A memorable baseball weekend (part 2): May 26, 2000 Red Sox v Yankees

I think we got to our seats in time for me to fill in the rosters for the Red Sox and the Yankees prior to the start of the game. The seats were great, a few rows back on the first base side. We felt like kids, none of us had ever had such good seats at a major league baseball game. We were a little above eye level with the field. Shortly after the start of the game a waitress assigned to our area came by. It seems that club seating comes with seat side food service. She gave us a menu and said that she would be back to get our order. Since it was a night game and none of us had time to eat dinner prior to leaving for the game, we had decided to eat dinner at the ballpark. I have a note on my scorecard that we spent $68 in food, seems that seat side food service comes at a premium. I did not make a note of what we ordered, probably sausages, fries, and a soda.

The Red Sox got off to a quick lead, at the end of the third inning they were leading by a score of 4 to 1. David Cone took the loss for the Yanks with Ramon Martinez notching the win for the Red Sox. The Yankees only run came in the bottom of the third by our reserve infielder, Bellinger (playing 2nd base that night) with a solo homerun.

The most entertaining part of the game came perhaps one–third of the way through the game. We noticed a buzz in the crowd and everyone was staring at something behind home plate. It took us awhile to figure out what was going on. Finally, we looked in the netting behind home plate and saw a body lying in the net. We looked in stunned silence at the body before the body stirred and attempted to climb up the netting. The crowd cheered when they saw that the body, male, was indeed alive. He got up, took some bows and tried to climb back up the netting. It became obvious to us that he was drunk, because he was unsteady on his feet and kept falling down as he tried to climb back up the netting. We started to boo. At some point, we looked up in the stands over where he had fallen in the netting and saw some of New York’s finest. They were ready to cart him away. And when he finally got back up, they did escort him out of the area. And probably out of the stadium.

The game went on and we had a great time. We enjoyed being so close to the action. We were in foul ball territory. Nothing came our way, but I have a note on my scorecard that two balls bounced off the scoreboard near our seats.

At the end of the game, we walked a short distance to the parking lot. Since this was the first time any of us had driven to the stadium, the traffic jam inside the garage caught us all by surprise. Writing this almost eight years later, I want to say that it took us 30 minutes to leave the garage. The reality was that it was perhaps half that time. We resolved never to drive to the stadium again. The trip home involved going back a different way from the one we used to get to the stadium. I don’t believe that this was our intended route, but it worked out. We got back to Manhattan and eventually back to the GW bridge for the trip home.

A memorable baseball weekend (part 1): car trip to Yankee Stadium

Perhaps the most memorable Yankee game we attended was on Friday May 26, 2000. I think this was the Friday of Memorial Day weekend. I got a telephone call that afternoon in my office from a good friend of mine. Her husband had just been offered four tickets to that nights game with free parking. The Yanks were playing a home series against the Boston Red Sox. I jumped at the chance for club seating. Now, the four of us had tickets for the Sunday night game against the Red Sox, and none of us wanted to pass up the chance to have such good seats. These seats are only available to season ticket holders. We thought it would be fun. What could be better for a baseball fan then a Yankee baseball in the Bronx against the Red Sox on Memorial Day weekend?

Our first adventure was driving to the Bronx. Our friends picked us up at our home. We were living not far from one of the exits to the New Jersey Turnpike. Given the fact that it was Memorial Day weekend and we had cross that bridge, otherwise known as the George Washington Bridge (GW Bridge), we allotted extra time for our trip to the Bronx. As we all expected, we ran into traffic perhaps a mile or so before the tolls at the GW Bridge. We were in what are known as the local lanes. The traffic was inching forward when we noted that a young man in a nearby car got out of the car, saying that he would be back in a moment. He climbed up the wall and disappeared. We entertained ourselves wondering where he was going, coming up with a few possibilities that I won’t go into here. A few minutes passed, more than enough time for him to do whatever business he was doing. The three of us (passengers) peered out the window waiting for him to return to the car. We were still close enough that the wonderer could have returned to his car. Several more minutes passed, and he did not return and we were beyond the last exit in NJ. We wondered what happened to him and how he would get to wherever it was that he and his friend in the car where going.

