30 Day Writing Challenge: Day 2 -- Your Earliest

Last month I did a 30-day writing challenge.  I posted about it in my last post.  Writing prompts were given and it made me think of writing in ways I hadn't before.  Some of it was good, some of it not.  Some of it was deeply personal.  I'm going to share some of my favorites.

#2: My Earliest Memory

My earliest memory comes from July of 1983.  I was four and change.  I sat in the bedroom that was partitioned off for my brothers.  We lived in a pre-war apartment building in Brooklyn, so we had the space to cram four boys into half a bedroom.

I was watching WPIX 11, New York's local independent station at the time, and home of the New York Yankees.  Stuff happened that I didn't understand until much later in life.  The game was honestly boring to me.  Then this happened:

 

 

 

 

 

It was weird, like a light went on in my still forming head.  This game was cool. Anything that could make grownups act like this was beyond cool.  And that day, I became a Yankee fan.

 

 

It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year...

That's right, pitchers and catchers have reported to Spring Training!  That means Opening Day is around the corner, and summer very shortly after.  Aren't you excited?



I make no secret about my Yankee fandom.  I like to think it's one of my most endearing qualities.  But this isn't a post about being a Yankee fan.  Spring Training also means that softball season is about to start out here, but this isn't a post about that either.

No, this is a post about connection.

Every year, millions of fans of the 30 MLB teams prepare themselves for a summer of various levels of commitment to the idea that their team can win a title.  Some fans will watch every game, most won't.  Some fans will attend every home game, most won't.  But on some level, everyone will have at least some interest in their hometown team.  On some level people care.  And on some level, people hope for the kind of unity victory brings.

I know this is true of all sports, but for some reason, it feels more true about baseball.  And I think I know why.

Football, the players wear masks.  Their careers tend to be short.  And in most of those careers, teams that don't win out don't stay together very long.  Basketball, the average length of time one player stays with one team is about five years.  Baseball, however, teams are kept together for years, decades in some cases, and even the teams that don't stay completely together, there's never a wholesale turnover.  There's continuity.  And while the Yankees win most of the time, most teams spend at least some time being competitive.  And you can always trace a link from one team's great player to its next through less than three degrees of separation.  And it's something you can link directly back to your childhood.  It's something I appreciate more now as I'm now so much closer to 40 than I am to 20.

For instance, one of my favorite players retired a couple of years ago, Derek Jeter.  He came up to the majors in 1996, when I was turning 18 and going to college and drooling over college girls.  1996 was also the first Yankee championship of my lifetime.  The year before Jeter came up, Don Mattingly -- longtime Yankee first baseman and the player I grew up idolizing -- played his final season in a career that started when I was three.  He played most of his career on a team that had all-time base stealing champion Rickey Henderson and fellow Hall-of-Famer Dave Winfield.  Winfield was brought to the Yankees in 1981 to anchor an outfield that featured Reggie Jackson, who was a member of the 1978 World Series Championship team that won when I was about two weeks old.  And right there, I've just charted my entire life through one team.  That is not a terribly rare occurrence.

It's a shame that the appreciation for baseball seems to be declining because that connection is declining.  Connection with a home, with a city, with something that's not only bigger than you, but something that you can agree upon with your neighbor at a ballpark regardless of your station in life, your religious beliefs or even your attitudes about race.  Two guys at Yankee Stadium wearing Yankee jerseys are both Yankee fans, and together for the three hours at the ballpark.  They share a drink, they share triumph and defeat, they share opinions on which players suck.  At the end it's over, and they go back to their respective lives, homes and differences of various levels, but in those few hours they were family of a sort.

They say baseball is something that's inherited, that fathers pass on to sons (or mothers to sons, or fathers to daughters, mothers to daughters, whatever).  If I ever have kids and I can pass on an appreciation for baseball and all the commonalities fans have with one another, all the things we share at the ballpark, and how we directly connect one player to the next, and one moment to the next, I will have honestly done my part to make the world a better place.

Unless the little crumb snatcher turns out to be a Red Sox fan.

Adulting

Some days I think Peter Pan got it right.

Screw adulthood.  I want to play and not worry about time.  I want to have all my needs taken care of for me and not have to think about employment or taxes or any of that stuff.  Who needs to think about politics and religion and love and feelings?

