I don’t know why it slipped my mind, but I had written up a blog entry while I was in Boca Chica last Saturday. I was looking through my lesson notes when I found it. Here it is, written on Feb. 2, one week late:
Unexpectedly, the powers-that-be, here at the camp, allowed the Dominican Summer League players to return home on Friday, instead of Saturday. This is the same group that has been here since the middle of January, the ones who have been given Saturday off the past few weeks, about which I have already posted. Despite their absence Friday afternoon, I still had enough of the new players to conduct the usual classes.
A fellow from Baseball America was visiting the camp yesterday, so I introduced myself to him, something I do whenever an unexpected Norteamericano face shows up. He was interested in my teaching assignment, and he asked for a short interview. No problem. I told him that this was a dream job for a lifelong Yankee fan, and I gave him a condensed version of how I became a fan of the Greatest Sports Team in the History of the World and the Known Universe. (The Red Sox are merely a regional phenomenon.) I can even recall the exact date. So, for your edification and to satisfy your insatiable curiosity, here’s my tale.
My family moved from the small town atmosphere of Chesaning, Michigan, my mother’s hometown, to the oil city of Port Arthur, Texas, my father’s stomping grounds. This was in the mid-1950s (sheesh, I’m dating myself), and my awareness of, let alone knowledge of, baseball was nil at that time. One of my uncles–oh, let’s call him Uncle Red, since that’s who he was known as at that time–liked to rib me about being a Yankee; i.e., someone not from the South, specifically Texas.
I, of course, took umbrage at his constant disparagement of my Northern background and began to take pride in my Yankee upbringing. To the best of my recollection, I was largely unaware of the North-South split and the whole leftover Civil War attitude at that time. So, thanks to Uncle Red, I began to identify myself as a Northerner, a Yankee.
Then, in October of 1958, my dear Uncle pointed out to me that a couple of baseball teams were playing in something called the World Series. One of the teams was called the New York Yankees, the other the Milwaukee Braves. If I remember correctly, he began to disparage the Yanks merely because of their name, never mind that both teams were based in the North. He told me that the Yanks had lost the World Series the year before to the Braves and were going to lose again this year, because they were behind by 3 games to 1. One more win and the Braves would be champions again. Typical of any Yankee–losers. (That’s putting it in today’s terms and he probably wasn’t that harsh, but as a young boy, I took it very personally, as if he’d actually said it that way.) I defended the Yankees, because they represented, in name, my youthful pride. We made some kind of bet, one with no stakes involved except, perhaps, bragging rights, on the outcome.
Against all odds, the Yanks, for the first time in World Series history, came back from being down 3 to 1 to win the next 3 games and the Championship. I was ecstatic! My Uncle never heard the end of it, of course. It was then that baseball and the New York Yankees, my new boyhood heroes, captured my attention. I began reading every baseball book I could find in the local library, and I learned about the rich heritage of the Yanks. From that day when they won the Series, Oct. 9th, 1958, I’ve been completely loyal to them, never, ever wavering in that loyalty (unlike one of my brothers, a dastardly turncoat who now roots for the Tigers). Such is the stuff of which dreams are made. Thanks, Uncle Red. More (dreams) later.
P.S. Thanks to all the gods of baseball that {{link Johan Santana was traded to the Mets and not to the Beantown Pretenders to the Throne.
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