Our next adventure came as we prepared to cross the GW Bridge. Game time was beginning to creep up on us, and we faced more traffic. My friend’s husband knew how to get to Yankee Stadium from Manhattan. It went well, he knew the way and there was little to no traffic. He dropped us off near the ballpark before driving to the parking garage and joined us about fifteen minutes later. We went to our seats on the first base line: section D, box 73. I’ll write about the game itself tomorrow.

The first two Bees of Spring

I saw my first two Bumble Bees of this young spring season yesterday. I have two flowering shrubs , Andromeda (I think) on one side of my house where I always see Bees. I love watching the Bees. And today, I saw my third. She was hanging out on one of these same shrubs for a little while. My cat was fascinated as it gave him something new to watch on TV.

Summer of 1991

The summer of 1991 was a very busy time for me at work and school. Baseball was my comfort food that summer and early fall. The Yankees, while far from the greatness they were to display in the late 1990s were better than they were the year before when the finished in the cellar of the American League East.

When I was not working or studying, I was watching baseball or hiking. Oh, yes and there were household chores and that dribble.

Baseball played a very important role as summer turned to fall. I was getting a little stressed out over a difficult project at work  Baseballwas about the only thing that would calm me down. It is hard to explain. There was the comfort of going to Yankee stadium on Saturdays, watching the game and keeping score. In addition to enjoying keeping score as I watch a game, I hoped to do so correctly where my card matched the one in the paper the next day. Keeping score requires paying attention. There are no announcers telling you what is going on, so if you are not paying attention you are going to miss how a baserunner gets on base. For the whole point is to keep track of every pitch to every hitter. The Saturday games helped to take me away from the rigours of my exam preparation.

As my project neared completion, I took great comfort in following the 1991 post season. Before I cheat and look at my Baseball Almanac, I’ll say that either the Oakland Athletics or the Minnesota Twins won the World Series that year. Now I’ll go and look, yes the Minnesota Twins took the series against the Atlanta Braves, 4 games to 3. In what the Baseball Almanac called one of the great ones.

One of the players on the Minnesota Twins that year was a third baseman named Mike Pagliarulo. Mike Pagliarulo or “Pags” played for the New York Yankees in the 1980s going to the San Diego Padres before ending up with the Twins in 1991. I enjoyed cheering him on as he got a World Series Ring.

That same year, the Braves had a 24-year–old left handed pitcher, Mike Stanton. Mike Stanton played with Yankees from 1997 through 2000, the lefty out of our bullpen winning three World Series rings with the Yankees.

Spring flowers and trees almost ready

It seems like any day now the trees will leaf out. The buds on the dogwoods are larger. When I look at the pin oak outside my dining room window I can see very tiny oak leaves as they emerge. The daffodils are starting to bloom; the crocuses were in bloom for a couple of weeks now and are just past their prime. I am happy that they did not end up as deer or rabbit food. I know that there is a rabbit somewhere around here. I saw it last night near my driveway as I was coming home.

The grape hyacinths that I planted on the south side of the house are starting to come up. Most of the perennials are starting to emerge from their winter hibernation. Yesterday we had a warm early April day, shirt–sleeve weather. I went outside and played in the dirt for an hour, otherwise known as weeding.

I have often let these early signs of spring pass me by, waiting for the day when everything is in bloom and the deciduous trees have leafed out. I was too busy or too caught up in my own affairs to pay attention to the process plants and trees emerging from their winter sleep. It is pretty cool. I am looking forward to watching this process unfold.

People in the stands

The first couple of years we had our Saturday season tickets we had tickets in the upper deck behind home plate. These were decent seats about half–way up in nosebleed territory. For me part of the experience of attending a baseball game is watching the people around us in the stands. If your team is playing well then there is a special celebratory camaraderie. If they are not playing well, as was often the case during the time we had our season tickets, well there is the bond of hanging in during the hard times.

