Why I Like Baseball

Today I plunked down about $3,000 for the full run of postseason tickets at Yankee Stadium. Four seats, eleven games, including game seven of the World Series, should they get that far. I have yet to attend a World Series game in my lifetime, and my fingers, toes, and imaginary appendages are all crossed that this is the year I finally get to one!

And today I know at the very least they will be making the postseason. They won a thriller in Anaheim, a stadium where they have the worst record of any spot in the majors, 0-5 this year until tonight, and 5-19 since 2005. For the past few days, all they needed was either a Rangers’ loss or to win one game for themselves, and it just hasn’t happened, until tonight.

Little things meant a lot in this game, as they always do in postseason play. For example, when Alex Rodriguez sent a 3-0 pitch (one of only 20 homers hit in the 2009 season on a 3-0 count, and that’s out of 4703 total homers hit in the big leagues this season) into the rock garden next to the batter’s eye, there was a man on base. The man was Hideki Matsui, who reached on catcher’s interference. He had grounded to shortstop, and he almost never grounds the ball that direction, so the moment it happened corwin and I turned to each other and said “what happened there?” But then the umpire ruled that Mathis’ glove had touched the bat, and replays confirmed it. In a game where one run was the difference, that’s huge.

So was A-Rod’s sac fly in the top of the ninth, the game-winner, which came on the first pitch he saw. No waiting around. He golfed a low strike on a line into center, which had it sliced or hooked might have gone in the gap. Instead Torii Hunter charged it and put a good throw to the plate, but Gardner was fast enough to beat it. Gardner is the only guy on the roster who would have been fast enough to beat it. How about the fact that Gardner swiped second on a pitch out? Good times.

Jeter probably had the funniest line off the night when after the game he said “We got the monkey off our back. No pun intended.” (Yes, the Rally Monkey did make an appearance, and the Angels did rally to tie the game, but the Yankees won it anyway.)

October, here we come.

Apparently, Derek Jeter got the memo about my dad’s birthday, he just got the details wrong.

You see, my father and I (along with my brother and his son Owen–three generations of Tans at one ballgame!) went to the game on Monday at 1pm, Labor Day, to celebrate my dad’s 74th birthday, and also in hopes of seeing Jeter climb another rung or two on the ladder toward Lou Gehrig’s all time Yankee hits record.

As has now been chronicled in minute detail in the mass media, Jeter got three hits the day before in Toronto, and had been on a torrid pace for several weeks, hitting something like .425 in the previous 10 days and so on. That day they started a home stand at Yankee Stadium, though, and the hype was so heavy I thought the ginormous video screen in center was going to fall down.
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You never know what you’re going to see when you go out to the ballpark.

Tonight I went out to the snazzy new Stadium in the Bronx to see the Yankees take on the Minnesota Twins.

I did not expect to see Phil Hughes pitch a no-hitter. And he didn’t.

I did not expect to see the Yankees score three runs off Twins closer Joe Nathan in the bottom of the ninth. But they did.

I did not expect to see an inside the park home run. But I did.

Here’s how it happened. (more…)

At last, some of my photos of the Home Opener at Yankee Stadium from April 16th. They would have been up sooner, but things keep happening like, oh, the Yankees arriving in Boston and playing games that take five hours to finish…

So we started with the line to Monument Park. The very very very long line… We entered the park at just about 10:20am, which means 20 minutes after the gate opened. Already the line was huge.
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We were really looking forward to a tight pitching duel at Fenway today, as AJ Burnett and Josh Beckett faced off.

As I write this, Jonathan Papelbon just walked Derek Jeter in the top of the ninth, in which Boston has a 16-11 lead.

There have been 28 hits in the game so far, and Papelbon is the 12th pitcher to appear. the lead has changed hands four (?) times, I think?

And this is on top of last night’s extra innings contest, which also used 12 pitchers, and featured 27 hits, even though the end score was only 5-4. Between the two games there have been seven home runs hit… I think? I keep losing track, that’s how many there have been.

And even though Pap is probably about to shut the door… the way things have gone this series so far… I better not count the totals until all is final and in the books! He just walked another one! (more…)

After the debacle of the inaugural game at new Yankee Stadium, today’s game seemed much more fitting as an opener! After all, Derek Jeter hit the key home run and Mariano Rivera got the save, among other things.

It was a gorgeous day in New York, the temperature just kissing 70. I didn’t actually go to the game today, though I wanted to. No, corwin and I went yesterday (photos to come), and then I was up at 4am to take him to a dawn flight out of Kennedy airport. Our route took us right past the new Citi Field, the Mets’ new home, and in the pre-dawn dark it was all lit up in garish color. If the new Yankee Stadium gives the impression of a cathedral, Citi Field looks like a carnival.

I think I like ours better.

I slept a few hours back in the Bronx, and then hit the road back to Massachusetts in the early afternoon, just in time to get in the car for the first pitch of today’s game.

Yesterday there were a lot of firsts, of course. Jorge Posada hit the first home run, for example, but the firsts continued to pile up in the second game. The Yankees scored 5 of their 6 runs on solo home runs, which is weird in and of itself, but they also all went to right-center field. Even the Indians’ Mark DeRosa’s homer went to right-center.

The last of these homers belonged to Derek Jeter, who came to the plate in the 8th with the score tied 5-5, two outs, and the bullpen looking very questionable after yesterday’s meltdown. He sent the ball to Mo, though, by sending one over the fence. Jeter is now the answer to the trivia question Who Got the First Curtain Call in the new Yankee Stadium?* Apparently it just took an extra day for the mojo from Ruth’s bat to take effect (prior to Jeter’s first at bat yesterday they laid a bat across the plate ceremonially–the bat that Ruth hit a homer on Opening Day 1923 with…). Or maybe they should have let the whole bullpen touch Ruth’s glove or something.

Mariano recorded the building’s first save, giving up two singles, but ultimately getting the side before allowing a run.

Hopefully there will be many more games like this one in the new Stadium than like yesterday’s loss. Final score, 6-5 Yanks.

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*Edit: I’ve been informed that Posada actually had a curtain call yesterday for his homer into Monument Park. Somehow I missed that, even though I was there. Perhaps the calling for him didn’t reach up into the upper deck where I sit…

Welcome back baseball! Here at Why I LIke Baseball, this week will feature new content every day in our special welcome back baseball week! Herewith, post #2 of the celebration!

I promised photos of the New Yankee Stadium, and so I’ve uploaded them to my Flickr account. Here are some of the highlights:

Click on any of the small images to see the full size image.

Walking past the old place with the new one beckoning on the horizon. Construction of a new parking garage and playing fields and restored playgrounds for Macombs Dam Park is also continuing.

View of the grand entrance hall on 161st Street, taken from the second level.

Just outside the Yankees Museum inside the new Yankee Stadium, reproductions of classic baseball cards, done life-size, adorn the wall.

The view from my season tickets, section 421.

Another view from Section 421.

Here’s a photo I bet you won’t find in the New York Times. The new look for the women’s restrooms! Gone is all the horrible Pepto Bismol pink! And the bathrooms were heated! Surely that’ll be important this year when the World Series stretches into November!!

The entire photoset can be viewed at my Flickr account here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/26277413@N06/

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Coming up in this week’s Welcome Back Baseball! An interview with writer Dale Tafoya, more book reviews, a roster preview… who knows, maybe I’ll even make some predictions…!!

Welcome back baseball! Here at Why I Like Baseball, this week will feature new content every day in our special welcome back baseball week! Starting with:

NEW DIGS

Today I set foot for the first time in the New Yankee Stadium.

The first thing I did, though was park in one of the old parking lots. Good old Lot 8, which used to be right next to the stadium, making it a quick run for the exit at the end after the final out. Now it’s on the far side of the old building from the new one, and at $19 to park today, not such a great idea any more, but until I try one of the new lots, I’ll take my chances.

Parking there meant I had to walk past the old stadium, which strangely enough had its lights on and flags flying inside, making it look a bit like the old place was set up for the ghosts to have their own game. The phone booths are empty, the spaces where the old signs in the entryways were now blacked out like missing teeth.

Meanwhile, the gleaming edifice of the new place beckons you to hurry past the old hulk to reach the brightness and music and life.

The first thing you come to on crossing 161st Street in what is the largest crosswalk I’ve ever seen, is the Babe Ruth Plaza, and a grand multi-story atrium entryway, at one end of which is the largest Diamondvision I’d ever seen–at least until I looked across the field and saw the even bigger one in center field.

I found it a bit bewildering at first to try to find my way around, partly because the crowd was just so thick. Through the tinted glass I could see the New Era souvenir store was packed with people like FAO Schwarz in late December. I walked up some ramps, rode some escalators, and found the Yankees museum, but the line to get into the museum was a half hour wait, and I didn’t want to stand around when there was more to be seen. The chilly weather also encouraged me to keep moving–did all these Chicago Cubs fans bring the wind with them? Gusts reached 50 miles per hour and the temperature was only 47 degrees at game time.

I finally climbed up to my seat in the “grandstand” (the equivalent of what we used to call Tier Reserved, the upper half of the upper deck) and was pleased to find the Seat Relocation Plan worked for me. I have essentially the identical position and view (and price…) as my season ticket seats in the old stadium. The sightline is slightly improved into the left field corner, in fact.

The scoreboard department hasn’t changed their pregame programming. When I had walked in, the Hammond Organ had been playing “New York, New York” and as I took my seat the song “Heart of a Champion” was on. The improvement in the sound system was immediately apparent as before today I had never been able to make out a single one of the lyrics beyond the chorus.

Even the bald eagle Challenger wanted to check the place out, making several laps back and forth before finally settling on his trainer’s arm on the mound at the end of the National Anthem.

