On the ends of eras

Watching the dramatic final innings of the All-Star Game last night, and finding myself entirely unable to keep track of so many of the newer players, I was struck by my increasing distance from the game, and in particular from the team that was one of my first childhood loves. I can recall one summer in particular when I memorized every name on the Yankees roster, pored over the box scores each morning, and then spent hours each day listening to John Sterling and Michael Kay call the games on the radio. (There was also a dirty old cap which, at one point, I insisted on wearing for several days straight without taking it off, even to sleep.) I remember calling up talk radio shows during the 1994 strike, demanding to know when the games would resume and Paul O’Neill could pick up where he left off in his quest for .400. I was there for the first playoff game in 1995, when some lunatic ran back and forth across the upper deck with a sheet proclaiming “THE JUICE IS LOOSE” – O.J. Simpson had just been found innocent – and was pelted with all manner of food and drink. And of course I remember Jimmy Leyritz’s 15th-inning home run at what must have been at least 2:00 in the morning of the second game of that series, and Junior Griffey sliding across the plate with the winning run in Game 5. At the shore in July of 1996 I made a stupid bet with my uncle that the Yankees would win the Series that year, and ended up the next summer with a pair of baseballs autographed by Joe Girardi and David Cone. (According to the original terms of the deal, he was supposed to be my slave for a week.) For the clinching Game 6 (John Wetteland got the save, but only after getting into an oh-so-typical jam, and Wade Boggs celebrated by riding around the stadium on a policeman’s horse) I was sent to watch the game with one of my parents’ friends, because I couldn’t bear to watch such a crucial game with my mother and her incessant questions. I remember the no-hitters by Jim Abbott, David Cone, and Doc Gooden, and the Darryl Strawberry days, and long home runs by Danny Tartabull, and David Wells’s perfect game and 18-strikeout performance. Heck, I remember Mike Gallego and Luis Sojo, and trying to figure out which one was my favorite.

Those days are gone, though. There was, of course, the incredible 125-win season in 1999, but two years later there was Mariano Rivera allowing Luis Gonzalez to hit one up the middle to win the 2001 Series, and the historic collapse of 2004 that followed the drama of Grady Little’s stupidity and Aaron Boone’s late-inning heroics in 2003. (In ‘04 I was in upstate Pennsylvania with a good friend who happened to be a diehard Red Sox fan, and he and Curt Schilling’s bloody sock more than got me back for my gloating after the first three games.) And since then – scratch that: since well before then, actually – things haven’t really been the same. When I got an e-mail from that same friend offering sarcastic condolences for the state of the “New York Moustaches”, I realized that I (1) hadn’t even checked the standings in several days, and (2) didn’t even care to do so. (I assume that we’re still buried somewhere in third.) I think of the Yankees almost like a rather distant ex-girlfriend for whom I retain some mild affection – those old days were fun, but now I’m in a different place with my life, though I do click over to Facebook now and then to see what she’s up to. The one crucial difference in the baseball case is that when October rolls around, I’m still habitually willing to gear up for a half-hearted fling.

Some of this is just a matter of geography and circumstance – three hours’ time difference now separate me from most games, and I have a wife who’s not much of a baseball fan and a son who keeps me plenty busy. But it’s not just that. There’s something more than a bit exhausting – something rather sickening, even – about watching what feels like the same old team pull the same old stunts year in and year out. Even the rest of the baseball world’s hatred for us has changed: it’s no longer the vehement jealousy of a loser, but the smug and satisfied near-pity that is the only proper response to an empire in its lazy, miserable, thank-heaven-it’s-finally-waning days. (The Yankees may be very much a metaphor for America in this respect.) And I think that I would feel this way even if the team were winning: I’d check the scoreboards a bit more often and put my game face on for the playoffs, but always with the feeling that they were going to blow it and never with anything like the kind of excitement-cum-potential-for-depression I brought with me as a kid.

I don’t think, though, that this is just about being spoiled from years of success – or rather, to the extent that that’s what it is, it’s the team that’s gone rotten, not me. No more a bunch of scrappy youngsters and recycled nobodies whose names only the obsessive could recite, the present edition of the Yankees is, as it has been for nearly a decade now, a veritable Who’s Who of ex-superstars-turned-overpaid-losers picked like so many cherries from across the baseball world. The Yankees blew that 3-0 lead in 2004 because they were a bunch of presumptuous, uptight princesses bickering with each other in the clubhouse while the abominable Red Sox were doing ridiculous things to their hair and downing shots of whiskey in the dugout. And when Johnny Damon left Boston and trimmed his preposterous mane to conform himself to George Steinbrenner’s dress code, he also conformed himself to everything else that was lame and embarrassing about his new teammates: a lazy self-assuredness, a selfish, me-first attitude, an inability to do the little things required to get ahead.

I tried my best to hang in there through quite a lot of this. I hated Roger Clemens, then brought myself to root for him in what was supposed to be his final season, then hated him even more when he signed with the Astros, and finally swallowed hard and made an attempt to cheer him on yet again when he rejoined the Yankees as a fat and washed-up prima donna. I rooted for the vile Alex Rodriguez to win the MVP, defended him against his critics, and invested my emotions in his playoff at-bats even as I knew full well he was going to blow it. I even forgave Jason Giambi his steroid use and brought myself to welcome the return of the traitorous former HGH-er Andy Pettite, who in his younger days had been one of my very favorite Yankees. But when Joe Torre – the perfect symbol of how everything that was right about the Yankees of my childhood had rotted away in my college years – was fired, I nodded calmly and knew it was the best decision, that the Yankees had to shake things up even if it meant the departure of some of the genuinely “good guys”. And I was unrepentantly happy at what seemed like Rodriguez’s imminent departure (a situation which turned quickly into another Roger Clemens Returns), and willing even to consider the possibility that the team should let Mariano Rivera walk, and hand the closer’s job over to Joba Chamberlain. But then I watched in dismay as what seemed like the perfect opportunity to purge the worst of the Steinbrennerian excesses and turn the team over to a new round of kids became just another episode in the payroll-bloating, cover-your-eyes-’cause-here-comes-October saga that has become the signature storyline of baseball in the Bronx.

Here I am, then, suffering through what used to be my favorite time of year to be a sports fan but which has now become a seemingly interminable wait for the college football season to begin. Watching last night’s game being played in the final season of the great stadium that brought so many memories to me and countless others (the one professional baseball game my grandfather ever witnessed in person was Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 Series) brought on quite the wave of reminiscences, as is perhaps already clear. The thought of a beautiful new venue, where one day I can take my son to see a game in person and teach him love the game of baseball as I once did, is an exciting one, but it will be his love, not mine – these last few years have taken too much of a toll for me ever to recapture the mindset of that twelve-year-old kid tuning into the games on a portable radio in the middle of July. Then again, we’re not all that far out of a playoff spot, and last night’s win earned home-field advantage for whichever A.L. team makes it to the World Series. Sounds like a recipe for some Yankee magic … or maybe just another Autumn collapse.

(Image via Flickrer Gafoto.)

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