We soon began to recognize other nearby season ticket holders and other regular characters. Sitting in front of us was a “family” from Queens. I knew they were from Queens because we saw them on the subway on Saturday at one of stations where riders from one of the Queens lines transferred to our Bronx–bound “D” express train. From appearances, they were a married couple with an adult son. The older man always had recent stats on the visiting team including a press guide along with a small notebook where he recording information. He did this every Saturday for the two years we had these tickets. One Saturday we overheard him talking to his son about the Mets, leading us to believe that they may have regularly attended Mets games, perhaps a Saturday plan? Most of the time, the Mets and the Yankees are not home at the same time so it is conceivable that one could be regular attendees at both teams’ home games.

We wondered what this gentleman was doing with his notebook and visiting team guides. Was he a very serious baseball fan, a participant in a fantasy baseball league, or something else? We never did fid out.

There were other season ticket holders around us in the upper deck. Most were like us, out to enjoy a game, perhaps keeping a scorecard like I did. Some had a portable radio. They were young, middle–aged, and seniors, coming alone or with a friend, spouse, parent or a child.

A father and adult son were near by. The son would often engage in a running commentary about the game, along the lines of a radio or TV announcer. Perhaps some would this running commentary annoying, we found it entertaining.

Then there was an older gentleman who would walk around the stadium with a small pot that he would bang with a spoon. I don’t exactly remember what he would chant as he banged his pot, but others in the stand would get in the act. He would offer the spoon to people in the stands, especially children, who would bang on the pot and chant.

The third year we had season tickets, we moved down to the third–base side of the lower level. Most of the seats around us were taken by an every changing parade of groups. We wondered if the family from Queens still had their tickets. We saw them one Saturday on the subway platform and had our answer. We wondered about the man, who walked the stands banging his pot, we were reassured when we saw him.

Rookies

Most of the time we got to the stadium about 20 to 30 minutes prior to game time. Arriving at the stadium, there was a feeling of anticipation in the air on game day. Even during the 1990 season when they were cellar dwellers. It might be the excitement of watching the young players wondering if they might be the next breakout player or a flash in the pan. For example, Bernie Williams came up in 1991 when we had season tickets, and we saw him play at least twice in 1991 and once in 1992.

My scorecard for a game played on October 5, 1991 shows that he had 5 hits in 6 at bats with two RBIs in a twelve inning loss to the Cleveland Indians. He was in the game the first game we saw in 1992 against the NY Mets on April 4. This was in the days prior to interleague play when the Yankees and Mets would meet for a couple of preseason games. He lead off the game, according to my score card he reached first on an error. Kevin Mass batted him home. \

Kevin Maas was one of those “flash in the pan” players. He hit very well when he first came up. He came up in June of 1990, hitting 21 homeruns that year, and 23 the next years. His hitting slacked off drastically after that. Eventually, the pitchers started to figure out how to get him out, and he never again was the dominant hitter he was during his rookie year. But he was fun to watch in 1990, adding some excitement to a bad year when the Yanks finished in the cellar. According to my Baseball Encyclopedia he played four more seasons, finishing up with the Baltimore Orioles.

Another player who only played a few months in the majors was a right–handed pitcher named Wade Taylor. He game up in June of 1991 with another right–handed pitcher, Scott Kamieniecki. We say him pitch one game on June 22. He pitched for 7 and one-third innings giving up 5 hits, 4 runs, 3 earned runs, 2 walks and 6 strikeouts.

There are a lot of baseball players like Kevin Maas and Wade Taylor that don’t make it in the majors. Some, like Kevin Mass have their day in the sun, others are like Wade Taylor and only play in the “bigs” for a few months. Many would kill to have the chance to play in the majors.

Riding the subway to Yankee Stadium

I moved to New York City in the mid seventies and began watching or listening to Yankees games. For reasons that I won’t go into here, the road to becoming a Yankees fan evolved over the next fifteen years or so. What turned the corner for me was having season tickets to the Yankees to a Saturday plan for three or four years in the early 1990s.