What is it with this city and plane disasters? The standing ovation for Captain Chesley Sullenberger, the pilot who safely landed that jet on the Hudson recently and saved the lives of all his passengers and crew, was spontaneous, loud, and enthusiastic when he threw out the first pitch. That was the one moment all day where I got really emotional, 9-11 flashbacks and all.

Well, and there were also tears of joy when I realized that upon getting some hot chocolate THERE ARE CUP HOLDERS IN THE UPPER DECK!! Yes, thank you!

The stadium staff are still clearly working out the bugs, as the snafus today varied from the small (the concession stand by my seats had only foot long hot dogs, but only 6 inch buns) to the large (the whole sound system blew out in the 6th inning, just before the YMCA… and the rest of the game was played in silence, meaning the YMCA dance was not performed, and me and one Cubs fan in the row behind me sang Take Me Out to the Ballgame all by ourselves).

Does the Stadium really play as small as all the home runs we saw over the weekend seem to suggest? Only time will tell, but the interesting thing is that inside the stadium bowl it actually has a much more closed-in and intimate feeling than the previous stadium. My impression is that the place is going to really rock when the Yankees win. The Bronx Zoo will go nuts with plenty of energy in a space like that. Meanwhile outside the bowl, everything is more spacious and open. The concourses are open–which was a bit of a detriment in the biting wind–and the women’s rooms are huge compared to the old ones. Gone is the Pepto Bismol pink paint in the women’s rooms, too, replaced by shiny chrome & steel.

So, yeah, it was different, and yet it was everything it has been hyped to be. It’s a lot like moving into a newer, bigger house.

But there was a roll call, the fans are clearly getting into the swing of things, and so were the Yankees, who won easily 10-1, with great pitching from Pettitte and Burnett, and home runs from Derek Jeter, Shelley Duncan, and two by Mark Teixeira, in addition to the three yesterday by Cody Ransom, Hideki Matsui, and Robinson Cano. There were only sporadic breakouts of “Let’s Go Yankees” and “Hip Hip Jorge” but that is normal for an exhibition game. I don’t know about the “ghosts,” but the spirit of Yankee Stadium is in the lifeblood of the fans, and that will be what really makes the new place feel like home.

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P. S. Tomorrow, photos!

(Originally posted February 13, 2000, reposted to new site December 3, 2008)

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!

(Originally posted February 13, 2000, reposted to new site November 1, 2008)

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?

Find out more in tomorrow’s entry.

Here’s a trivia question you’ll be able to stump your friends with in 2013. Who hit the last home run in Yankee Stadium?

Answer: Jose Molina.

Jeter tried to do it, but his line drive was caught just short of the wall. Johnny Damon tried to do it, blasting a three-run shot to put the Yankees ahead in the third inning. But after the Orioles had tied it up again in the top fourth, it was Molina who came up with the two-run blast that put the Yankees ahead for good.

If the Orioles’ defense had been a little bit better, then Mariano Rivera would have gotten a save. Instead, it was a comfortable 7-3 lead when the strains of Enter Sandman blared for the last time, but the appearance was no less pressure than in any playoff game. National media watching. Fans in full voice.

Oh, and did I mention, the Yankees elimination number stood at one when the game began?

Mo closed the door and brought down the curtain with a perfect 1-2-3 inning. Did you notice how through all the postgame ceremonies, Mariano kept the game ball in his glove?

As it turned out, the win was a balm for the anxious souls who could have made the final game quite maudlin. I avoided going to the game myself because I didn’t want to cry so much, and I didn’t, watching it on ESPN from The Forest Cafe in Cambridge, Massachusetts. My Sox-loving bar friends kept me from getting too down, anyway, by making jokes, like “What if Kevin Millar is the last man to hit a home run in Yankee Stadium?” (Please God, no….)

Bobby Abreu looked like he was having fun. All smiles after he reached first base on an excuse-me hit. He was a good reminder that baseball is fun. It’s supposed to be fun. Sometimes it can be fun even when your team doesn’t win. 39 Pennants, but over 100 seasons, after all.

We dreamed a little while walking back from the bar tonight. “What if they won all the rest of their games, and the Red Sox lost all of theirs?” corwin mused, as we picked around the puddles that an unexpected rainstorm had left all along our street. “Wouldn’t that be something?”

That would be something. And amazing, incredible, miraculous, magical things can and do happen in baseball, and seemingly especially with the Yankees. They don’t happen every year, but it is just like going out to the ballpark on any given day. You never know when you are going to see something incredible, maybe even something that has never been done before.

I think back to the game I brought corwin to in 1999 which turned him overnight into a tremendous Yankees fan. It was a beautiful late-summer night and the Yankees were playing the Oakland A’s. corwin and I had been together for eight years at that point, and yet he’d never gone to a game at the Stadium. We were recently minted thirty-somethings then and going through a bit of a second childhood, I suppose, including a trip to Disney World, so returning to the site of some of my favorite childhood memories was fitting.

Here’s what I wrote at the time. “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 wonder if the new Stadium will provide that same “wow” moment, or if that one, which so many people experienced at Yankee Stadium, was a function of the too-cramped, too-dim hallways and ramps in its innards?

Here was my game summary: “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.”

And that’s really it in a nutshell, isn’t it? The Yankees went on to win the World Series in a sweep of the Braves that season, which entirely cemented my newly rekindled Yankee love.

I honestly think the reason there has not been more outcry to “Save Our Stadium” is that the extended family of the Yankees, their alumni, and their fans have all accepted the idea that the old place has to come down. I think it’s not just the potentially structural disintegration, which we have been turning a blind eye to for years, but other factors, too. Crowd/group psychology is a tricky thing. You might have thought that after the destruction of one of New York’s iconic structures, the Twin Towers, that people might might have resisted even more giving up the historic locale. But I think things actually went the other way. The Towers themselves were not, ultimately, what was important about September 11th. Rebuilding them would not bring back those who perished, nor would failing to rebuild them keep us from regaining our spirit.

Likewise, tearing down the Stadium will not kill our love of the Yankees. As Jeter said in his address to the fans after the game, the memories remain, and we’ll carry them across the street. We, the fans, will do our part. We’ll keep making banners and signs, we’ll keep chanting for our favorite players, we’ll keep coming out to the park.

The Yankees have to do their part, though. They have to win. They have to do amazing and miraculous things. But we know they will. We just hope we won’t have to wait too long for more.

Well, I have probably just seen my last game at Yankee Stadium, at least the stadium as I knew it. My very earliest trips to the stadium were before the mid-70s renovation. I even remember a doubleheader at Shea on a day it poured rain so hard that the decks looked like waterfalls. But the vast majority of my baseball memories are of the renovated stadium. It was a favorite destination for birthday parties and family outings. Longtime readers of this blog will remember that we were there when Dave Righetti pitched his no-hitter, which to this day is still spoken about as a famous day in Tan family history.

And now there are only ten games left at the place, and I will probably not be back again this season. I’ve put my tickets for the final game on sale and it seems likely they will be bought.

Am I nostalgic? Yes. But I managed not to cry, although the National Anthem almost did me in (as usual) and I only staved off tears by singing louder than usual.

It seems to me the Sunday crowd sings more than on other days of the week. Not only was the National Anthem audible, but there was definitely high participation on Take Me Out to the Ballgame also.

The game itself was not that memorable. The Yankees lost to the Blue Jays 6-2, after Pettitte walked the leadoff batter and then Nady lost a ball in the sun in the first inning. It was pretty much downhill from there, except for two solo home runs off Halladay, one from A-Rod, who heard some real cheers for the first time basically all week, and Jason Giambi, who has been, as they say on Lon- Gisland, “awn fiyah.” I saw three games at the Stadium this week; Giambi hit a homer in each one. (He must be getting the memos that say I’m there.)

The weather was beautiful, though, warm and dry, with a blue sky barely marred by just one or two clouds throughout the afternoon. The Yankees’ playoff hopes fade day by day, and you can feel the lethargy in the crowds as they wonder whether they should get excited or not. It’s a bit of a vicious cycle: the team doesn’t seem to have the horses to make it, so people won’t clap, and you can’t will a team to do more than it’s capable of, can you?

Anyway, the thing is… even with the team losing, the playoffs dwindling on the horizon, and the destruction of the Stadium imminent, it was still a pretty nice day at the ballpark. Am I a sap? Yeah. But we got to see the major league debut of Alfredo Aceves, who pitched two scoreless innings and struck out three. His throwing motion looks a lot like Mariano’s, but he differs from Mo in one major way, which is that he throws a change-up.

I now present a collection of observations and snippets of overheard conversation from the past week of baseball here in the Bronx:

Prior to the Wednesday game against the Red Sox, these words were delivered wistfully: “It must be nice to have a new Stadium.”

Prior to Sunday’s sold out tilt, to a scalper: “You got any cheap tickets?” The reply: “Yeah. At Shea Stadium.”

The Red Sox fans sitting next to us the other night, as A-Rod came to bat. The girlfriend said something we couldn’t hear, which prompted the boyfriend to respond: “With Madonna?!?! But she’s old!”

Did Carl Pavano always have a lazy eye, or did that happen after he got hit in the head with a ball?

Talk about feeling like it was the 1970s again; there was old school sky writing above the Stadium today. It read: I N T R E P I D M U S E U M . C O M

We watched yesterday’s game from a bar on the boardwalk (Spicy in Seaside Heights), where there was a live singer with a guitar (I’m so sorry I didn’t get his name—he was quite good). He kept pausing between songs to ask us what the score was. He tried to egg on the White Sox (who are playing the Red Sox) by playing “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.” The scoreboard department today opted for AC/DC “Highway to Hell” when the Yankees failed to rally.

While watching the game from the bar, which is a pleasant experience thanks to the weather and booze and nice music, even when the Yankees lose as a result of a Cano error (but I’m not bitter)… we learned that the song “When I Come Around” mashes up perfectly with “No Woman, No Cry.” While we’re at it, have you noticed that “Sweet Home Alabama” mashes up with “Werewolves of London?”