It seems the difficult stuff was never in the manual.  Parents would offer vague warnings about savoring our youth and enjoying simplicity without directly stating what about adulthood sucked so much.  All we saw was a life free from stupid rules and chores and stuff.  So many of us were not schooled on the responsibility adulthood carries.  We were told bits and pieces, educated in math and science and history, but we weren't prepared for this life of bill payment and maintenance.  We were told that we were special, that we had something to offer the world.  Who would have thought they were merely referring to our time?

It was a conversation I had briefly with my sister-in-law on her birthday earlier this week.  Adulthood carries the responsibility of time management, of child rearing, of management of emotions, of deferring happiness for the sake of the bigger picture.  If I had that information at 8 or 9 years old, it would have been a one-way ticket to Neverland.  I'd have taken my chances with the Pirates.  We do grow up though.  It's not a process we can opt out of.  We do what we have to to accomplish what we want to.  Dreams are tailored to fit the reality of the the world around us, the world we wish to change.

If we're lucky, we are either born with or developing the skills we need to affect that change.

***

I never thought I'd live in a world where the Mets, Cubs, and Blue Jays are in the running for a World Series at the same time.  Meanwhile, my beloved Yankees are watching from home.  I'm not okay with this.

***
My grandmother's 96th birthday just passes.  Am I wrong to hope she can double it?

Wings. (Vacation, Day Three: Brooklyn, NY, Lower Manhattan, NY, and Hoboken, NJ)

A day that started in Brooklyn, went past the World Trade Center, cruised through North Jersey, and ended in Brooklyn.

Ah, it's much less dramatic than all that, but I did get a really good shot on my phone.

That is a picture of the Fulton Transit Hub with 1 WTC in the background.  Shot with a Droid Phone, only in New York.

So let's recap.

I spent the morning at breakfast with my sister and my niece, catching up over coffee and IHOP, expressing our differences of opinion regarding sugar vs. substitutes, organic food vs. non-organic and the appropriateness of singing in public.  If I'm being honest, there was no difference of opinion on that last one.  Singing in public is always a good idea.  We chatted and laughed and talked about all manner of fun things.  I realized I hadn't had the chance to catch up with these two in any real manner in months.  The last couple of days had I had focused my energies inward, and because of my schedule and the three hour time difference, I'm never able to catch them on the phone for any real length of time.  These two women are among my favorite people.  After breakfast and a long walk, my niece went to work and I went to sleep.  I've slept more in the last three days than I have in the last three months.

After my morning/afternoon nap, I arranged to meet with my longtime friend from college, Sara, who I haven't seen since my father's passing a couple of summers back.  On the way to meet her I got to take the Subway into Manhattan.  For as long as I can remember, I've always loved the New York Subway.  Not the cost of it, of course, $2.75 is railway robbery.  But it is beautifully efficient as a people mover.  I made it a point to take the train to Cortlandt Street, first time I had been at that station in more than a decade.  Cortlandt was one of the more heavily damaged stations in the aftermath of 9/11, and Hurricane Sandy a couple of years ago didn't do it any favors either.  It was shuttered for several years until the completion of the Fulton Transit Hub.  The World Trade Center was complete when I was last in town, but not open, so it was all kinds of cool to see people going in and out for work or what have you.  If I wasn't on the clock I would have ponied up the money to check out the observatory.  Oh well...

From there it was a trip on the PATH train to Hoboken.  I've never been to Hoboken.  Imagine my surprise when I stepped out of the station to find a city that seemed...

... well, a lot like Downtown Brooklyn.  Great views of the skyline.  Awesome seaside park. Vibrant, energetic, young.  It was cool.  I went to the W Hotel and hung out at the bar, engaging a couple of locals in a conversation about what's wrong with baseball while I waited for my friend to arrive.  It was entertaining.

Here's a little backstory: Sara is one of my oldest and dearest friends, having long ago earned herself a spot on the bullet list, the short list of people for whom I would take a bullet, largely because they wouldn't put me in a position to do so.  She was the first fan of my writing, which is what made me think "I can do this," instead of pushing for a more stable/prestigious/boring career in criminal justice.  She's been a stable friend throughout the three major deaths my family has dealt with.  I attended her wedding and congratulated her very loudly at the birth of each of her three children.  She has stated that my atheism is the only reason I'm not her kids' godfather, which is fine.  My Brando impersonation is terrible.  I'm guh make youa offa you can't refuse...

