Toward Fargo" tells a host of other last-chance for redemption stories associated with the Saints, all of them fascinating, intriguing, and uplifting, except for one, the author's own. Neal Karlen, you see, had been offered large wads of money by Rolling Stone magazine to follow the Saints in order to do a "hatchet" piece (an ultra-negative expose) on Bill Murray, Darryl Strawberry, and anyone else who might take a sordid fall in the backwoods of the bush league. But Karlen immediately finds himself in a moral quandary. He needs the money, and he used to thrive on that sort of work, but now he's left the big city behind and moved back to his home in Minneapolis, and even though his heart was broken recently by a baseball-loving bitch, he really, truly, likes the St. Paul Saints and their wacky ways...
Karlen spends most of the year following the Saints and all these many worthy characters, but he is too distracted by his own angst and conflicted feelings to either report effectively or focus on the drama going on on the field. The book's main strengths turn out to be the other characters in the book, who are well-worth reading about, and even Karlen's failings can't disguise what one-of-a-kind people these are. Karlen's own journey to redemption is interesting, but not interesting enough to put up with his sloppy editing (sometimes the Madison team is the "BlackWolf" all one word, the "Black Wolf" two words, and once the "Black Wolves") and his penchant for repeating the same anecdotes and descriptions multiple times, while seeming to leave out crucial information. I wanted to see more of the actual on field play and details of the Saints pennant race, for example, and less of the authors' handwringing about whether he would, or would not, write the hatchet piece. God knows that, as I baseball writer, my baseball journals prove that I write about myself as much or more than I write about the game, so perhaps I should not cast stones. But I craved more BASEBALL in "Slouching Toward Fargo."
I recommend the book to anyone, though, who wants a peek at the bush leagues and the especially wild and zany Saints. Yankee fans will be curious to see Straw it his then-lowest, along with cameos by players like Chuck Knoblauch (who was then still with the Twins). Perhaps if the book had just been a tad more focused and better edited, I would have sailed through it smoothly--but being a professional writer and editor myself, maybe I am too picky. There is much to treasure about the people and places Karlen uncovers, and any fan of the grand old game should enjoy discovering them, despite the book's many failings.
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
Remember the month of April, because come October it will seem so far away. Remember how it was ridiculously cold all over the country, how the Indians sat in their clubhouse three games in a row in Boston, with rain cancellations every day, how the Dodgers/Mets were snowed out. Remember Ken Griffey, Jr. having a tantrum because he wasn't hitting, and then starting to hit. Remember the Mariners seeming rejuvenated without him. Remember Mark McGwire being sidelined from his one chance at Coors Field with a back problem. Remember the Chicago White Sox suddenly making it all work. Cal Ripken's 3000 hit, and the Orioles on a tear--for a short while anyway. The young Kansas City Royals winning four in a row in the bottom of the ninth -- was it three on walk off home runs? But then... getting stopped cold by the New York Yankees.
The Yankees of the new century are not the Yankees of the seventies and eighties. Why? Because in the 70s and 80s, Steinbrenner would have been trading people left and right, dangling big money in front of great players who would come to New York and gripe about sitting on the bench, getting hitters when we needed pitchers, getting pitchers when we needed fielders, etc. Torre and Cashman have finally learned to handle George, or maybe George has finally learned to handle his impulses.
The result was an April where there was much nail-biting and teeth-gnashing among the fans, as various members of the team slumped, and they struggled to make it work without any big trades. The team as a whole looked lackluster. Maybe it was the background worry that every player had for beloved Mel Stottlemyre, who was going to miss Opening Day because of treatments for cancer. (As it turned out, this year's typically cold, rainy April postponed Opening Day by one day, and Mel was able to join the team after all.) Or maybe it was the plague of injuries keeping some bright stars from shining.
Scott Brosius went first with a pulled rib cage muscle on the second day of the season. Alfonso Soriano, the blue chip shortstop prospect brought up from Columbus, couldn't play third very well, or bat. The home runs were nice, but how about some base hits when we needed them? Shane Spencer found himself in a similar spot. When he connected, he blasted the ball four hundred feet. But too often he was sent back to the dugout with nothing. Ricky Ledee, after having a hot spring (seven home runs) and hitting the first home run ever in Enron Field in Houston (exhibition game), had a run of bad luck and bad hitting, including many balls that should have been doubles or triples that were miraculously caught by outfielders, and one or two that should have been home runs, but weren't. And what was up with Jeter and Knoblauch? Jittery, trying to pick their teammates up, they swung at too many pitches, didn't walk as often as they should, and both had low on base percentages compared to what they are used to. Jeter put the bat on the ball well a lot, but too often the ball went right to an infielder. Thems the breaks. At least they were both fielding well, Knoblauch seems to have left the throwing weirdness behind, and for once it is Jeter who has four errors to his name.
There was good news, too, though. Even as those guys were slumping, Jorge Posada came out of the gate like a bullet, hitting home runs, clutch hits, and gunning down runners at second base as if he'd been doing it all along. Suddenly only Pudge Rodriguez is a better catcher in the American League. And Bernie Williams, who traditionally starts slow, didn't. Bernie showed why he deserved that Gold Glove and also had a hot bat. In one game in Toronto, he and Jorge made history by being the first set of switch-hitting teammates to hit home runs from both sides of the plate during a single game. And Paul O'Neill threw off the critics who claimed he was too old, batting over .400 against his supposed weakness, lefty pitchers, and driving clutch hits. Lance Johnson was a bright spot on the bench too, coming in to pinch hit a few times, and connecting with the ball. Tino Martinez hit well against lefties too, at least partly, he said, because now the Yankees are seeing so many of them. Various teams have stacked their bullpens with lefties, specifically aiming for the Yankee lefthanded weakness, but that plan may have backfired.
Speaking of pitching, here was another area where nails were bitten. Andy Pettitte went on the DL with a strained back muscle. Ramiro Mendoza pitched a perfect game into the seventh inning when he took a spot in the rotation, and Jason Grimsley filled in one day as well. But 'Doza wasn't as perfect his next several starts, and David Cone and Roger Clemens struggled. (El Duque was stellar, though.) Clemens was walking way too many batters, and way too many of those guys were crossing the plate. Cone was having trouble with his mechanics, and batters were pounding him. But Cone moved from one side of the pitching rubber to the other, and by the end of the month had one brilliant start. That same week, Pettitte came off the DL and had a brilliant start as well. Then Clemens did it. As the end of the month came on, it looked like the rotation was finally going to be all there... well, except for the fifth starter question, but with guys like Mendoza and Grimsley around, it's a question that can wait. The bullpen was incredible, becoming the first bullpen in history to be undefeated in the month of April. Jeff Nelson was on the leader board with 4 wins, 0 losses, tying him with El Duque and Pedro Martinez. Not bad company, Nelly!