I admit my sadness over the ending of the Yankees’ season is tempered somewhat by a feeling that certain things are inevitable. First off, Cashman has pulled a rabbit out of his hat year after year after year to replace injured players and find the last pieces of the puzzle so many times. From David Justice to Shawn Chacon and Aaron Small, he keeps plugging the holes. This year, though, there was really no way to replace the loss of Chien Ming Wang and Jorge Posada. Pudge Rodriguez doesn’t have enough left in the tank to fill the need (he’s like 10 for 55 since putting on pinstripes), and using Sidney Ponson and Darrell Rasner in place of Hughes and Kennedy hasn’t lifted them above mediocre. So, Cashman’s luck was bound to run out some time.

The inevitability, though, stems partly from the overall feeling that an era is coming to an end. The Stadium is coming down. We’ve already lost Eddie Layton, and Bob Sheppard seems sure to go next; I’m not sure he has been well enough to work even a single game this year? Even Derek Jeter is having an off year and whispers about his age are starting to crop up.

So it’s hard to separate my feelings about the season from all the other things that seem to be winding down. Or maybe it’s just that I literally do not remember what it is like not to make he playoffs, so I don’t know how to feel.

I actually have not given up. But it is feeling a lot like it’s the bottom of the eighth and we’re down by a lot of runs, making the comeback unlikely. But not impossible. And how amazing it would be if they did.

The two Yankees who have defined the post-Paul-O’Neill era were the stars yesterday in one of my final visits to Yankee Stadium, Jason Giambi and Mike Mussina.

A look back at their Yankee careers shows a saga of “not quite.” Mussina had two of the ultimate “not quite” experiences, narrowly missing a perfect game in Fenway Park on Labor Day Weekend in 2001 (not even a full month before September 11th would change everything) and then pitching the incredible lights-out 1-0 must-win game in Oakland (the “slide, Jeremy, slide!” game) where if he had let in even a single run, the Yankees would have been going home… only to sit helplessly by while the ninth inning of Game Seven of the World Series unraveled around Mariano Rivera.

Giambi’s initial blush as a Yankee had one incredible Ruthian moment to it, in which with the team down 3 runs in the 14th inning against the Twins, in the pouring rain, Giambi did the seemingly impossible, which was came to the plate with the bases loaded and hit a walk off grand slam. The sports pages reported it as a feat to have only been performed by one previous Yankee, Babe Ruth himself. But the steroid scandal and myriad health problems have plagued Giambi in his time in New York, making him often no better than a bench player who was being paid like a star. Most of us have forgiven him all the steroid stuff, mostly because of all the players named in the Mitchell Report, he is the one still playing who actually ‘fessed up about it, both in the courtroom and in the papers. He’s proved himself to be a regular guy who gets it, who just wants to mash the ball and get cheered, and whose relationship with the fans is as simple and pure as Alex Rodriguez’s is complicated.

Yesterday, the Yankees faced the Red Sox at The Stadium for the final time (unless some miracle pits them against each other in the postseason). On the day Yankee Stadium opened, the two rivals met, and Babe Ruth hit a three-run shot to beat his former team in a fitting inauguration for the House that Ruth Built.

Yesterday, Giambi once again performed a Ruthian feat. With Sox lefty Jon Lester on the mound, Giambi had been given the day off. Mike Mussina took the mound for the Yankees, and pretty much stifled their potent lineup other than one rally where the Sox managed to get two runs (sparked by the return to life of the bat of Jason Varitek, who has been hitting around .200 all year and whose selection by the players to the All Star Game baffled many). As such, when he left the game with the Yankees down 2-0, Mussina would either be the hard-luck loser or get no decision. It’s impossible at this point for me to accept that a pitcher “must” have a 20-win season in order to be elected to the Hall of Fame, when Moose has been a victim of low run support for nearly his entire career (including with the Yankees, go figure). Moose held the Sox to 5 hits over 7 innings, walking two (Big Papi twice, and who can blame him). He contributed to his own demise slightly by hitting Alex Cora with a pitch with two strikes on him, and if Robinson Cano had stepped on the bag and thrown to first on a ball off the bat of Jacoby Ellsbury, they might have gotten out of the inning only giving up one run. Instead he had flipped to Jeter and Ellsbury beat it out, letting the second run in.

But one run or two, it doesn’t matter if the Yankees don’t score.

In the bottom of the seventh, with two out, Cody Ransom, who had been inserted at first base for Giambi in the lineup, came to bat. Ransom, a 32-year-old rookie, for those of you who don’t recall, hit two homers in a spring training game, but no one really wrote about it because that was the day that Billy Crystal “played” for the Yankees. Ransom had also had to give up his number so that Crystal could wear it, and then after the game stood off to the side in a towel and his shower shoes because the media horde around Billy was so large that Cody couldn’t get to his locker to put his clothes on. Ransom also had one of the more unique displays of batting stats when he came to the plate, which showed he was batting 1.000 with 2 homers and 5 RBI. In his first plate appearance of the day he was hit by pitch, and then did strike out against Lester in the fifth. But in the eighth (with his average having plummeted to .667) he doubled off Lester and drove the lefty from the game.

At that point, Girardi sent up Giambi to pinch hit. After the game Suzyn Waldman would report that Girardi picked him in the hopes that he’d tie the game with one swing. None of this “just hoping he’d get on base” stuff. Down 2-0, with Papelbon in the wings, the manager (and everyone in the Stadium) wanted a two run shot.

We got it.

It was, surprisingly, a shot to left center, not the direction that Giambi usually hits the ball. But he has supposedly been working with hitting coach Kevin Long all year on taking the ball the other way. He took it all the way into the Yankees bullpen. Did I mention he hit the shot off lefty Hideki Okajima? Girardi told Waldman that it didn’t matter who they brought in to pitch, whether they left Lester in there or brought in their lefthander from the bullpen, his orders to Giambi were the same. Tie the game.

The very first time I saw Jason Giambi play live was when he was with Oakland. He was, then, my favorite player in the American League who was Not A Yankee. So I always wanted to see him hit a home run. My rule of thumb for seeing teams in other stadium is simple: always root for the home team unless they are playing the Yankees. I saw a game in Anaheim, for example, where when the Angels were winning handily in the late innings, I then rooted for Giambi to hit one for the A’s—and he did. We saw the Yankees play Oakland a few times at the Coliseum, too, and he pretty much hit one each time there—including one that left me totally conflicted when he hit a walkoff homer off of Mike Stanton’s 12-6 curve ball, which you KNEW Stanton was going to throw on the first pitch, because he almost always did. corwin joked that Giambi must have gotten a memo that I was there, and hit it for me.

Anyway, since then, most of the games I have seen live have featured a Giambi home run, since of course he came to the Yankees after that. He even hit one for me the night before, as we sat sulking in the upper deck with the score 11-2 Red Sox. Apparently, he got the memo again.

So, here he did it AGAIN, this time tying the game and sending the crowd into a frenzy. Our entire section of the tier seemed to have been taken over by Red Sox fans, but they were silenced by the blast, and Yankee partisan voices, which had been very subdued all day and also the night before (I’d rarely heard the Stadium so quiet), finally were raised.

Oh, did I mention Jeter had three hits yesterday? It’s probably my imagination, but it feels like he often comes through with a big day the day after the Yankees get humiliated. A-rod, on the other hand, did not have a big day, but at least he wasn’t actively awful like he was in the opening game of the series. Please, Alex, keep up with the therapy, because when you make the mental breakthrough to deal with pressure, you’re going to be a monster. (His numbers according to FanGraphs for this year are not only not clutch, he’s anti-clutch. Last year’s clutchiness was fine, but this year…? Blame Madonna?)

Oh, and did I mention that the Yankees are 19-9 in Mike Mussina’s starts, but are below .500 otherwise? If I wear my Mussina jersey a thousand more times, will Mike Mussina get into the Hall of Fame?

Now, with the score tied 2-2, Joe Girardi did not fool around, using three relievers to retire three batters in the top of the 8th. Brian Bruney got Pedroia, Damaso Marte got Big Papi, and then Mariano Rivera came in for a four-out appearance. Not a save, since the score was tied. According to the Star Ledger this morning, it was the first time since September 22, 1996 that Mo has entered a game at home with the game tied before the ninth inning—and back then he was not even the closer.

Mo retired Youkilis on a fly ball to center. Terry Francona countered with two outs in the eighth, bringing in Justin Masterson to strike out Alex Rodriguez. A-Rod ended the day with three strikeouts (one caught looking on a highly questionable call, but when you’re going bad, stuff like that happens) and one pop up to the infield on the first pitch with two men on in the 6th. Yeah, ouch, but A-Rod is not the story here.

Jeter made a throwing error to lead off the ninth, but Mariano shrugged it off and retired the next three men easily. Jeter has looked somewhat stiff in the field this series, as if his back or legs are stiffening up on him. Old age setting in? Or an injury that’s being well-hidden? I’m curious to see if something will be revealed after the season.

So, to the bottom of the ninth. Xavier Nady, who has been really a nice surprise since coming to New York at the trade deadline, led off with a single off Masterson. Brett Gardner, the guy my mom dubbed “Speedy Dynamo” in spring training, came in to pinch run. Robinson Cano (who has been hitting his traditional post-All-Star-break .320 or so) then hit a line shot … but right into the glove of Lowrie at third. Gardner stole second, so they intentionally walked Matsui. That brought up Pudge Rodriguez, who has been hitting dismally since coming to the Yankees, and who traditionally is an aggressive hitter.

He told reporters after the game that he just kept telling himself over and over “don’t swing if it’s not a strike.” He worked a walk, loading the bases and bringing Giambi to the plate.

