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