That final week of April and going into the first week of May, Spencer and Ledee started to hit, their averages climbing into the 200s. Jeter had stolen seven bases on eight attempts. But all was not completely rosy yet. Injuries continued to shake up the team. Roberty Kelly had gone down with a sprained elbow. Allen Watson pulled a muscle in his side. Felix Jose came up from Columbus, had two base hits in a row, then tragically went on the DL with a pulled groin muscle. Chris Turner, a backup catcher, then came up, hopefully to let them use Leyritz more and get him out of his slump. And Knoblauch became the latest injury victim with a strange wrist sprain--if he gets put on the DL, it will be the first time in his ten year major league career.
Still, the cliche about these Yankees is "they know how to win." Even with the spotty pitching, slumping offense, and injuries, they are now (May 5th) in first place, three games ahead of Boston, with an 18-8 record. So we may remember it as a cold April, with the team as unsettled as the weather, but ultimately, it was still good.
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
Time's an important concept in baseball. There's no clock running, the games run long or short, the season is long, the post-season is even longer. Baseball has been around for a long time. Injured players spend a set amount of time on the DL, batters call time to throw off a pitcher.
It has been forever since I made an entry here, mostly because of time. Two things really--one, time pressure in the form of deadlines on other writing projects keeps me from simply writing for pleasure, which this is, and two, there's actual baseball to occupy my time with. With at least four hours a night (must listen to the pregame and postgame shows, too, of course) devoted to my obsession, I don't have a lot of time for anything else. And of course, with the actual ups and downs of the season to contend with, I'm not spending quite as much time pondering the abstractions of the game.
But tonight the Yanks are off and so am I. And so I'll ponder the abstraction of baseball time.
When I was a kid, time seemed to take a lot longer. A year was a really long time. A week, even, was pretty long. An hour was forever, depending on what you were doing. As I get older, time shortens up. A year goes by in a blink. The only reason this makes me a little bit sad is that baseball games don't seem to last as long.
I remember as a kid, going to see games, and it seeming like the game went on ALL DAY. This was great. It was more like spending a day at an amusement park than going to see a movie. We'd pack food, as if we were camping out. A trip to the ballpark was a big excursion, and when I was ten years old, I remember the games seeming endless. It was not because we were bored--far from it--it was like a different measure of time took over. An afternoon at the ballpark had plenty of time for a hot dog, an ice cream bar, a knish, plus the fried chicken and fruit and other goodies mom had brought. There was time to roam the stadium, exploring the ramps and souvenir stands and escalators. There was time to forget all about school--like we were on vacation. We never wanted them to end, either, except for the fact, of course, that if the game didn't end, the Yankees couldn't win.
They say the Yankees play slower games, on average, than any other team. (Well, all those big offensive rallies take a lot of time!) Thank goodness! Now that I'm a grown-up, those 3.5 hours (or however long it is) seems like a precious short time. Because the game can still make me forget school/work/deadlines, but all too soon, it's over, and we're waking up from the dream and back to reality. There's just this brief window of time in which to bask in the baseball.
Remember twi-night doubleheaders? Those were the best. I know the players didn't like them, but for me, that was the greatest. That really was an all day excursion. Dad liked to park in this tiny parking lot right near the giant Louisville Slugger (it's not there anymore), and you had to get there early for that. So we'd be two hours early at least for the first game, then have that whole game, and then ANOTHER ONE. Gluttony. That's what it was. We loved it.
So that's why I like to go as early as possible. Because I just can't get enough. I'm still standing in my seat until the first round of "New York, New York" is done. Anything to make it last just a little longer. Because baseball time, magical as it is, does come to an end.
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
Anyone who has watched even a little baseball knows that luck has something to do with it. I don't mean the "oh, it was lucky the wind blew the ball back" kind of luck--I mean the kind of circumstantial chance that creates great drama. Like the luck of the draw that put Pedro Martinez on the mound the same night as former Red Sox ace Roger Clemens, the same night that ESPN broadcast from the Stadium to the entire nation.
It's the same luck that had me and my entire Yankee-loving family sitting in section U13 (upper deck, first base side) during that game. Once again, we get to utter those word that fans love to say: "We Were There!"
I was supposed to be in Wisconsin speaking at a writers conference. But my cousin picked Memorial Day weekend to get married in Philly, so I changed plans, met up with my parents and brother for the ceremony on Saturday. Which meant we had Sunday to take in a game.
In the months before the game, when we bought the tickets, we had no idea who would be pitching, nor that the Yanks and Sox would be tied for first place going into the weekend. All we knew was we had a chance to get to the Stadium. It would be our first trip to the national temple of baseball as a family since 1983.
In 1983, I was a teenager, and my brother was about eight years old. That was the year we first got lucky--when we were at the Red Sox game on July 4th, when Dave Righetti pitched a no-hitter. In my locked, handwritten diary I put in an entry on July 10th. I went on for several pages about boys I had crushes on and then wrote the following: "Speaking of sports, on July 4th we went to the Yankee Game.To set the mood, 5 parachutists landed on the field and Chuck Mangione played The Star Spangled Banner. They gave away cars, golf carts, and money. Besides that, Dave Righetti pitched a NO-HITTER!!! First one since Don Larsen's perfect game in '56! WAY TO GO RAGS!" What I didn't write in was we waited two hours outside the press gate in a throng of fans until Righetti came out. At least, my Dad insists it was two hours. I don't remember it being that long, but you know, maybe that's another one of those "time flies when you're having fun" things.
You don't expect to see a game like that again in your life--unless you're a Yankee fan. But still, you never know when it will happen.
So, here it was, another summer holiday, and for the first time in sixteen years, the Tan Family starting lineup was once again at the ballpark together. The previous summer we'd planned a triumphant return for August which was scuttled when Dad went on the DL with a collapsed lung. (He's fine now, thanks.) So when the opportunity, because of the wedding, to make a trip this May came up, I jumped at it.
It was already going to be a great day no matter what. Even the threatening gray skies couldn't dampen our spirits--It was Umbrella Night, so if it rained, who cared? We all had Yankee umbrellas! We had no traffic crossing the George Washington Bridge, and zipped right across the Macombs Dam Bridge to our favorite parking lot. As we were walking up to the stadium, we came to the press gate. Shane Spencer was just walking in. Then a small green convertible pulled into the player parking lot and people started screaming "Bernie!" Bernie Williams and Tino Martinez went walking in a few minutes later.
Of course, being there early enough to see the players enter meant that we were once again wrong about when the gates opened to the public. It being the ESPN game, it started an hour later, so we had time to kill. We walked around the corner in search of an authentic New York pizzeria with a bathroom, and found one about two blocks up 161st street! A startlingly clean place, actually, with pinstripe and Yankee-Logo wallpaper on the walls, and the best pizza I've had in a long time. (See, in New England, the pizza is kind of like the baseball team, thick, substantial, occasionally very tasty, but it just doesn't satisfy...)
Then we took up residence on the steps outside gate 2, so we could get in line for Monument Park right away.
I had been through Monument Park once earlier this year, by myself, but this was corwin's first time through. The Yankees were taking BP as we went through, so we put our gloves on. A lot of people there were making comments like it was their first trip to the Stadium and it was quite crowded among the monuments. Bob Sheppard's newly minted plaque was hung under Mel Allen's. As we filed slowly out toward the stairs to exit, some guys in the bleachers above us yelled "Here comes one!" A ball sailed in, hit he camera platform and bounced into the grass right by the groundskeeper's monument. I wish I could say I caught it, but actually, I pounced on it with my glove in the grass.