Francona brought in Papelbon with no margin for error. With Giambi down 0-2 he left a ball over the plate that Giambi smacked on a line into center field for the game winner. Gardner held up in case it was caught, but crossed the plate easily as Ellsbury merely swiped at the ball in disgust as it came to him. Giambi was mobbed at first base.

We exited into rush hour traffic but creeping along in the car burning valuable fossil fuels is so much easier to take while singing “New York, New York.”

One of the things I relish most about experiencing baseball live and in person is the ever-present possibility that I might see something special. Maybe something that’s never been done. Maybe something historic. Everyday baseball is full of possibilities like that. Postseason baseball of course creates special opportunities for it. And the All-Star Game produces a unique set of circumstances that pretty much nearly guarantees something special.

Put the All-Star Game in Yankee Stadium, in the final year of the building’s existence, and you create an even more unique situation.

But ultimately it was the play on the field that distinguished the 79th All Star Game as an unbelievable “I-was-there!” experience.

And yes, I was there.

The details of the game will be analyzed and recorded in a thousand places. I know because not only did they have to build an auxiliary press box in the outfield loge (like they do for the postseason), they built a third one around section 20 in the upper deck, way up under the roof. So perhaps I should not even try to detail all the amazing things that happened…

But then I think that so many of the reporters there are limited to a certain number of column inches. How many of them won’t even mention Ichiro’s amazing throw from the right field corner to nail the batter trying for second? More of them will probably mention that Dan Uggla set a new record for the most errors in an All Star Game, racking up three (and also striking out three times and grounding into a double play).

I should back up first, I suppose, and say a few words about the FanFest that went on down at the Jacob Javits Center. corwin and I slept late, then headed out after a terrific breakfast of bagels and lox courtesy of our gracious hostess (who would join us at the game later). We decided that what might seem like a high price to pay to park at the Stadium (thirty bucks) actually seemed reasonable for all-day parking in New York, so we drove to our favorite lot (which was already open at 12 noon) and parked, and then took the D train from the Stadium down to midtown.

FanFest might best be termed Tchotchke Fest. The sheer amount of stuff we acquired might require a blog entry of its own. Actually, I’m sure that it will – suffice to say that by 5pm we were tired out and laden with many bags of goodies. We made our way back to the Bronx and put all the stuff in the trunk, then still had time to grab some excellent Dominican food before going into the Stadium.

For a while I was worried that the game itself was going to be overshadowed by the pregame buildup. For this grand sendoff for Yankee Stadium, they did a special pregame introduction, position by position, of all the living Hall of Fame players. So that meant the Yankees like Reggie and Yogi and Goose (who’ll be inducted next month), but also Bill Mazeroski, and Henry Aaron, and Luis Aparicio, and even Earl Weaver.

Even Lee MacPhail, who I hadn’t even realized was still alive. MacPhail was the architect of some seven World Series championships and I think also served as president of the American League. I’m writing this entry in the car at 3am on the way home from the game, so I have no Internet to check my facts with, and hardly any brain to recall them with in the first place.

Sheryl Crow sang the National Anthem. And there were four ceremonial first pitches, from the four living Hall of Famers whose plaques feature a Yankees hat, Yogi, Reggie, Whitey Ford, and Goose. They were caught by the four Yankee All-Stars of this year: Jeter, A-rod, Mariano, and Joe Girardi, who was on hand as a coach.

A B-2 Spiirt Bomber did the flyover at the end of the anthem and was pretty nifty.

There were huge cheers for anything Yankee-related, and boos so loud for Manny and Papelbon that the concrete under my feet vibrated. Papelbon apparently mouthed off in the preceding 24 hours that he, and not Mariano Rivera, ought to close the game. That’s patently ridiculous for a number of reasons, and even the New York setting and the respect due to Mariano for other reasons aside, Mo’s numbers this season alone blow Papelbon’s out of the water. 23 for 23 in save situations, and until a week ago had not allowed any runs at all in those saves.

As things turned out, with the game going into an extra innings situation in which each manager was down to the last pitcher in his bullpen, no one got a save at all. Papelbon got booed roundly and was greeted during his mound appearance with chants of “Mari-ano!”

During the first inning, the Bleacher Creatures did the roll call for three men only: Derek Jeter, A-rod, and Bobby Murcer.

In keeping with the All-Star theme, and things like bringing out all the Hall of Fame players… during the traditional “YMCA” dragging of the infield the actual VILLAGE PEOPLE came out and performed it! There were a lot of little touches throughout the game which were purely Yankee Stadium. They did the “match game” but with All Stars instead of Yankees (though of course it was Alex Rodriguez whose face they were looking for), but there was no Cap Game. There was Cotton Eye Joe in the 8th, but no Subway Race.

While I’m on the topic of the scoreboard, I have to say that the scoreboard department did not acquit themselves like All Stars. I can only assume that various things were impeding their normally flawless work, like maybe the plethora of All Star media and rightsholders, and all the out-of-routine things that had to happen at various times. There were a few times when the wrong stats appeared on the board, things like that. The worst night, though, was had by Jim Hall, the announcer, who has been Bob Sheppard’s understudy for many years and who has been doing all the announcing since Sheppard fell ill.

He mangled several names, calling Justin Morneau “Monroe,” and getting Justin Duchscherer’s name utterly wrong. He also had trouble following the game at times, announcing the next batter when the original batter had only gone to get another bat after a foul ball broke his—things like that. All the substitutions were a problem for him, too. Apparently, I could follow the changes better just by watching, without the aid of any scorecard (or even any idea who half the national league players were), than he could.

But the game!

The game. For a long time the AL just couldn’t get any offense going. They had given up single runs twice, and with the score 2-0 going into the seventh, J.D. Drew hit a two run shot to tie things up. But Papelbon gave up a run to huge disapproving boos, and it took a rally in the bottom of the eighth, including an RBI double from Evan Longoria, to even the score again.

That meant there would be no save situation. Because just a simple win with a Mariano save simply wasn’t a good enough story for the final All Star Game in Yankee Stadium. No. Instead, an epic battle that included amazing defense (making up for horrible defense), incredible pitching, and the total exhaustion (pun intended) of both rosters ensued, which would turn out to be the longest All Star Game by clock time by a wide margin, and would tie for the longest at 15 innings.

In the end, Terry Francona had to pitch Scott Kazmir, who was supposed to not be used, and Clint Hurdle was down to the closer he had saved until the end, Brad Lidge. Kazmir would get the win, Lidge the loss, when the AL finally managed to push across a run. It was 1:37 in the morning, and we had already sung Take Me Out to the Ballgame twice by then (the 14th Inning Stretch) AND had a second round of Cotton Eye Joe.

Huh, I totally forgot to mention Josh Groban’s totally smarmy rendition of God Bless America. Ronan Tynan can beat you black and blue any day of the week, Groban.

There’s more to say but I’m starting to nod off. And I had better take a nap, since in another 50 miles or so, I’ll have to drive. Suffice to say it was well worth the high price of admission when such an amazing game is played!

Home now—it’s six a.m.–and I’m going to sleep… thankfully today and tomorrow, too, are off days for the Yankees! zzzzzzzz….

Well, now I have proof that the Home Run Derby is even better live than it is on television. And I’ve always enjoyed it on television. Tonight I sat in the upper deck at Yankee Stadium and watched at least 106 balls sail out of the park. And that’s not counting batting practice!

We arrived at the Stadium around 5pm, managed to park in our favorite parking lot, and then headed out to find some food before being at the mercy of stadium concessionaires for the next six hours or so. What we found first, though, was a large Nike-sponsored amusement area, with a batting cage, PlayStation 3 setups for MLB: The Show, and souvenir stand. We amused ourselves there for a bit, then moved on to the pizza joint we like. Sitting in the back in the air conditioned area of the shop, eating Real New York Pizza ™ — the likes of which cannot be gotten in Boston where corwin and I live – I counted fans of no fewer than five major league teams, including the Orioles, Red Sox, Yankees (of course), Mets, and a large contingent for the Twins.

Outside the Stadium Chevy was running a promo where if we answered a survey about our car-buying habits, they would give us a free DVD about Yankee Stadium. Score!

Once inside, we wandered around the Main level for a while, watching batting practice. The American League was taking their practice then, and we hung around in the box seats watching that for quite a while. We were about to go off to see if they would do Designated Driver signups on an All-Star night (they do) when we realized Alex Rodriguez was about to bat. We decided to wait.

It was worth the wait. A-rod put on his own personal home run derby, launching the first ball that I have ever witnessed go into the upper deck in LEFT. Many of his shots were mammoth. It was impressive and really made me wish he had decided to do the Derby, but on the other hand, I would rather see him hit 25 more homers this season than see him hit any in a meaningless exhibition.

After that, we collected our free Designated Driver drinks and headed up to our seats.

There is lots of entertaining hoopla around the derby, of course, one piece of which is the introduction of all the Major League Mascots. Wally the Green Monster got one of the loudest boos I have ever heard at the Stadium. Yankees fans are already anti-mascot (an early 80s experiment with one was a horrible failure) but add to that the Red Sox connection and, well, the result was predictable.

Meanwhile, there is some stuff that makes it feel not that different from other special game days, like of course there is the National Anthem, and Reggie Jackson threw out the ceremonial first pitch. His catcher was Derek Jeter, which prompted a loud, unified, “Derek Jeter” chant from the fans.

The first contestant in the derby was Dan Uggla, whom I love just for his name, plus I’m partial to hard-nosed guys who make the most of their shot. Uggla, in case you don’t know or remember, labored in the Diamondbacks minor league system for years until he was left unprotected by them and went to Florida in the Rule V draft in 2006. That same year he was picked to be a reserve on the All-Star team, and has torn up the league since. He broke the ice immediately with a blast to left, and racked up a respectable 6 homers in his first round.