About two and one–half to three hours before game time we would drive the short distance to the local light rail station, aka the PATH tubes into Manhattan where we would take the subway to Yankee stadium in the Bronx. Our transfer point from the PATH to the subway was the PATH station in the World Trade Center. We had one more transfer point, West Fourth Street in Manhattan where we would catch an “express subway train” to the Bronx. If we were lucky, the trip was a little more than one hour. If we were not lucky, it could be two hours. The usual travel time was a little more than 1.5 hours.

We would always see other Yankee fans on our ride to the ballpark, especially on the subway in Manhattan. The stop for Yankee stadium was the first stop in the Bronx and the subway would empty, sometimes literally, as we left the subway to go to the ballpark.

Most of the time the worst that happened was that we would have to wait for the subway. Going to the ballpark, was not so bad. Leaving the ballpark was another story. Remember that the ballpark is in NYC, and even if you had a car like we did, many take mass transit of some sort to the ballpark. So, at the end of the game, the crowds would descend to the subway station back to Manhattan. There were two subway lines to Yankee Stadium and both were equally crowded after the game.

If we were lucky, we would get to the subway platform just after a train arrived so the platform would not be crowded. Most of the time we were not lucky. We would get to the platform to find wall-to-wall people. Having lived in Manhattan for over four years in my early twenties, I learned some tricks to dealing with crowded subway platforms. One was to go the opposite end of the platform from the entrance. We would politely make our way to what was the southern most end of the platform, the least crowded end. Sometimes the least crowded end of the platform only meant that you were not standing in a sardine can. The worst was when it was hot and humid. Our subway was underground, no breeze, and it often smelled. The wait may have only been a couple of minutes, sometimes as long as ten or more minutes.

Sometimes the train that came along would be so crowded that we could not board the train. At other times, we would let the packed subway leave, gambling that the next one would be less crowded. Sometimes we would take the local train back to Manhattan. Once we got on the subway, people would be buzzing about the game. As you can imagine, the flavor of the buzzing depended on if the Yankees won.

I said that most of the time the worst that would happen was waiting for the subway on hot crowded platform with various subterranean odors. We never got on a subway that broke down, that happened to me once or twice when I lived in Manhattan. But late one Saturday night after a night game, something happened that had never happened before. We were on the local train from the Bronx that terminated at the World Trade Center. Our car was almost empty. A couple of stops before the World Trade Center we saw someone running through the train. Then we smelled a terrible odor. Someone had set off a stink bomb. Everyone got up and walked up a couple of cars to one that did not stink.

Behind homeplate

For my eleventh or twelfth birthday my Dad took me to baseball game. It was the second baseball that I had been to. He managed to get seats on the lower level behind home plate. I had a great time at the game even though we lost. My Dad taught me how to keep score at a baseball game. To this day, I can’t go to a baseball game without keeping score.

I did not appreciate at the time how wonderful those seats were. I remember thinking that it was a little disappointing to have to watch the game through the mesh screen behind home plate. What a snot I was. I hope that I had the sense to keep my mouth shut. I have been to quite a few baseball games since then and I there was only one time that I had seats that approached the quality of those seats. You can’t even get seats behind home plate in many ballparks as they are all spoken for by full season ticket holders

The best thing about that baseball game was going with my Dad. We had a great time.

As an adult I moved to New York City and then northern New Jersey and became a New York Yankees fan. We took my Dad to a New York Yankees game a couple of years before he passed. They were playing the Detroit Tigers, one of his favorite teams. He lovingly chided me for being a Yankees fan and proudly wore a Detroit Tigers hat.

When the baseball bug bit me

I remember when the when the baseball bug bit me. I was nine years old, the year I almost died. I spent a total of about nine weeks in the local hospital, first with a very serious bone infection in my left hipbone called Osteomyelitis. I came home for a couple of weeks before broking my hip on or about July 4, 1963 and was in the hospital for another six weeks.