Our first BP home run ball! Even at Spring training this year, we never got a ball from the field. We yelled up to the guys "Who hit that?" "Tino Martinez!" they shouted back. Wow. As I held the ball in my glove I thought "Do it again, Tino.... but against Pedro..."
Well, you probably know how the game turned out by now. You can read all about it at The Sporting News or yankees.com. But you know what? It almost doesn't matter. For eight innings every single pitch was cheered, booed, and hollered about. This was different from the Righetti no-hitter, where there was one half of each inning we cared about, and the other half didn't matter so much. Here, every member of a sell-out crowd was hanging on every detail. You know that term "edge of your seat?" At one point my back was starting to hurt, and so was Julian's. "Hey bro," I said. "You know we can lean back and still see everything perfectly fine." he and me and corwin eased ourselves back in our seats, and lo, we could. But one pitch later we were back to hunching forward and screaming like maniacs. And two pitches later we were standing up, again, as Roger Clemens mowed down another Red Sock.
The flashbulbs. I've never seen so many flashbulbs go off in the first two innings of a ballgame. On the first pitch to every batter, from both Pedro and the Rocket, it was like some kind of magic special effect, sending sparkles all through the place. They died down as the game went on, then would flare up again--I can just imaging the guy at the one hour photo place in the mall the next day. Processing all these shots of a huge green field, the blue stands full of people, and this tiny little figure on a round brown dot below... "The one in white is Roger Clemens, the one in gray is Pedro Martinez..." Man. The MLB powers that be say they think people want to see high scoring games. I think the theory is that home runs and high scores are exciting. But well, strikeouts and low scores are pretty damn exciting, too, wouldn't you say?
It's weird to say it but I don't think I've ever enjoyed a loss so thoroughly. If the Yanks had won, it would have been the absolute best baseball game of my entire life: got a ball, Red Sox, sell-out, whole family there... Now, if we were REALLY lucky, that BP home run ball would have been our good luck charm. After all, we'd seen Tino and Bernie coming in to the stadium. And both of them got up in the bottom of the ninth, and could have won the game with a three-run homer. But, for once, the full Curse of the Babe did not appear to be in effect, Tino grounded out to end the game, and the Red Sox escaped with a win. Luck, whether good or bad, only goes so far, I guess. Now if only I can get tickets for the whole gang some time in October...
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
So the weirdest thing happened to me today during the ninth inning of Game One of the Yankees/Mets Subway series.
I fell asleep.
I know, I can't believe it either.
I'm obsessed with baseball, it's true. Just ask any friend or acquaintance who has had a conversation with me since October. I go around in a weird surreal funk when there's an off day or a rainout. So for me to shut my eyes and sleep during those brief hours I live for, during a game, is really weird.
Maybe it's a strange form of denial. How can the Mets be beating us so badly? Does-Not-Compute. System will now shut down. Doctors used to think that was what narcolepsy was, a way for the brain to escape from input it didn't like. But seems unlikely.
I'm telling myself it has more to do with the fact that I've been working too hard, not sleeping enough, and suffering allergies, and less to do with the fact that it was the Yanks who looked like they were asleep tonight. If you haven't heard the news, the Yanks were down 12-2 when I started to snooze. I woke up just in time to hear Derek Jeter ground into a double play to end the game, then crashed back into oblivion.
I'll know I'm really in trouble if I can nod off during the game at Fenway I'm going to in two weeks. Seems pretty unlikely, doesn't it? But just in case, I'll make sure I get plenty of rest. And maybe if the Yankee bats will wake up, so will I.
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
So here it is, the night before the Yanks start a four game stand at Fenway Park, against the Red Sox, who are ahead of them by half a game in first place in the AL East. And Toronto is only a half a game below them.
My team needs picking up. They were swept by the White Sox (who are leading the AL Central by a lot) in four games that were by turns frustrating, humiliating, and heart breaking.
We've got a second baseman with a load of mental anguish about his mysteries throwing malady. We've got a slew of guys pressing now and worrying about the trade deadline. Some red hot guys have cooled off, and some veterans haven't got hot yet. We've got a rookie pitcher in the starting rotation who got absolutely shelled in his debut, and we've got a veteran ace who got shelled just today for nine runs in a single inning--the first inning. We've got another veteran pitching ace on the DL.
Yeah, my team needs picking up. So how can I even think to go to Fenway Park tomorrow in anything other than my full fan regalia? Midnight blue cap with the white interlocking NY. Dark blue turtleneck with the interlocking NY embroidered on the neck. Blue t-shirt with the Yankee top hat logo on the front. That's everything I have that's Yankee, unless you count the Dairy Queen mini-batting helmet sundae cup, and the umbrella I got on umbrella day.
If the Yanks were on another unstoppable tear through the year, like they were in '98, well, maybe I would tone it down. Out of respect for my friends who are Red Sox fans, and out of mild concern for my personal safety.
But not when it's like this. Not when the season seems on the verge of falling apart. Not when Chuck and Shane and Mendoza (and even Westbrook) need the support. Not when Scottie's still trying to find his clutch instincts again, and Georgie and Bernie are trying to get hot again. I gotta do my part.
So I'll be there guys, screaming from the loge deck of Fenway Park, no matter what you do, win or lose, hit or miss. I'll be there, probably drowned out among all the Sox fans, but I'll be there, no matter what.
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
Well, last night my team was down, and all kinds of drama, humiliation and heartbreak loomed potentially on the horizon. We were out of first place, suffered an unbelievable loss 17-4 in which our ace got shelled for 9 runs in the top of the first inning and came out of the game after only 2/3 of that inning, only to end up on his way to Alabama to see the surgery specialist who does Tommy John surgery, probably ending his season, potentially ending his career.
And of course we were coming into Boston, to our arch rivals in baseball history. I live in Boston. I've had my tickets for this game since January. But there was no way I could know what a situation my Yankees would be in today.
corwin and I both got into our full Yankee fan regalia for the occasion, to support the team, to show we weren't afraid and neither were our guys.
As we walked to the ballpark and rode the T, people (always men, I notice) would yell "Yankees suck!" behind our backs. When corwin went to the concession stand before the game, the vendor gave him a really hard time about being a Yankee fan, as well. "I was offended!" corwin said with indignation as he handed me my hot dog. He wouldn't tell me what the guy said, but it takes a lot to offend corwin...
I entered the ballpark not long after the gates opened, garnering a tiny beach ball from a man in a giant dog suit on my way in. (A lycos.com giveaway...) It was my first time in Fenway Park to see a major league game, and I wasn't really sure what to expect.