In between almost every hitter (or at least each pair), there are commercial breaks in the TV coverage, so for people in the stands there are all kinds of other filler, including video montages, various people being given charity awards and such, and little interviews with players. The on-field host for the event was Michael Kay, and at one point he interviewed Mariano Rivera. Mo is so soft-spoken half the time you cannot make out what he says anyway, and this time there was no chance since the fans broke into a quite loud and unified “Mariano” chant.

The man who would get the most and loudest chants of the night though was not a Yankee. Oh sure, there was a very strong chorus of “ass-hole, ass-hole” at the umpire who ruled that one ball which was going to fall short of the wall, but which was grabbed by a fan Jeffrey Maier style, was not a home run. But the thing that really raised goosebumps was the hitting of Josh Hamilton.

Hamilton is already MLB’s feel-good story of the year. A 1999 draftee, with a near-$4M signing bonus, he was working his way through the minors with his parents in tow in an RV. They had quit their jobs to follow his career. But a car accident resulted in injuries for his mother and his parents headed home to recuperate. On his own, Hamilton ended up falling into drug addiction, and then out of baseball from 2002 through 2005. He worked his way back, then was left unprotected by the then-Devil Rays and was taken by the Cubs in the Rule V draft. He’s bumped around a bit since then, but as a Texas Ranger this year he has been phenomenal, winning the starting center field job out of spring training and tearing up the place since.

We saw almost every major league team represented among the fans tonight. I never did see anyone wearing either Diamondbacks or Washington Nationals gear, and for the AL we saw no one with Seattle Mariners, Oakland A’s, or LA Angels stuff. I imagine we’ll see more of them tomorrow, but at least 50% if not more of those in attendance were Yankees and Mets fans. Since there was neither a Yankee nor a Met in the derby, the crowd quickly adopted Hamilton as our own, when one of the first homers he hit banged off the BACK WALL OF THE BLEACHERS. That got him a standing ovation, and while people were still on their feet for that, he hit one that hit the BANK OF AMERICA sign! Five hundred feet.

He hit them into every part of the ballpark. The upper deck in right. The bullpen. The “black.” He was also the hitter who came closest to hitting the “HIT IT HERE” sign, which if he had would have meant MasterCard had to pay some lucky fan a million dollars. He never did hit it, but he came within 50 feet of it, and the crowd stayed on their feet for most of his incredible 28 homers in the first round, a new single-round record for the HR Derby. Between pitches, he received one of the greatest honors a Yankee Stadium crowd can bestow, which is the rhythmic chanting of one’s name. For about a half hour or so, Josh Hamilton was adopted as an honorary Yankee.

The rest was mostly anti-climax, fun but not the incredible show-stopping performance that Hamilton’s first round was. In the end, too, because of the way the derby rounds work, Hamilton lost the final round to Justin Morneau, 5-3. Morneau is the guy I was betting on (though not with actual money…), so that is kind of neat. But in the end I was as won over by Hamilton as anyone.

Now we hope he smashes a couple more balls like that in tomorrow’s game. More to come! I’m going to FanFest and then to the All Star Game itself!

These days every movie or TV show has a “making of” documentary to accompany it. And every sport is analyzed up and down, from the drafting of talent to the construction of the roster, from the strategy employed on the field to examination of each and every play that happens. So I thought it was about time I parted the shrouds of mystery on how to turn out a top notch game story, including the secret techniques employed by all sportswriters, myself included, and tips for getting the most out of every game story.

1. PLAY ON WORDS
A sure-fire way to grab people’s attention is with some kind of pun, double meaning, or play on words. Sometimes this can be in the title of the piece, or it might just be a clever (or painfully obvious) connection, like “It was 95 degrees at game time today in the Bronx, and Joba Chamberlain was hitting 95 mph on the radar gun.” I considered that one for todat’s piece, but actually Joba hit all the way up to 99 in the first inning, so for the sake of accuracy. I scrapped it. How about “The bats that heated up yesterday stayed hot in the Yankees’ 6-3 win over Kansas City, while the fans stayed hot because of surprisingly sweltering temperatures.” Eh, kind of wordy and not that sensical. maybe something simpler, like: “Temperatures soared and Joba was throwing heat.”? You get the idea.

2. EVOKE NOSTALGIA
The Yankees have a lot of history associated with them, and especially any story about a game that takes place in the final season of Yankee Stadium ought to have a patina of nostalgia on it. So, for example, making a comparison to games or figures of the past, allows you to pull in some history. Joba’s barrel chest, jowly face, and exuberant spirit make him an easy comparison to Babe Ruth. The pitcher he looks the most like from the upper deck, though, is actually Roger Clemens. Opposing players can be useful for evoking the past, too. After Joey Gathright ended the Yankees’ first inning rally, and prevented another one from starting in the second, both with unbelievable catches in center field, the old fellow sitting behind me remarked that he was “like Willie fucking Mays out there or something.” (These are Yankees’ fans, remember.)

3. ANOINT A HERO
Sometimes the hero is really obvious. Like in yesterday’s game, Johnny Damon went six-for-six and every hit was part of a rally, not to mention that he had the game-winning walk-off hit. Today, though, we could debate whether Bobby Abreu deserves the hero title or Jason Giambi. Abreu, after all, hit the two-run shot in the first that gave Joba some breathing room, whereas Giambi hit a solo shot in the sixth that broke the 3-3 tie and was ultimately the difference in the game. When anointing a hero, it’s important to take into account past performance–and to recap recent heroics if relevant. Right now Giambi is leading the major leagues in home run frequency, hitting one per 11 at bats or something like that. Not only that, he had a pinch-hit walk-off with two outs in the ninth in Thursday’s game, and just yesterday ALSO had a solo shot to break a tie in the sixth. I’d say Giambi gets it this time around, also because…

4. EVERYBODY LOVES AN UNDERDOG
Now, when you write about the Yankees, the term “underdog” can seem a bit ironic, if not oxymoronic. But in the eyes of some fans, a guy like Giambi went from MVP to underdog when he had all his health problems, and then fought back into shape. There are not many candidates for underdog in today’s game though, unless we count the Kansas City Royals themselves… Wait. How about Dan Giese? This is a pitcher who has been waiting for his chance to pitch for a long time, and who got called up for Joba’s first start last week, as the team has Joba on strict pitch counts while they stretch him out from short relief to a starting role. He pitched extremely well in the long relief role, and then the next day was sent immediately back to Triple A. He was recalled after just a few days and praised by team management for being cooperative and professional about the whole thing. And he pitched effectively again: two and a third innings, no hits, no runs.

5. WORK A MOTIF
The overwhelming theme of the day had to be heat, but I’ve already harped on it so much. The last time I remember being so steamy at the stadium was in August 2005, when we took in a game that was stopped twice by passing thundershowers. And Bernie Williams hit two home runs. The Belmont Stakes was yesterday and Big Brown, trying to win the Triple Crown, came in dead last. Hm. Probably not a good comparison. I hope. I’ll be avoiding horseracing references for a while just in case.

6. QUOTE SOME STATS
Authority in baseball writing is always conveyed by the use of numbers. Some of my best friends are baseball statisticians. And I do some number crunching myself, though I often have the feeling that if there is a case I want to make, I can surely dig up numbers to support it that will look extremely convincing to all except perhaps my stat geek friends. So I try to look at the numbers with an open mind, and see what they suggest to me. Among other things, what they suggest is that Mariano Rivera is still improving with age. The solo shot he surrendered yesterday (in a non-save situation) was only the second run he gave up all season. It caused his ERA to “balloon” to 0.64. For those of you who are new to baseball, that’s SMALL. He has converted 15 of 15 save opportunities. Not much arguing one can do with numbers like that.

7. LOOK FOR THE UNSEEN STORY
Of course if you want to give your readers the feeling that you are really, really on top of everything, write about not only what you saw, but what you didn’t see. I didn’t see any hint of Kyle Farnsworth in yesterday’s game. Now that Joba Chamberlain is in the rotation, doesn’t the eighth inning belong to Farnsworth? Unfortunately, with his recent tendency to give up the long ball, he has lost what tentative trust the crowd had begun to put in the “re-invented” reliever. “He’s a bum,” is what the 12 year old sitting next to me said. “We better get some more runs,” said the guy on my other side, “because you know Farnsworth is coming in and he’s going to give up at least one run.” But although the Yankees got two insurance runs on a two-RBI double by Alex Rodriguez (which he tried to stretch into a triple but ended up thrown out at third), Farnsworth did not appear. Instead, Jose Veras pitched, and pitched well. That’s two games in a row that Veras pitched. After the game, manager Joe Girardi said he held Farnsworth out of the game because he has a slight tweak in his biceps. Interesting. I think Girardi is bending over backwards to maintain his trust in Farnsworth, because he knows the moment Farnsworth thinks Girardi has lost confidence in him, Farnsworth will fall apart. And unfortunately, they need him to contribute because if there were better alternatives, they’d have already explored them. It looks to me, though, like Jose Veras is on the verge of earning the 8th inning job.

8. INCLUDE AMUSING ANECDOTES
Sometimes the amusing anecdotes come from the clubhouse, from players, other times from other people associated with the game. And still other times they come from my own observations, in which case maybe they are only amusing to me. Here’s today’s: I have a new nickname for Jorge Posada, which is El Jardinero. “Jardinero” in Spanish means “gardener,” and in Spanish baseball lingo also refers to “fielders” especially outfielders. However today was the annual Puerto Rican Day parade in New York City, which perhaps put me in mind of the Dominican salsa master Wilfrido Vargas, who had a huge salsa hit in the 1980s under the title “El Jardinero.” So Jorge, who is proudly Puerto Rican, earns the title for all the gardening he does around home plate. After Joba finished throwing his warmup pitches, the first thing Jorge did was fluff up the dirt right in front of the plate. He seemed to be carefully building up a layer right at the edge of the plate, and then smoothing the rest. He also obliterated the lines of the batters’ boxes closest the the plate, presumably because of glare in his eyes on the sunny day? I’m not sure why. I just know he spent a lot of time looking like he really wanted a garden spade in his hand.

