The Beginning

It all started when I was not more than 5 or 6 years old. I had just discovered Baseball and god, I just loved the Mets! Ed Kranepool, Ken Boswell and Tom Seaver were my first Baseball heroes. I begged my mother "please buy me a Mets uniform!" Plllleeeeaaaassssseee, I would beg with the purest of sincerity. One day, my mother relented and told me that when she came home she would have a Mets uniform for me.

When she arrived home I waited to see that beautiful pinstriped jersey with the cursive METS written across it. Only, much to my surprise, she did not pull a Mets uniform out of the bag. I knew then that she brought me a Yankees uniform instead. I was disappointed. The Yankees? they were the other team from New York, the team that could not fill that old looking park they played in. In fact, they were downright boring.

My mother, probably sensing my disappointment as little kids do not hid that very well, started to tell me stories of the great days. Days when she could go to Yankees Stadium and see the Mick, Yogi and Whitey. Days when the Yankees ruled baseball. When she promised to sow a number 7 on the back of my jersey. I was sold. I started watching the Yankees on WPIX in New York and gained a new crop of heroes. Bobby Murcer, Ron Bloomberg and Thurman Munson. I had turned away from the Mets and fully embraced the Yankees.

Through the years there are events that in my life that the Yankees are intertwined with. My families first color television? We got that in 1974 and it was the day that Rich McKinney committed four errors in a single game at third base against the dreaded Red Sox. In 1978 my mother and I were watching the one game playoff between the Yankees and Red Sox. In the bottom of the ninth Yaz was at the plate with the tying and winning runs on base and two outs. My mother went into the kitchen and refused to come out. She really felt that the Yankees winning that game was solely dependent on where she was in the house. If she watched, they would lose. I remarked, "If the Yankees lose at least it was Yaz" wow, that upset her. the Yankees won that game, Yaz popped out to third. My mother didn't really talk to me for the rest of the day. I had committed the cardinal sin by accepting a potential loss to the Sox. Then, in 1979 Thurman Munson died in a plane crash I felt as if I had lost a member of my own family.

The 80's were kind of the lost years for baseball in the Bronx. I was living in Boston by then and the Yankees were finishing each year out of the running. There were highlights though. Don Mattingly, or Donnie Baseball and the no-hitter against the Sox on July 4th 1984 are the two things that stand out most for me. Mattingly was, for about five years, the most feared and respected hitter in the game. The no-hitter? I found out about that while riding the Orange Line in Boston. I noticed the headline off of somebody else's paper and cheered out loud. I did not feel very loved for the rest of my ride on the subway car.

The 90's brought me my wedding, the birth of my children and a return to glory in the Bronx. My second daughter was born in October of 1996 just in time for the return of the Yankees to the fall classic. The Bombers took out the Braves in 6 games that year. I watched many of those innings with my 2 week old daughter in my arms. I tell her this story today in hopes that she will become a Yankees fan. She didn't, but I still try.

Over the years Baseball and the Yankees, for me, have become a way to measure time. Spring arrives the first week in March and not when the calender says it does. Fall arrives with the playoffs, not when the calender says it does. The months between the excitement of the holidays and spring training are dark, bitter and cold. Spring training brings the hope of a new year and opening day is the validation that everything is right with the world once more. Baseball is back.

Today I can look out from the window in my office and what do I see? I see snow and lots of it. The landscape is as bleak as the skies are gray. Winter coats are a must today as wind chills hide the fact that we are above the magic number of 32 degrees. Yet, despite the misery of my current surroundings in respect to comfort, I am content. Somewhere, in a place a little to far for me to reach but not so far that I cannot feel its effects the National Pastime is starting its annual ritual of meaningless games and warm ups as we move towards opening day. Do I care that these games mean nothing right now? No, I am content because somewhere someone is playing Baseball and because of that, spring has begun. I feel warmer for it.

Yankees 6 Pirates 3. Spring is here, I can feel it.