As I came up the runway marked with our section number (31), the main thing I noticed was the sky. At 5:30 in the afternoon the sky was blue, the air was balmy and beautiful--perfect, really. Most of what I could see coming out in to the grandstand was the sky, the Prudential building rising up, reflecting the sunset, directly in front of me. Then I noticed the park itself, so low compared to Yankee Stadium, the green of the grass seeming to flow right into the wall and bleachers, as if the park were just some natural depression in the Fens, low to the ground, irregular. When mostly empty, as it was at that hour, it looked almost as small as Legends Field in Tampa. Of course, Fenway seats 3 times as many people as Legends Field, but only half as many as the old pre-70s Yankee Stadium fit. When you take off that top 40% of a stadium, what you have is a park, and that's what Fenway is, a park, green and antiquated and lovely. Even the cheers of the crowd seemed intimate, easy to hear, unified by the close surroundings.
I made my way down to the third base wall, where Derek Jeter and Jorge Posada were standing, waiting to take fielding practice. A kid nearby was yelling "Mister Jeter!" again and again, until his voice cracked as Derek turned to go into the field: "Mister JEE-ter!" And Derek yelled back "What!?" It was all Yankee fans along there at that time.
I got talking to some fellows from upstate New York, from two towns over from Clay Bellinger's hometown of Oneonta. Bellinger was just stepping in to the cage then, and we cheered for him. Jimmy Leyritz put a whole bunch of balls over the Green Monster onto Landsdowne Street. Then Derek's group went into the cage, him, Knoblauch, Paul O'Neill--I got distracted and didn't see who their fourth was. Derek put a few over the Monster as well.
When he was done hitting and didn't foul any balls off toward us, I went to find my seat. It turned out it was only a few rows back from where I was standing, and I was amazed. I don't think you can even get seats that good in Yankee Stadium without being a season ticket holder. I was reminded of Spring Training for that reason--that's the only other time I've sat so close to the field.
I should have stayed at the wall, though. Shortly after I sat down, Jeter came and autographed for just about all the fans along the wall. Sigh. You know, I thought I was past the Jeter thing, but just thinking about standing there I felt a little faint. I got back up and stood by the wall again, but he'd passed by there already. Just being that 10 yards from him though, gee, I guess the Jeter thing isn't over for me yet. I say again, photos and tv just do not do him justice.
While I was standing there, the ten year old boys next to me were hollering for various players to come sign. Felix Jose was coming in from the outfield just then, but they didn't know his name, guessing "Mr. Hernandez?" I told the kid next to me "That's Felix Jose."
"Mr. Jose! Mr. Jose!" he yelled. And lo, Felix came over and signed for them all. "You owe me a favor, kid," I told him.
As you can probably tell, I was having a great time, even before the first pitch. But it gets better. In fact, it gets so good that at a certain point we couldn't even score the game properly anymore.
In the beginning, it looked like a close game. Brian Rose was pitching well, getting a lot of strikes called on the corners. but the first two hits off him were a long double and long triple into the centerfield "corner"--both of which would have been home runs in Yankee Stadium. I mean, Spencer hit one 420 feet right into that notch. I turned to corwin and said "It's only a matter of time before they figure out how to get the extra five feet..."
Indeed, it didn't take too, too long, and in the end, after Rose came out, the Sox offered up their sacrificial bullpen lambs to be slaughtered. First Bryce Florie, who only just came off the DL, pitched two pretty good innings, but they wouldn't leave him in much longer since he's just getting back. Then Rob Stanifer, who just got the call up from Pawtucket today. Welcome back to the big city, kid--in Stanifer's 2/3 of a frame, every member of the Yankee lineup crossed the plate. Of course, there were three errors in the infield, one on Nomar, one on Veras at third, and one on Offerman at first to blow a double play. The result was nine runs, but only one of them earned.
Tim Wakefield, the knuckleballer, then came in, and got one out with one pitch. That was his one good pitch. Because in the ninth, the Yanks hit him for seven more runs, all earned. By then they had mostly substitutes playing, again making it seem like Spring training (as did the lopsided score). Bellinger hit for Knobby (who, by the way, didn't throw a ball away all night, though he did toss veeery self-consciously to get the outs at first...), then went in to play first base in the 8th while Wilson Delgado came in to second. Felix Jose pinch ran for O'Neill in the eighth, and then played for him in the ninth. In the ninth they sent Bellinger to centerfield, Jorge Posada to first base, and put in Turner at catcher. Might as well get those guys some playing time...
Lost in the offensive explosion was the fact that Ramiro Mendoza quietly kept the Sox shut down for his second straight game. After all, it was just last week he made what was essentially a start coming in after Roger Clemens was taken out after the first inning and put on the DL, against Pedro Martinez, no less. And won the game, 2-1. Just this time, it was 22-1. (Only 14 of those 22 runs were earned, but that's not much consolation to the losers...)
The Sox are saving their good bullpen guys, Hipolita Pichardo, Derek Lowe, Rich Garces, for the next games. Cormier and Beck are no slouches either.
Meanwhile, I hope my Yankees are sleeping well tonight. Tomorrow they face Pedro Martinez, who they have discovered is not completely unhittable after all. They'll see what they can do. Let's just hope Pettitte can keep them shut down, and that the Yanks didn't use up all their runs today.
Tomorrow's game I'll be watching on tv from my living room. And Wednesday I go back for another taste of Fenway. This time I won't give up on Derek Jeter's autograph. Because I know the Yankees won't give up on anything.
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
But when they win, boy does it get tough to be a Yankee fan.
Tonight's game we lost 9-7, due to an inexplicable implosion of the bullpen in the seventh, when Jason Grimsley walked three men (one intentionally) to load the bases, and then Mike Stanton walked two more across the plate. Bernie hit a two run homer with two out in the ninth, but it wasn't enough to tie the game. (One news report had Pedro Martinez standing at the top of the dugout steps making a "hex" sign with his arms and fingers when Grims and Stanton were pitching...)
We were fairly well-razzed on Monday as we rode the T to the game and walked to the park. But today, people actually came up to us in the subway and asked us if we were from New York. When they found out we lived here, they demanded to know why we didn't root for the Sox. When I told one guy I was born in New York, he demanded to know why I didn't root for the Mets. I told him my father was a Yankee fan, and so was I. He then went on a little monologue about how certain teams like the Mets and Sox (i.e. losing teams, though he didn't use the word 'loser') have character. "And if a human being doesn't have character, he has nothing," he concluded.
"Yeah, you've got some characters on the team, all right," I said as he walked away.
When we arrived at the park, the Yankees were taking BP, and we stood at the wall with a bunch of other Yankee fans, watching Spencer sail ball after ball over the Green Monster. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to do it in the game tonight. It wasn't a good night for autographs, either. Even old reliable Derek Jeter was in the second to last BP group, and then went in to the field before being called in to the clubhouse with the rest of the team. Still, it was nice to stand with New York fans, and chat about the players and the Leyritz trade (Jimmy got sent to Los Angeles today in trade for a utility infielder named Vizcaino...)
It was pretty much the last time we'd see a friendly face the whole night. Our entire section was Red Sox fans, mostly old white guys (come to think of it, the crowd at Fenway is almost 100% white on nights when Pedro doesn't pitch--I counted four black men in the crowd and they were all wearing Yankees regalia...), the loud obnoxious kind.