9. END WITH A BANG
Of course, every piece should end with something that makes the reader go either “aww” or “aha!” or “wow.” This effect can be achieved by looping back to the beginning to close the thematic loop (“and as the weather stays hot, hopefully the Yankees will, too…”), by making bold predictions for the future (“and Joba Chamberlain will likely be in the rotation for the rest of the season…”), or by adding one last tidbit that was held back until now. Um, except I didn’t actually hold back a tidbit. I left it all out on the field.

I was in the house for a wild, wild win in the Bronx today.

Um, by “in the house” of course I mean “at Yankee Stadium.” The scoreboard counting down the number of games left by increments went from 51 to 50 today, and at various points in the game we were treated to video montages of: great moments in Yankee Stadium, time lapse of the construction of the new stadium, aerial video of the new and old stadiums (stadia?) standing side by side…

It all feels a bit like the Yankees are hoping we’re really going to like moving into that snazzy new condo, even though nothing can replace the family’s ancestral home. One can’t help but stare at the grand and classic-looking facade across the way while waiting in line to enter the old place. I don’t know. Every now and then I worry that we’ve been sold a bill of goods. But I guess we won’t really know until we move in over there and see how it is.

The thing that will make the new place as special as the old, of course, is that the Yankees will play there. And if they play a lot of games there that were like the one we saw today, it won’t be long before a whole new generation cherishes that building nearly as much as the old one.

It started out a hot, humid day–the first really summer-hot day of the year. Last night it was chilly and foggy, and the Yankees lost 2-1 to Kansas City in another game that starter Darrell Rasner deserved to win, except the Yankees could not score for him.

Andy Pettitte did not have that problem today, as the offense came alive in the hot weather. Unfortunately for him, it came alive for both teams.

The pounding began in the first inning, when with two outs Mark Teahen hit a booming double which would later cause Johnny Damon to remark that he knew then that it was a good day to be playing deep. He couldn’t play deep enough for the next batter, though, Jose Guillen, who hit a two run shot. Andy seemed to be struggling with his control, but he got the next hitter to end the inning with a soft comebacker.

The Yankees bats then got to work. Damon himself started off with a big double. Jeter moved him over with one of his patented bunts in a sac situation but which could have been a hit if the Royals hadn’t fielded perfectly. Giambi singled him in for the Yankees first run, and the Royals’ lead was cut in half.

Pettitte was still a little wild in the second, walking the leadoff man, but appeared to settle down with the ensuing double play and strikeout.

Then, in the top of the third, the first pitch of the inning was bunted at by Joey Gathright and the glancing foul hit the home plate umpire in the head. A twenty minute delay ensued while he was taken out of the game for precautionary reasons, and Jim Wolf had to change into the chest protector to take over behind the plate. The delay seemed to “ice” Pettitte, whose wildness returned, and after retiring Gathright on the very next pitch (4-3), the then gave up a single and a triple, walked Teahen, gave up an RBI single to Guillen, struck out Olivo, then gave up another RBI single to John Buck who was caught out trying to stretch it into a double. The Royals now had a 5-1 lead and Pettitte had thrown 64 pitches in 3 innings.

Pettitte did settle down after that, recording 1-2-3 innings in the 4th, 5th, and 6th, and giving the Yankees a chance to catch up, which they did in the 4th. A-rod led off with a single, Giambi (who has been red hot of late) walked on four pitches, and the Jorge Posada, in his only his second game back after a long stint on the DL, slammed an RBI double. Cano brought in another run with a base hit, and then Wilson Betemit brought in Jorge with a deep sac fly to center, proving that these days he is the only man who can hit a fly ball with a runner on third and fewer than two outs. But the rally didn’t end there, no. Melky singled, then Damon followed with his third hit of the day, making it now 5-5 with men on the corners and one out.

Up came Jeter, who then had a 3-0 count… and swung at the next pitch and fouled it off. He ended up hitting a high pop to right, not terribly deep, and Melky tagged up and tried to score… and ended up out at the plate in a 9-2 double play. To that point Jeter had hit into two double plays and he and Abreu were the only two in the lineup who had no hit or RBI.

And it was only the fourth inning.

The Yankees took the lead in the fifth when Giambi hit a solo shot–one of those ones where the crack of the bat rings in your ears–a soaring blast into the upper deck. Everything was peachy.

Until the seventh, when Pettitte began to tire. The temperature was in the 90s, perhaps expecting him to pitch a full seven inning was to much? Alberto Callaspo greeted him with a double, light-hitting Esteban German followed with a bunt base-hit, and Gathright followed that with an RBI single to tie the game. Damn. DeJesus bunted the runners over, and so Mike Aviles was intentionally walked to set up the double play. Pettitte actually struck out Teahen though, and then was one strike away from sealing the deal against Jose Guillen. If he’d been able to sit Guillen down, he would have gotten out of the inning giving up only one run.

Unfortunately, Guillen then hit a grand slam. Ouch. It was now 10-6 Royals, and Pettitte had earned all ten runs. Jose Veras came in and struck out Olivo on three pitches, but the damage was done.

The Yankees, however, were not done. In the bottom of the inning Abreu finally joined the party with a base hit, followed by a no-doubter off the bat of A-rod that landed in the visiting bullpen. It was now 10-8 Royals, but it seemed likely the score wouldn’t stay that way.

And indeed, in the bottom of the eighth, the Yankees made up their second four-run deficit of the day. Cano led off with a bit, and after a Betemit strikeout, Melky added his own. They moved to second and third with Damon at the plate. Damon had a 3-0 count and had already gone four-for-four in the game. Could he actually get five hits? Yes. He knocked in both runners to tie the score. Jeter followed with a hit, but both he and Damon were stranded, and Mariano Rivera entered the ninth inning with the game tied.

Not for long. Mariano’s first pitch went deep off the bat of David DeJesus and it was 11-10 Royals. It was the first homer Mo has given up, and only the second run he has allowed all year.

One more comeback, Yankees, please?

The fireworks began with one out, when Jorge Posada, jumping right into the thick of things, hit a solo shot into the lower deck in right off KC closer Joakim Soria. Tie game. With two outs, Betemit worked a walk, and then Melky Cabrera got lucky, rolling a slow grounder up the third base line that just never rolled foul.

And so up came Damon, who was then 5-for-5. Betemit on second, Melky on first, and two outs. It was two pitches into his at bat that corwin reminded me to eat sunflower seeds. You see, in each of the two big scoring rallies for the Yankees that day, we had been eating them. Clearly, we needed to eat them now. We each took a handful and began munching.

And it worked! Damon laced a single, Betemit raced home, and Damon was mobbed by his teammates at first base. Final score 12-11 Yankees, with the two teams having 31 hits between them.

We’ll be back at the Stadium tomorrow, to see Joba Chamberlain in his second start. Hopefully the Yankees’ bats will stay hot, and the Royals’ will not.

I have now initiated my friend Brian (let’s call him Brian…) to the fun and wonder of Major League fandom. I took a trip to Baltimore to take him to his first major league game, a tilt of Orioles versus Yankees.

The reason I went all the way to Baltimore for this is that the company he works for gets tickets at Oriole Park at Camden Yards. Nice tickets. Behind home plate nice. So when he asked if I’d come down and see a game with him and explain what all the fuss was about, of course I said yes.

I took Amtrak, which is about the perfect way to travel from Boston to Baltimore in comfort. I got a lot of work done, since even the cheap-o train I took still has power plugs for my laptop and is only an hour slower than the Acela. If only they could come up with a way for the train to have wireless Internet, I’d seriously take it all the time to New York, too.

When I arrived it was mid-afternoon, just enough time to get settled and then head over to the park early so we could have a thorough look around. When we got down to the park they were already letting people onto Eutaw Street. The sky was clear, the temperature was a comfortable 68 degrees, and the humidity was low. Lucky us. The night before, it had been 85 degrees, 100% humidity, and a thundershower had delayed the game by 90 minutes in the ninth inning with the score tied 8-8. Not only that, but the Yankees lost in the 11th. Grrr. In the good news department, though, Jason Giambi hit a home run onto Eutaw Street–the 41st dinger to land on the street since the park was built.

The first thing we looked at was the brass plaques set in the street where various of the home runs have landed. I would have thought that most of them would be Orioles, but no. Red Sox, Yankees, Rangers… we found David Ortiz and Paul O’Neill and many other favorites, including one Giambi hit in 2005.

There was also one hole where it looked like one was missing. Stolen?

We also searched the side of the warehouse for the one plaque for Ken Griffey Jr.’s homer that is the only one to hit the actual building, which happened during the Home Run Derby the year the All Star Game was in Baltimore. We didn’t find it, though. For some reason I remembered it being at the same height as the first row of windows, and also that it was the size and shape of a baseball (three-dimensional) instead of a flat plaque like the others.

We watched a bit of batting practice from the bleachers, but no balls came particularly near us. We had not brought gloves. We had fun watching Mike Mussina shagging though, and I explained how batting practice works. We then watched wooden bats being made for a short time (Brian is into woodworking but the demonstration was not every engrossing), and then looked at our food options.

I always like to get something unique at a ballpark that cannot be gotten at other ballparks. We got a crab soup and a knish, then walked up to the upper deck just to see the view from up there. Had a nice chat with a female usher who is an aspiring baseball writer, too. From up there we could see the mow patterns in the grass, and the sod farm that grows beyond the bullpen.

Back down to sign up as non-drinking Designated Drivers and get coupons for free drinks (of which we only redeemed 2 of the four we were given), and then to our seats. One of the GEICO Cavemen threw out the first pitch–I had no explanation for that. After the national anthem I had to explain the “O” in “oh say does that star spangled banner yet wave…” and warned him that John Denver’s Country Boy would be coming up later in the game. Every park has their traditional songs, after all. Fenway Park has, in recent decades, developed a cult around Neil Diamond’s SWEET CAROLINE, to the point that Neil Diamond is now going to play a concert at Fenway. And Yankee Stadium has Cotton-Eyed Joe.