The first hospital stay occurred over my ninth birthday. I was at my sickest on my birthday, throwing the nurses out of my private room when they came into sing happy birthday. I also had one of the few TVs in the hospital in my room. I know this because I have memories of being very sick and watching TV. I remember game shows and baseball. Bone pain is the worst possible pain. It is hard to explain but the sounds on the TV, the sounds of baseball and game shows gave me some comfort. It was like there was something outside of the pain and the fever that I could focus on.

I also remember the room. The door was to the left of my bed. The bone infection was in my left leg, so I either lay on my back or on my right side. Lying on my left side where I would face the door was not going to happen.

I got better; I had a wonderful pediatrician, a real sweetie. I continued to watch baseball, game shows, comedies and cartoons.

During the first hospital stay, my parents moved to a new house across town. I remember being disappointed because he rented a pick–up truck for the move. I desperately wanted to ride in the pickup trip but I was not allowed to leave the hospital so I missed my chance. My Dad drove the truck to the hospital where I could see the truck from the window next to my bed in the four–bed ward that I was in pediatrics. It wasn’t the same.

I got out of the hospital sometime in early June, before school let out for the summer. I got out of the last few days of school. This suited me just fine because I hated school. When I got out of the hospital my family gave me another birthday party. Grandfather gave me some birthday money and I used it to buy a baseball glove.

The house we moved to was a really cool old farmhouse vintage mid 19th century with a wrap around porch. The house next door was on the corner and was owned by a nearby private school. The school rented the house out. The tenants when we moved in had two boys, Bebo was a year or two younger than me. Bebo was a nickname, I don’t remember his birth name. Bebo had an older brother named Rob. I think that Rob was sixteen or seventeen because I have it in my head that he drove a car.

So, I would hang out outside on my lawnchair in either my yard or Bebo’s yard with my sister, Bebo, and our basset hound. My leg was weak, so I could not move around a lot. After being in the hospital for a couple of weeks, the last place I wanted to be was in a house. Rob was nice to me and we probably talked about something, but we did not pay that much attention to each other.

I loved my baseball glove. I think I even slept with that glove. Whenever possible, I’d sit in my lawnchair and play catch with whomever else I could snag. Bebo was easy to snag, so he was a frequent partner. I spent as much time as I could outside, so I don’t really recall how much baseball I watched during this time. But I must have watched some games.

On or about July 4 we went swimming at a local swimming club. I remember this because it felt wonderful to actually move around. That is the night I fell and broke my hip. The pain was even more awful then the Osteomyelitis. I remember the pain and the whole neighborhood must have heard me. I found out later that Rob was especially upset at hearing my screams before my parents could get me to the hospital.

After I was readmitted to the hospital, I spent a couple of days in a private room. I was in traction with weights off my left knee and ankle. I was to remain in traction and in the hospital for six weeks. I have good memories of the private room because I faced the door of the room. Since I had nowhere to go, I got intimately familiar with whatever room I was in. It was probably a couple of days after my fall when I saw Rob walk through the door carrying a small magazine, the 1962 yearbook for the local baseball team. I remember being surprised to see him but the baseball yearbook put me at ease. We talked baseball for awhile then he left. Rob and Bebo and their family moved shortly after Rob’s visit. I never saw them again. And I will always remember them.

I found out later from my parents that Rob was very shook up when he heard me screaming in pain the night I broke my hip. My parents said that he wanted to come and visit me in the hospital before they moved. He would have known that I loved my baseball glove because I was never without it, so he would have known just what I would like.

I don’t remember how many times I read the yearbook from cover to cover. I knew every player and their stats. There is an advantage to being a sick kid in for a longtime stay, so I got one of the very few televisions in the hospital. In the mid sixties, there were many afternoon baseball games on TV, and it was the height of the baseball season. So, I watched baseball that summer. It did not take long for me to get hooked. I quickly learned the game. It wasn’t like I had anything else to do. And someone brought me my baseball glove. The local team was not very good, but that didn’t matter, the magic of baseball took over.

And I always remember Rob visiting me in the hospital with the baseball yearbook.