What is it these people have against Paul O'Neill? Every time he came to bat they'd be like "Oh, I hate this guy" and shouting at him "Hey, O'Neill, crybaby, wah wah wah! And you're ugly, too!" (Word for word quote, I am not making this up.) And when Derek fouled a ball off his knee and hit the dirt in pain, someone yelled "Awwww, Poor Jeter twisted his widdle ankle!" Jeez, people. If Nomar went down in a game at Yankee Stadium, you better believe we'd cheer when he got back on his feet. In all fairness, a lot of people did cheer when Jeter got back up.
I think people feel they can pick on me because I'm a woman, and I'm only 5'4" tall. And the win makes them bolder. Seven year old kids were giving us the thumbs down every time they walked past us during the game. But after the game, as we sat there waiting for some friends to find us, total strangers would come up to me, push my hat down over my eyes, and with big-shit eating grins on their faces, say "You lost." One asked me if I had a pair of scissors so he could cut my ponytail off? (Shrug?? Would that be like the Indians scalping? I didn't get it either.)
Would I have left my cap and shirt at home? No way. If the Yankees can take the abuse, so can I. But I was pretty tired of the treatment by the time we got out of there. I just smiled and took it. What am I going to do, start a fight? Deck one of these guys? I've been studying tae kwon do for fourteen years, and yes, I could do it. He wouldn't even know what hit him. But that's just not right. They're just bitter from so many heartbreaking losses--I pity them, really. Let them savor this one win.
Because after all, the best revenge comes, as it has so many times, in October.
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
Oh, I kept up pretty good in April and May, was glued to the radio/Internet many nights, and would read the newspapers (web sites) every day, and had time to write pieces here, and to post in the Yankee fan forum...
But around mid-June, real life started to become more demanding. Deadlines. Meetings. Crises. And pretty much the whole month of July whipped by, well, since the All-Star game. I don't think I've listened to a complete game since.
This is difficult, because since the trading deadline passed, there are so many changes to get used to. Ricky Ledee went to the Indians, and then they traded him to the Rangers. The Yankees have David Justice, Denny Neagle, Ryan Thompson... it just occurred to me I don't even know what Ryan Thompson looks like. I probably saw him in Spring Training, but man, that was a long time ago.
That's right, it's two thirds over already.
The good news is, if the Yankees keep going as they are, with the added punch of Justice in the lineup, and the lift that Neagle gives the rotation, we'll see a lot of time in the post-season, as well.
We can hope.
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
Well, actually, when I wrote about it on Xtreme, it was only an interest, a curiousity. But now I can definitely say it's an obsession. He imagines himself pitching while he's trying to go to sleep at night.
He's organized a whole pile of friends to play Wiffle Ball on Sunday afternoons, and Kimberly bought him a whole outfit (complete with eye black and a rosin bag) for his birthday. He's contemplating formalizing a league.
For many of us, myself included, playing wiffle ball in the past few weeks was the first time I played an organized team sport of any kind in over ten years. I played soccer once when I was in college with some friends from my tae kwon do school, at a picnic. That was the last time since high school I've played a team game.
What's wonderful about wiffle ball is that physically it really isn't very demanding, and yet it simulates baseball closely enough in its rules and form of play (i.e. battle between pitcher and batter, etc) that we can get totally into it. We play with actual baserunning, unlike some wiffle ball leagues (yes, there are LEAGUES) who use invisible baserunners. We like running the bases.
Thus far in my wiffle experience I've had my Derek Jeter moments (catching the ball in the infield and doubling up the runner), and my Jeff Nelson moments (striking out a batter, but unfortunately after walking in two runs...). And get this, it turns out I'm a switch hitter. Mechanically, it feels just as "good" from either side. I use "good" in quotes, since I can't hit terribly well from either side. I feel like my eyes don't track the ball very well. It doesn't feel like I'm being "fooled" by the break in the pitch, rather I feel like as soon as the ball leaves the pitcher's hand, I forget to keep looking at it. So no matter what the ball does, it doesn't matter, since I can't see it anyway. Sometimes it's obvious it's going to be out of the strike zone and I don't swing. But if it is coming into the zone, it's invisible. I swing and hit it some of the time despite not being able to see it. I've been on base a lot with walks and singles. I suppose it's something that comes with practice.
We aren't weenie enough to be keeping stats, but I'd be willing to bet that if the obsession lasts much longer, corwin probably will.
The next step is nicknames, I think. We don't have team names since we just rotate who plays with whom, who's captain, etc., depending on how many people show up on a given day. So yeah, we need wiffle nicknames for the individual players.
Of course, my secret agenda is to hopefully work a couple of people up to giving MY birthday present a try--an aluminum bat. Not for use with the plastic ball. If not this season, maybe next...?
Meanwhile, it turns out we're not alone. There are wiffle leagues all around the country. Wiffle PARKS. Check out these links if you want to know more about the wiffle craze:
http://www.wiffleball.com/mhealtharticle.html
http://www.ma.ultranet.com/~kuras/wifferh.htm
Pardon me now--I've got to start warming up my pitching arm.
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
I think it's especially fun for the baseball fans in the group. I think for us, playing wiffle ball is sort of akin to those guys who go out and play those soldier-of-fortune paint ball games. It's not the real thing, not the real war, as it were, but it does have a lot of the excitement.
For us baseball fans, what matters is we are out there on the diamond. Our physical skills may be meager, but we are still recreating the battle of wits between pitcher and batter, the fielding and baserunning excitement. We have double plays, home runs, strike outs, and RBIs. We have great plays and we have errors.
Before every game, we have pitching and batting practice, and some of us are actually improving as the weeks go by.
For some reason yesterday I got locked in as a hitter. The week before I struck out a bunch of times--either caught looking or just swinging past stuff that was invisible to me. This week, even against two different pitchers, I put the bat on the ball just about every time up. I got several hits, some of them RBI hits, though we don't keep stats. Maybe I'm like Ricky Ledee, and I'll have a lot of 0-for-4 streaks and a lot of 4-4 streaks.
The second-guessing is part of the game, I guess, as Jim Bouton says in Ball Four.
Yesterday I also fielded a ton of balls. I was playing what I think of as shortstop position, though really with wiffleball there is no shortstop. Normally, besides the pitcher, we have either two or three fielders (there is no outfield, either). But I play in the shortstop hole, and most righty batters pull the ball right to me. That happened a bunch yesterday, so I was feeling good about both my batting and fielding.
The one thing I could NOT do yesterday was pitch. I pitched thirty warm up pitches in practice and only three were thrown for strikes. Ouch.
Today, because my right arm and shoulder were hurting so much from bowling, I could only bat from the left side. Good thing I'm a switch hitter! And I couldn't really field for s***. Fortunately, my team jumped out to an early lead, and corwin pitched several scoreless innings for us. Bowling did a world of good for his arm slot, and he was throwing most of his pitches for strikes! Amazing. So when I didn't field that well, it didn't hurt us too badly, and for some reason, not as many balls came at me today anyway. I played a bunch of the game with my right hand in my pocket, to keep me from using that arm. I guess I should have been a DH today, except we only had four people per team...