What followed was a close-fought battle, where neither team ever held more than a one-run lead until the ninth, and every at bat was a battle. Andy Pettitte was pitching for the Yankees, and although he managed to be effective, he was throwing a lot of balls, falling behind in the count, and generally struggling. And yet he walked only one man, and his only mistake was a low fastball then Melvin Mora golfed into the seats for a two run home run.

On the O’s side there was young Jeremy Guthrie, who was throwing some heat, hitting 93 on the radar gun and getting some big and exciting strikeouts, like fanning Derek Jeter in the third to strand a man on third. The Yankees managed a single run off him in the second when Matsui hit a one-out double and then Giambi stroked a single to score him. Giambi also hit another home run–I couldn’t tell if it hit Eutaw Street or not–in the fourth, to make it 2-2. The third run came in the fifth, this time with Melky hitting the one-out double, Damon singling him to third, and then Jeter hitting a line drive deep enough to be a sacrifice fly.

In close games, every play is magnified. When Roberts got picked off second, the crowd was in an uproar, as O’s fans and Yankee fans alike were stirred up by it. At the time, Brian had gone off to the souvenir shop. Chatting with the clerk he mentioned it was his first major league game, and the clerk took him over to the fan assistance office where they gave him a certificate for his first game, complete with his name and the date, some Orioles postcards, and a special envelope to keep it all in. Kinda neat.

Each team mounted their threats, but no one was able to run away with it. In the ninth the Yankees scratched an insurance run, as Matsui led off with a double and they played small ball to get him in. The importance of that run became quickly apparent when Mariano Rivera, pitching the ninth, had to face the tying run in the person of Brian Robets and then Melvin Mora, when a man had reached on an A-rod error. (A-rod’s second in two games… and he looked lost at the plate, hitting the 2nd or 3rd pitch of every at bat on the ground to third or short.) But Mariano showed his Hall of Fame form (ERA 0.41–I explained to Brian that most pitchers are happy with a 4.10 ERA…) and got both Roberts and Mora to pop up.

Not only that, the game was over with in under three hours. Wow. The night remained dry, pleasant, and cool, and we walked out with a feeling of deep satisfaction. Or at least, I did. I think Brian had fun, too.

He mentioned, among other things, that the game seems different when you are in the stands than watching it on TV. And of course it didn’t hurt that I was there to explain every little thing, including the strategy of pitching, signs and sign-stealing, the difference between pitching from the wind-up and the stretch, why bullpen guys would rather pitch one inning several times a week than 2-3 innings only once or twice, the difference between pulling the ball and going the other way, how Chad Bradford learned to pick up dirt while he pitches underhand, and many other topics.

Just another night at the ballpark.

This is going to be a kind of personal piece today, about life and baseball. Or perhaps about baseball and life.

I cried a lot yesterday. There are a lot of reasons why, and they all come back to baseball.

I drove to New York City Sunday night, had a lovely dinner with my good friend Lori in the Bronx, who shares the same birthday with me. We have a tradition of going to Opening Day at Yankee Stadium together, since the home opener often falls on or next to our birthday, and then having dinner at a steakhouse in Yonkers that we like (and that gives birthday discounts).

I thought I was going to miss the opener for sure last year, since I had a trip to China and Japan planned for early April, but as it turned out I was able to go to the game, then head home and leave pretty much the next day for the Far East. This year would have been my ninth Opening Day in a row.

And of course, as the media has trumpeted repeatedly, the last home opener ever in The Old Ballpark.

I wanted to be there. Sure, it’s just a game. Sure, I’ll have plenty more chances to attend games this season. I’ll very likely be there for the last game of the season. So you’d think it wouldn’t have been such a Big Deal that yesterday’s game was rained out, postponed to tonight, and that I decided to drive back home instead of trying to stay another day.

But it wasn’t until I was partway home that the tears hit. That the disappointment came on me like a wave.

I’ve often said one of the most amazing things about baseball is how it can reduce a mature adult to being ten years old again. I didn’t quite feel the disappointment as keenly as I would have at ten. But the more I thought about it on the way home, the more I realized I wasn’t just upset over one game or one rainy day.

The two-hundred mile drive back to my house from the Stadium is never longer than after a loss, and I associate it with nights like the time my friend Rich and I drove down to see Game 2 of the ALDS in 2001, with our hearts still raw from 9/11 and the game felt like attending a wake. Coming home after various other playoff losses, too. That drive is joyous and wonderful after clinching–one can get WFAN late at night through over half of Connecticut and there was one night after they clinched a round we did the drive and listened to happy fans calling in until well past New Haven. We also listened as long as we could the last night of Joe Torre’s tenure, too, the night Suzyn Waldman cried from the clubhouse while trying to report on the radio about how all of Joe Torre’s coaches were in tears.

Yes, there’s crying in baseball. Because people care. Because it’s a huge thing in the fabric of our lives, as huge as the things we associate it with, like family, and religion, and triumph and defeat.

They’re going to tear down my stadium! MY stadium, I say, like it belongs to me. I’ve been resigned to the destruction of the place since an Old Timer’s Day in 2002. I was sitting in the stands before the game, just looking around, and the realization hit me then that even if they did tear it down and rebuild on the same spot–it would never be the same. At the time we didn’t know what the plans for a new building were going to be. But preservation was pretty much out of the question.

As a historian, I hate to see real, actual things disappear from the world. The reason some of the things one sees in Cooperstown at the Hall of Fame are so striking is because these are the actual objects that were involved in the history. It’s one thing to know the story of how Jack Chesbro’s one wild pitch at the worst possible time cost the Yankees the pennant, handing it to the Red Sox in 1904. It’s another thing entirely to see the actual ball that got away sitting there behind Plexiglas.

I talked to Reggie Jackson this spring about the Stadium. And here’s what he had to say. “I don’t think I am as caught up yet, because I’m not there now. When the end comes, I’ll probably get teary-eyed.”

He went on to explain all the good and valid reasons why we’re going to enjoy the new stadium. And I have no doubt that I will. I believe that the fans that will cheer and root and pour their hearts out there are what will give that new building life, and the feats that the team that plays there accomplishes are what will make it precious to us eventually. I have no doubt about that.

But he went on to say, “I’m just not that sentimental yet. Maybe when it gets closer. I really wouldn’t want to be around to see them tear it down.”

No, I don’t think I could stand that. At the time I was nodding my head right along with him, excited about the new stadium, and the new season, too. It was a spring full of optimism in Yankee camp, after all. But he was right, I think, about not feeling as sentimental because he wasn’t there. I think Reggie will be feeling it as much as I am when the end actually comes.

“[The new one] won’t have its history,” he said. “And I don’t think you’ll lose the history. It’s just like I don’t play anymore, and I’m nothing in baseball except an old name, but I have my memories. They’re always with me. So if you wouldn’t let me in the ballpark, or you took my uniform away from me, I would be sad, but you wouldn’t take my memories away. I don’t think I’m explaining it well. But the memories that I have in my mind and in my head, whether it’s old cars or old homes or things like that, things change, things get better, and so I try to understand what they’re doing. You know, I remember when Mickey Mantle walked in front of me in Yankee Stadium and I looked down at his shoes, and he had the tongue turned over and it said number 7. Players don’t even have tongues on their shoes now. They’re not marked the way they were before, you know. And the 407 foot sign in right center, the 344 in right center… those are all numbers for me that I’ll always remember, forever. The field was sloped, it was sloped down toward left field. The old fence, the low fence was a Cyclone fence like that (points). The new fence hasn’t taken away my memory of the old one. So it’s not going to be gone for me. I was lucky to see it. And to have lived in it for a while. I’m not sad about it.”

He’s right, in that nothing will take our memories away. But I can’t deny that real things have power. Artifacts have power.

And for all my rationalization about how great the new place is going to be, that doesn’t negate the hurt that the ten-year-old in me feels about losing the old place.

When I was ten years old, my family moved from one place to another. We’d left New York City a few years before, and this was a move from one New Jersey suburb to another. I had a terrible time adjusting to my new school. I regularly came home crying and miserable.

Is that some of what I’m feeling, when I look at this move? I fixated a little on our old house. But it wasn’t the house itself that I missed–it was my old life, my old friends. But the house seems like such a tangible thing.

The House That Ruth Built. The outraged ten-year-old in me cannot believe they’re going to tear it down.

Meanwhile, I may as well take this opportunity to announce that I’m retiring from the playing field. I’m forty. The Slaterettes are happy to have me so long as I can haul my ass down to Pawtucket to get in uniform. But it’s not fun in the late season when the light gets real dim and you know the ball’s coming because you saw the pitcher wind up, but it seems to disappear into the sepia-tone of the world.

I actually had a decent season last season. My team was fun and my bad knees even held up pretty well. But I don’t think I’m ever hitting .400 again, and I don’t ever want to feel like I’m the 15th player on the 15-woman roster.

Of course, then comes the question… if you quit playing, what are you going to do with yourself?

I don’t know. I’m going to miss it terribly. I don’t want to find some 40+ softball league near my house that plays on a well-lit field and allows courtesy runners. Just so I can smell the dirt and touch the grass?

I’ve thought about learning to umpire. But, I don’t know. Maybe someday.