But speaking of second-guessing. Right now I feel good and I'm able to declare that I'm getting better at hitting. But maybe I'm just lucky. I suppose that the only way to tell is, as in baseball, to compile stats over a longer period of time, to see how things average out.
I suppose, though, that's one of the fascinating things about the game(s), isn't it. It's not just a game of numbers--it's about what happens right now, this pitch, this situation. You can be 0 for 10 against a pitcher--but does that mean this pitcher has your number, or that you're really really due for a hit against him? (or her?) Or even if that pitcher does own you, does that mean you're not going to get a key hit in the game? Of course not. Think about Kirk Gibson (Detroit Tigers) facing Goose Gossage (when Goose and Graig Nettles had gone to the Padres) in the World Series. If you don't know the story, Gibson hit a home run that sank the Padres. They were going to take Goose out of the game, but he argued, saying, no, I OWN this Gibson kid, look at the numbers. The numbers agreed. But Gibson knew Gossage would try to blow him away, and met force with force....
Anyway, I'm sure that the next time Phil pitches -- a friend of ours who has long long arms like Randy Johnson, and so has a lot more giddyup on his ball than our other wiffle pitchers -- I'll be second guessing again. Oh, an off day for me, maybe. But who knows, maybe when it comes time to get that key hit, I'll see the ball better. There's no way to know until we get to that situation.
Until then, this wiffle warrior is going to tend her wounds (my shoulder is killing me--well, not so much from the two days of wiffle games this weekend as from the fact we went candlepin bowling last night.... and then there's the swollen, itchy mosquito bite on my leg...) and bask in my glory. I only struck out once in the past two days, and I got on base in every inning both yesterday and today. That ain't too shabby.
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
It was this time last year that I was sitting in the stands at Yankee Stadium for the first time since the 1980s, watching Ricky Ledee beat Griffey and the Mariners with an inside the park home run. Griffey slammed hard into the centerfield wall but couldn't come up with the ball, and Ledee turned on the jets. My how things have changed in a year.
My initial feelings for Ledee were, wow, this kid can really play! In a lot of the games I watched or listened to at the end of last season, he really seemed to show tremendous talent and hustle. That weekend, I remember hearing a guy --a real classic New York Yankees Fan, in faded hat, gray team t-shirt, beer gut and sideburns in need of a trim-- in a New Jersey 7-Eleven store say he thought Ledee was the next Don Mattingly.
Lots of people in the Yankees organization had the same positive first impression, I guess, because they stuck with him for so long. In Spring Training this year, Ledee was one of the only ones who didn't look half-asleep out there. But the impression didn't last. His up and down inconsistency eventually bothered Joe Torre, and it bothered me. I got tired of saying to myself "Come on Ricky, get it together!" Flashes of brilliance, but he never burned like a star.
Of course, Ledee is now gone from the Bronx, and we wish him well. I hear he hit a grand slam the other night in Texas (where he's now playing, after a very brief stint with the Indians). My feelings for him are still positive, but he never quite won my heart.
At the time of that game last August, I really liked Junior Griffey, too. I'd watched the Home Run Derby from Coors Field on tv at some point, and I was kind of taken by his boyish charm, and his prodigious ball-smacking ability. I liked MacGwire, sure. But I had a really positive impression of Junior, one I was still carrying with me when I got to the Stadium that day.
Now, Yankee fans can be fickle in some ways. Often, we're gracious and respectful to the star players on opposing teams. Players like Cal Ripken have received their ovations at Yankee Stadium. But there are some players that, as a collective whole, Yankee fans can't stand.
Apparently, Junior's one of them. I wasn't on the baseball planet in 1995, when Seattle beat the Yanks in their first postseason appearance in forever, but a lot of other people in the stands that day were, and they bore a grudge against Griffey. The boos were intense.
I had been hoping to see batting practice that day, to watch Junior launch balls into the bleachers, but it being an afternoon game the day after a night game, I guess they had decided to take a day off. And I realized, the first time Griffey came to the plate, that when the game counted, I didn't want to see him blast the ball. I wanted to see him strike out, or pop up.
It was a feeling of conflict for me, because here I was liking him as a player and as a person I had a good impression of, and yet, disliking him as an opponent. The crowd definitely swayed my feelings in that direction. We didn't want to let Griffey beat us. In a lot of ways, it was the Yankees versus Griffey, it seemed, not versus the Mariners, but against Junior himself.
I've still got the scorecard of that game, which reveals it to be a "typical" winning Yankee game of the Torre era. Mariano Rivera got the save, Pettitte the win, by a score of 11-5. (Stanton and Nelson also pitched in.) Bernie Williams hit a home run and also scored on Ledee's inside the parker.
And Griffey went O for 5 with one strikeout. He failed to make the play on Ledee's ball which led to the first inside the park home run in Yankee Stadium since 1990. And there was one more play he should have made in centerfield -- I'm not sure exactly which one of the 12 Yankee hits it was -- which cemented my feeling that that day, the Yankees had beaten not only Seattle (for the eighth straight time!) but Griffey himself.
I suppose that was all it took for me to decide maybe Griffey wasn't so great after all, that maybe I really didn't like him that much.
It seems unfair, doesn't it? He's undoubtedly one of the best players in baseball in this decade, but between my rediscovered Yankee loyalty (yes, I admit, the peer pressure really did affect me) and a lousy outing for him that day, he lost me as a fan. At least for a while.
I kind of started to like him during the off season, when he took less money to go to Cincinnati, so he could be with his family, etc. Seems big-hearted and noble. But there was a lot of other press at the time that made him out to be a whiner, and I was a bit put off by some of the reports that made him seem really immature and childish. Like the one about how he wouldn't play for the Yankees now since he got scolded as a child (when his Dad was with the Yanks) and wasn't allowed to go on the field during batting practice. (I think to myself, am I still holding any grudges I formed when I was eight years old? I sure hope not.) Still, I thought maybe the whole "Griffey Goes to Cincinnati" story would be an inspirational, historic one.
But then, a few weeks into the season, there was a whole to-do about how he couldn't get his number, since the Reds had retired it a few months earlier. Junior was in a slump and the reports were that he had a tantrum in the clubhouse, demanded his number back, and that his father (who's a coach with the team) also demanded that a clubhouse guy make up a uniform with the retired number. Geez, Louise!
This isn't fair either. These media reports are never the whole story, and are obviously meant to show him in a bad light. But there remains the fact, he wasn't hitting.
Like Ledee wasn't hitting this year. Hmm.
Am I so fickle a fan that when a guy is doing well, I'm a supporter, but when he slumps, he's yesterday's news? Is it disappointment, the pre-cursor to heartbreak, which I'm trying to save myself from?
No, I don't think that's it. If anything, I've become a bigger fan of Chuck Knoblauch and David Cone this year than I ever was before, despite --or perhaps as a result of-- their struggles. Of course I feel let down by their failures, but I stick by them. I'm inspired by their struggles.
And perhaps that's it. I was not inspired by Ledee's or Junior's struggles this year. As a fan, it just got harder and harder to root for them. In Griffey's case, I already had picked up the Yankee fan grudge against him, and then on top of it, he not only wasn't living up to the nobleness of his story, he was degrading it with his behavior. With Ledee, on the other hand, well, I still really wanted him to make it. But with Shane Spencer also having a hard-luck story, and seeming to play so well in the field while Ledee just looked lost sometimes... I just couldn't keep my hopes up for Ledee. It was easier to root for Spencer. (Well, and there's a heartbreak struggle story for you--with Shane out for the year with the torn knee mere days after Ricky departed the Bronx.)
Ultimately, I suppose I shouldn't feel bad about starting to like a player because he does well, though. After all, it's not their job or their role in society or anything to be saints or my best friends -- it's their job to be the best ballplayers they can be. And if that is the first, most important criterion, then at first blush John Rocker and Carl Everett deserve at least the benefit of the doubt from fans.
But we want them to be heroes, don't we? If Boston, or the Braves, wins it all this year, the nation will want to embrace the players as heroes. But even the most fanatical of us about the game of baseball still want our heroes to be nice guys, role models--LIKEABLE. We want them to be both, superstars in the field AND great people. And both Rocker and Everett have shown themselves to be, well, not the kind of guy I'd want to have over to dinner. So should I respect them as players, as athletes, but not very much as human beings...?
Do I respect Junior as a human being? You know, I think I'm going to reserve judgement on that one. The media loves to pick on him, so the likelihood of my impression of him being skewed are high. In fact, it's 100% likely that I will never, ever get to know what Ken Griffey Junior (or probably any other pro ball player) is like as a human being. All I'll ever know is the public persona scraped together by the media and the player's own efforts to speak out.
I think, as a fan, I just have to go with my heart, my instincts. Junior could still win me back. Leading the Reds to a championship run? Becoming a clubhouse leader? Setting a good example? A few well-placed articles in the media? In the future I could probably be convinced to at least say "good for you, Junior!" --kind of like what I do now for Ricky Ledee. But for the moment, it's boo-hiss.
Except when he's facing Rocker.
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
It's been forever since I added an entry here, but this is not because I have stopped having baseball adventures. No, it's that I'm now writing a weekly column for Yankees Xtreme, and a lot of my material is going there, and also I've just been busy as a knuckleball catcher lately. I've been to Staten Island to see the SI Yankees play. I've trolled the arcades of the Jersey shore trying to win a Derek Jeter stuffed bear. (I succeeded.) I went to the batting cages. I've been to Yankee Stadium again and saw Andy Pettitte pitch a complete game.
I'm all atingle with anticipation though, about two upcoming games. Tonight I go back to Fenway Park for the final Yanks/Sox series this year, and I'm going to be sitting with some other Yankee fan die-hards I know from the Yankees Xtreme site.
This morning I woke up earlier than usual and couldn't get back to sleep, that's how excited I am about it. I'm going to see my Yankees. It's like Christmas morning when I was a child. I don't leave for the park for hours yet, I've still got work and a conference call to do, but I've already packed my snacks, pre-printed my scorecard, and loaded my camera. I suppose it shouldn't surprise anyone though who has read my previous journal entries--remember the time I packed for the weeklong Spring Training trip over a week in advance?
I'm planning my customary early trip to the park, to watch the Yankees take BP and hound for autographs. This time, dammit, I'm not giving up on Jeter until he goes into the clubhouse! I've been so close to him so many times now, and always either in the wrong spot, gave up too soon, or just plain chickened out...
It's Clemens on the mound tonight. Everyone knows he's been pitching great and he already had that incredible duel with Pedro this year on May 28, but there's always the danger that the Rocket will get rattled by the immense waves of negativity Fenway park will heap upon him. As he did in last year's postseason...
Meanwhile, pitching for the Sox is rookie Tomo Okha, who is 24 years old, from Japan, and eager to prove himself. He's only earned two runs in each of his last six outings or something, so he's doing quite well at it. So either the Yankee offense has to prove they can break through on him, or Clemens has to pitch near perfectly. Or both--I'd be happy with both!
The weather is clear and cool. It's going to be quite a night, no matter what happens.
I'm going to Yankee Stadium one more time this season, as well. I hadn't planned to, but when I heard about Yankees Xtreme Day on September 23rd, I decided I had to make one more trip. Then I figured if I am going down for Saturday the 23rd, I may as well come in early and see the game on Friday the 22nd, and why not stay for Sunday's game, too? The only drawback to seeing three games in a row is I don't have enough Yankees gear to wear! I suppose on Xtreme Day, actually, I should be more dressed up, as I'm to be meet-and-greet-ing the subscribers to the site. So maybe a hat and logo pin alone will do. Hmm, what do baseball writers wear?
What a season this has been. My first full season following the old game in years and years and years. I'm dreading the offseason a little, as it was so painful last year, waiting for spring to arrive. But hopefully it won't be as bad. I'll have Yankees.com and Yankees Xtreme to keep me busy. I'll await my issue of Yankees Magazine each month (speaking of which, I wonder where the September issue is?) and maybe I'll get started writing that novel about the Curse of the Babe.
I think the thing I'm going to remember most about this season was all the injuries. So many Yankees were down at one point or another, Brosius, Jeter, Bernie, Pettitte, Knoblauch, Mendoza... we lost Shane Spencer and Allen Watson for the year, and Roberto Kelly never even got going. O'Neill's still limping around with his hip problem, Canseco and Justice are susceptible, and now David Cone dislocated his shoulder. It's been a year of ouches. Let's not forget Mel Stottlemeyre will have to leave the team soon for his set-cell transplant, and Darryl Strawberry had a recurrence of his cancer and had a tumor along with a kidney removed.
The other thing that made this a strange summer was how cold it was in the Northeast. The team traveled all over, of course, but it never heated up in Boston or New York, and here it is September and already very very autumnal. The maple tree out my window is already mostly red.
And we can smell October in the air.
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
Wow.
I watched the Yankees clinch game 6 of the 2000 ALCS from the living room of a rental house in Orlando, Florida--a mere two blocks, actually, from the house where I watched Game 4 of the 1999 World Series last year (Roger Clemens' dominant masterpiece that presaged his amazing 15 strike out win just a few days ago). I'd hoped that the Yankees would sweep in Seattle so I could take my vacation without having to worry about baseball while in Disneyworld, but Denny Neagle and the Mariners hitters had other plans. Instead, I packed my scorecards and other baseball game material into my carry-on bag, and prepared to watch the games on tv from Florida.
Disneyworld, as anyone who has ever been there knows, is a very demanding vacation site. There's so much to do, so much to see, and only so much time and energy a person has... also Disney has this way of disconnecting you from the real world. So when the Mets clinched against St. Louis on Monday night, I never even heard about it. In fact, I never even thought about it, until late Tuesday afternoon, when I saw a guy in a Mets hat. Unfortunately, I didn't get to ask him if they had won--we were going opposite directions in a crowd.
So it wasn't until I turned on the tv that night that I found out that the Subway Series was imminent, if the Yankees could win.