The truth of the matter is that baseball isn’t fun when you miss your pitch all the time. I played my last season at forty years old and that seems like a good time to call it quits. Playing more years won’t make up for the fact that I wish I had started much younger and that the opportunity to play didn’t come along until I was in my thirties.

corwin says he won’t believe I’m really retired until I actually sit out the season, though. He’s right. There’s always a possibility that I won’t be able to stand it and I’ll show up on when Slaterettes season opens with a bat and glove. But as of right now, no. The hill is getting too steep to climb. Which is a depressing prospect, but there you have it. Maybe I’ll have to look into vintage baseball…

The next logical step for me, actually, is starting a women’s and girls league in Cambridge, MA. But honestly right now I don’t have the time. Perhaps that is something for some years down the road, too.

Meanwhile, in this year, it’s been a very long winter. And they’ve been teasing us with the start of “baseball season” with several false starts, too. The Red Sox played an opening series in Japan over a week ago. The Nationals opened their new ballpark a night earlier than everyone else because… I’m not sure why. I guess because ESPN wanted them to. And yesterday, things were supposed to finally be underway.

But they weren’t. It rained. And then it rained some more. And I drove 200 miles in the rain to get home after the game was called, crying. I’m definitely depressed and I should be old enough by now to recognize the symptoms. But the best treatment I’ve found is baseball itself, so go figure.

Meanwhile, tonight, they will play the first home opener at Yankee Stadium that I have not been at in almost a decade, and the fact that it will be the last home opener in the building really does make a difference. Because as a historian and as a fan, I know that Being There is a meaningful thing. Real events happen in real places and are witnessed by real people. “Reality TV” is such an oxymoron. The compelling thing about sports on TV or radio is that they are live, the next best thing to being there, but nothing beats being there.

Now that my retirement is upon me, it is starting to sink in how significant being on the field really was. This thing happens when you play, I think, where your mind focuses so much on the game and on the mindset necessary to play, that you forget a lot of the other stuff around the game. Playing itself, the act of playing, fielding, baserunning, keeping your head in the game, and so on is so all-absorbing at the time it is going on that you develop a mindset for playing that is quite different from the one you have as a spectator, or fan, or historian.

This is why I was surprised today when I finally started going through the stack of baseball books that have accumulated on my desk over the past 12 months and discovered my name so prominently featured in one of them. I’ve gotten a lot of good books. Some I bought, some were sent to me by publishers or authors hoping for a review, others I got as gifts. I’ve been meaning to read them all, but I haven’t had time.

One of the largest in the stack is the “Encyclopedia of Women and Baseball,” edited by Leslie Heaphy Mel May. Leslie gave me a copy of the book at last summer’s SABR convention in St. Louis. I’ve been a member of the women and baseball committee of SABR for a couple of years now, and we’ve corresponded a lot in email about it. I recalled sending her some photos of the New England Women’s Baseball League and such.

I didn’t realize, though, what a lynchpin in the system I apparently was, as a bridge between the historians and the current players. But I am the very first person thanked in the Acknowledgments. “There are many individuals who deserve special thanks for their help in gathering materials, starting with Cecilia Tan,” it says, “who is herself a player. Cecilia provided information not only about her own experienced but also about the 24-hour benefit game in Arizona. Most importantly, she provided contacts with a couple of hundred other ball players.”

Yeah, I guess I did! It was only then that it occurred to me that… holy crap… am I actually IN this encyclopedia? Yes. There I am on page 282. 162 words encapsulating my sporting and athletic achievements.

In other words, I was there.

Sometimes it doesn’t feel like much. What did I do really, but drive around like a nut searching for the right out of the way ballfield in Lynn where the North Shore Cougars were due to take on the Lowell Robins? But put on cleats and tear up the grass two nights a week in Slater Park in Pawtucket, RI? Maybe I’m the Joe Garagiola of the women’s leagues. I was never the best player, but I’ve told the most stories about it.

I can tell the stories differently because I was there. You can look it up.

And so, yes. It would have mattered to be there for this home opener. But I’m not going to be there. I will pin my hopes instead on being there for Game Seven of the World Series, which would be the only truly fitting occasion to say goodbye to the old ballpark with. We’ll see if it happens. A lot depends on the weather, and the Yankees, and things beyond my control.

It was a day of love at Yankee Stadium on Sunday.It began with an outpouring of love for someone recently departed from the family, Phil Rizzuto. While many members of the Rizzuto family–including his wife of 64 years, Cora, and lifelong friend Yogi Berra–watched from seats of honor near home plate, the scoreboard played a highlight montage from Phil’s career as player and as broadcaster. The music they chose couldn’t have been more fitting: “That’s Amore.”

But what struck me most that day was the way the fans have embraced one of the youngest, newest members of the family, Joba Chamberlain. The big kid with the 99 mile per hour fastball turned 22 on Sunday, and his father and some friends of the family were there all weekend to celebrate it with him.

For Harlan Chamberlain, Joba’s wheelchair-bound father, it was his first trip east of the Mississippi River. Many fans are familiar with his face from the television broadcasts of the game in Kansas City he attended where he saw Joba pitch in the majors the first time. Tears of joy made Harlan Chamberlain’s face shine that night, and now the smiles and greetings of New Yorkers everywhere he goes makes him smile.

“The people here have been wonderful. Absolutely great,” he said before a game this weekend. We were on the warning track in front of the Yankee dugout. Normally at that hour, batting practice would be taking place, but it had been cancelled because of the extra-innings affair that had kept everyone up late the night before. So we were doing what everyone else was doing: talking baseball.

In specific, we were talking Joba.

I had to ask. “So, was he always into baseball growing up?”

“Since four years old,” Harlan said without hesitation. “Back then of course it was just dress up. I had bought this catcher’s equipment from the church across the street. They were phasing that part out of their parochial school’s phys ed department, so I bought [it] for thee bucks. So he dressed up and just started taking to it, and I saw he liked it, so I just took a ball and started throwing it at him, teaching him not to be afraid of the ball. And that didn’t take long.”

I wondered if little Joba had been just as stocky as he is now, but what I asked was, “Did he play tee ball and Little League and all that?”

“Yeah. He always played with neighborhood kids. And then tee ball and what not. He always came to the top of whatever pursuit he embarked upon. He always has risen to the top, and well, it doesn’t get anymore top than this other than the World Series. And we’re not so far away from that.” The excitement in his voice is as palpable as it is in the crowd later that day, when the Yankees still have a chance to catch the Red Sox for the division, and stage comeback after comeback until finally notching an extra inning win in a five-hour game. But that will come later. Harlan told me more. “He’s got a passion for the game that is unequalled by anybody I’ve seen. There are lot of players an athletes who are better than he is, but I don’t ever recall seeing anyone who matched his passion. And that’s his motivator.”

I asked how old Joba was when he started to see that fire. “Oh, when he was about eight.”

Eight? “He liked playing the part. Initially it was a part.”

Like a role in a play? Yes. I asked if he always thought he was going to be a pitcher. Harlan laughed. “No, he was a catcher! He was a catcher for a long time.”

I told him then about Ralph Terry, a pitcher for the Yankees in the 1960s who was MVP of the 1962 World Series, but who started out as a catcher in high school in Oklahoma, playing against Mickey Mantle. But back to Joba. “He didn’t seriously get into pitching until he was a senior in high school. I mean, he’d throw the ball and play that position once in a while, but as far as actually pitching, developing pitches, being a pitcher. There’s one thing to being a thrower, another to being a pitcher. And people would always say to me ‘your son throwing tonight?’ Because they don’t know the difference. And I’d say ‘yeah, he’s pitching tonight.’”

Harlan’s pride in his son was obvious. And so was his love. “Did you know,” I asked in closing, “that there is video on the Internet of Joba singing in the bullpen?”

He didn’t seem surprised and he smiled at me. “That’s just the way he is. He’s a ham. He really is. He’s always been a ham.”

It’s not just the people of New York who have been so friendly to Harlan Chamberlain. A steady stream of players still came and went on their way to jogging or stretching, each one pausing to shake Harlan’s hand or say hello. Joba’s dad is as popular as his son, it seems, and that is saying a lot, as his son is possibly one of the most lovable characters to put on pinstripes in a while.

Already the “Joba Rules” T-shirts are being sold on street corners outside the stadium, and on Sunday, Joba’s birthday, there were at least four different styles of Joba-related shirts in evidence on the crowd, even though according to those “rules,” Joba should not have been available to pitch. The rules, as laid down by the coaching staff, included stipulations like, Joba shall not be brought in in the middle of an inning. If Joba pitches one inning, he shall rest one day. If he pitches two innings, two days. Well, he’d already been used in the middle of an inning earlier in the week, but Friday night he did pitch two complete innings in 14-inning loss to the Jays.

But on Saturday night, Joe Torre did say, when press by reporters, that the rules were ‘evolving.’ “All I can say is that the rules from here on will probably involve pitch count,” he said. The rules, it seems, can bend.

Sunday afternoon saw the Yankees take a comfortable 7-3 lead over the Jays while Mike Mussina pitched seven solid innings for New York. Unfortunately, with two out in the eighth, Luis Vizcaino walked the third batter he faced, then gave up a home run to Matt Stairs. When the next man, Aaron Hill, got a hit, the crowd began chanting “We Want Joba! We Want Joba!”

When Vizcaino then walked the next man, Joe Torre came out of the dugout and received a cheer.

Then a blare of heavy metal theme music came from the stadium sound system, and Joba came trotting in from the bullpen. It was positively Mariano-like. Five pitches later, he left the mound, triumphant, having struck out a player whose name he probably didn’t know and probably didn’t care to know. (Adam Lind, if you’re wondering.)

As it turned out, Torre decided that rather than use Mariano three days in a row in the ninth, he would send Joba back out to finish the job. He got a soft dribbler back to the mound, struck out pinch hitter Lyle Overbay, and then quite fittingly, blew away Reed Johnson on three straight pitches to seal the deal. His first major league save and the adulation of a sold-out house was his birthday gift.

By next season, as any fan knows, the love affair could be over. He could be traded, get injured, or even fall from grace. But for now, the lovable kid with the blazing fastball is loving it and being loved right back.