Originally we had thought we might go to the "playoff party" at the "ESPN Zone" sports bar/restaurant in Downtown Disney. But traveling in a large group, we opted to go back to the large rented house and barbecue and relax. Well, that is, the rest of them planned to relax, whereas I was getting more and more tense as game time neared.
At 7:30 pm we watched an incredible pyrotechnic display with fireworks, a flaming lake, dancing, singing, a dragon come to life, and other spectacular Disney effects. You have to respect an organization that is able to set an entire lake on fire every single night, synchronized to music, no less.
Fortunately for me and Yankee fans everywhere, David Justice was able to come through on cue with some pyrotechnics of his own. I was beside myself as we were in the horde of 10,000 people leaving the Disney show, fighting our way to the trams to take us to the parking lot. It was already about fifteen minutes into game time when we went through the turnstile.
What did I do? I called my brother's house to ask him the score. One of his best friends answered the phone to give me the happy news that Julian was actually AT THE GAME (the lucky dog!), but also shared with me the sad news that the Mariners were leading 2-0 and that Knobby had almost gone yard, but it was caught. Argh!
Then, I raced into the house only to find the presidential debate on every channel! Aaah! Just when I was thinking I should have gone to the ESPN Zone or the All-Star Sports Cafe, I found the game on PAX. Those rental houses down in Orlando have almost a hundred channels of cable, thank goodness.
Aside: I know it was cruel, but I had to laugh really hard when Bob Costas remarked that he hoped Dan Wilson remembered he had to run the bases counterclockwise. Maybe it's because I was so nervous--like Steinbrenner, I thought El Duque didn't have his best stuff, and when Wilson, whose last hit in a postseason was years ago, got a hit, I was really ready to start biting my nails. Thanks, Bob, for putting things back in perspective, and restoring my jubilant mood. At that point, I KNEW El Duque and the Yankees weren't going to fold. I didn't know if we'd win, but I knew we were going to come back, and battle hard.
And we did. In case you have been in Disneyworld or another alternative universe since that night: we won. When Justice hit the three run homer to make it 6-4, I leaped out of my chair and jumped up and down. The Mariners didn't lie down and die either. A-rod's home run to lead off the eighth. And A-rod again on the bases in the ninth, stealing second (defensive indifference, actually) with Edgar Martinez--who has hit Mariano Rivera very well in the past--at the plate with a great chance to be a hero. But now, he grounded out--to Jeter, of course--to end the game and the ALCS.
And that meant the Subway Series was a reality.
Interestingly, the next day at the Magic Kingdom I counted over 64% of the baseball caps I saw were Yankees hats. About 8% Atlanta, 7% Boston Red Sox, but only one Mets cap the whole day... coincidence?
I, of course, always wear my Yankee hat when I travel, and coming back in to Boston's Logan airport today was no exception.
I decided to take the subway home, since that's $1.00, and a cab is more like $25-$30. As the train pulled into the station, the driver looked back to see when the doors were clear to be closed, and I think he saw my Yankees cap. Now, normally subway drivers don't say much other than the name of the next station and "Watch the doors, the doors are closing." They are also not known for being the most eloquent guys. But here's what he said into the intercom once the train was underway: "Welcome ladies and gentlemen, especially those of you here for the first time, to Boston, Massachusetts, home of the Boston Red Sox. Now, I know two New York teams are in the World Series and so it must be pretty boring in that city right now. How they must have wept when they saw the breadth of their domain and saw there were no new worlds to conquer." I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP.
While walking home from the train station, a cabbie yelled at me on the street, and although I couldn't make out a word he said, I am fairly confident it expressed a similar, if less eloquent sentiment to that of the T driver.
I expect it'll be like that for the next week or so, here. Until the World Series is over and Red Sox fans hibernate for the winter. And remember, Sox fans hate the Mets, too, for beating them in the 1986 World Series--the "Bill Buckner" series.
But if it's "lose-lose" for Sox fans, it's win-win as far as I'm concerned. If the Yankees lose, well, of course I'll be upset, but it'll be a historic, momentous thing for New York no matter what happens. And given the history of the previous year or two's interaction between these two teams, I expect it is going to be an exciting battle no matter who wins. Both teams have their strengths and weaknesses, and both want it "real bad."
And me? I look over the breadth of my domain and rejoice. Another spectacular pyrotechnic show is coming my way.
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
If any of you have read my last column of the season on Yankees Xtreme, you know I was alone on the night of the Yankees World Series win in 1999.
And if you've been following my columns or my baseball diary on my web page, you know that although I was a total Yankee fanatic when I was a kid, I spent over a decade in the late 80's and most of the 90's completely oblivious of baseball and the Yankees.
Last year, in the middle of the season, my passion for the game came roaring back. And my love of the Yankees, so long forgotten, blossomed as well. I woke up from a long sleep to find myself bleeding pinstripes and living in Red Sox country. And let me tell you, it has been lonely up here, sometimes.
But I wouldn't trade this season for anything.
My first full season as a Yankee fan started over the off-season, when I discovered the Fan Forum bulletin boards at Yankees.com. Through the Internet, I found out a lot of things I never knew before, including information about Spring Training.
So, I convinced my Dad and my brother to come with me to Florida and go to our first ever Spring Training. There, I met my first Yankee (Clay Bellinger) and got autographs from several more (El Duque, Jim Leyritz...) and alumni (Goose Gossage), and had a close call with Derek Jeter that almost made me faint. (You'll have to read the journal entry on that if you haven't yet... http://www.apocalypse.org/pub/u/ctan/baseball.html)
People tell me the 1998 season was magic. Everything went right. That certainly wasn't the case this year. I tried to get tickets to Opening Day--but it was just as well that I didn't, as it was called off for cold, rain, and sleet. Instead I saw a game a few days later. I was also looking forward to returning to the Stadium several times over the summer, and I did: the Memorial Day Weekend face-off between Roger Clemens and Pedro Martinez, Whitey Ford Day, and let's not forget Yankees Xtreme Day. I'd also make my first trip to Fenway Park, and return there several times--each time to see the Yankees. I knew I was in for a great season.
But on that chilly April Day, I never could have guessed that a month later, I'd be writing for Yankees Xtreme, my first professional baseball writing gig. I've been writing professionally, interviews, columns, fiction, you name it, ever since I was in high school. But here I am, diving headfirst into my first full season of Yankee devotion, and I find myself suddenly in the employ (although indirectly) of the team.
I also never guessed that I'd find myself in the electronic company of such a great group of fans as I found on Yankees Xtreme. In the chat room during games, posting in the bulletin boards, meeting one another at Xtreme Day, mailing each other videotapes, magazines, and photos...
Now the Yankees have put the best cap on the season that there could possibly be, winning the World Championship. They fought and battled and scratched their way along the entire season, battling injuries, illness, slumps, and bad weather, and made every minute of the season worthwhile. Thank you, Yankees, for everything.
But I owe a big thank you to all the fans at Xtreme, as well, for making this unforgettable season even better. Thanks to you all, I'll never truly be alone for a game again.
Copyright © 2000 Cecilia Tan