We had a drink and caught each other up on the events of our lives.  She was happy for me and my relationship, I made googley noises at pictures of her soon-to-be one-year old.  She asked about my mom, my grandma, and my family, I asked about hers.  She was supposed to be planning her kid's birthday party but her husband let her off the hook to hang out with me.  I said he should have got his ass out here too.  We laughed and talked and enjoyed company like we did 20 years ago in school.  Then we realized how old we both were.  20 years.  We are nothing like the kids we were back then.
We laughed loudly and reminisced wildly, recalling some of the misadventures we had as teenagers and young adults.  Her son Noel accelerated her maturation into a grown-up, whereas I'm just now getting my feet wet in the adulthood arena.  After a couple of hours and a brief tour of Hoboken (birthplace of Frank Sinatra, apparently), we parted company, and I headed back to my city.

Back in NYC, and eager to erase the Jersey funk off me (sorry, Jersey is still Jersey), I walked a couple of blocks around the World Trade Center area to find the one thing I had been searching for the last six years I've been in Washington... a good slice of pizza.  My vacation goals are easily attained, aren't they?  Pizza is supposed to be cheese and sauce and perhaps some form of cow, pig, or chicken product. The dough is to be made with mineral-heavy New York tap water (otherwise known as wau-tuh.  My New York tongue returns!), not whatever it is they put on it or in it on the West Coast.  It's not supposed to have anything artisanal or soy or low-fat.  Dough, sauce, cheese, meat.  In that order.  The pizza place I went to, whose name I can't remember but is right next to the New York Dolls Gentlemen's Club, had two sausage slices that I claimed as my own (I was willing to do it Ariana Grande-style by licking the damn thing).  Three long but well-spent minutes in the oven later, and I was snarfing down hot pizza while making sounds like I was really enjoying a lap dance.  I even took the long way back, so I could enjoy my slices in pizza... I mean peace.

Wow, that was a baaaaad joke.

This week, I'm learning something about being home.  It's not so much the place I miss.  Don't get me wrong, the place is awesome, and I definitely miss it some.  No, it's the people I miss.  People I associate with these places.

Tomorrow is the last full day before I take off to London. Maybe I'll finally make it to Coney Island.

June 21.

Father's Day is upon us again.

I give a shout out to all the dads I know, the good ones, the bad ones, and mine.

First off, to the good ones I know, like my brothers.  Keep on keepin' on.  I want to be just like you when i grow up.

To the bad ones: Try harder.  Keep your daughters off the pole and your sons out of prison.

To my dad: I miss you.  You were hilariously funny, and your children still recount your stories when we get together.  You were strong willed, and stubborn to a fault, but you believed what you believed without apology.  You were proud of your children, and we did you proud.  I miss talking to you about things like the Yankees and the Knicks, which you loved passionately.  When we couldn't talk about much else, we always had that.  You did the best you could with what you had, and it's taken me nearly two years after you've departed to understand that, to accept that.

 

To my father, I hope to continue to do you proud.  Rest well.

Captain Clutch (short post)

Okay. Wow.

Earlier this year, I wrote about the final season of Derek Jeter, shortstop and captain of the Yankees.  He's the all-time team leader in, well, most offensive categories not already topped by Babe Ruth.  This entire season has been a sort of tribute to the Captain, despite the lackluster performance of the team.  There have been commercials and gifts, fan tributes and the ever-present "De-rek Jee-ter" chants wherever he's gone.

Until tonight, though, there hasn't been a moment.  No flip play.  No Mr. November.

This hasn't been a banner year for the Yankees.  We're not making the playoffs.  Injuries have kicked the hell out of the team.  We score at Mets-like levels.  Our saving grace is that the Red Sox suck worse.  Jeter has had an especially lackluster season.  But -- and I've said this in conversation with friends -- you give me a list of players to have up in a make-or-break situation, if Jeter's name is on it, he's my guy.

Take today, for instance.  In his final game at Yankee Stadium, he came up in three key situations: first inning with the Yankees down 2-0, he bangs an RBI double off the left field wall, and scores one batter later, tying the game; fifth inning with the bases loaded, he slaps an RBI grounder that gets turned into a 2 run error, Yankees up 4-2.

And the big one.

Bottom of the 9th, game tied at 5.  Jeter comes up with a runner on second and his a walk-off RBI single.  In his final at-bat at Yankee Stadium.  With the sold-out crowd expecting magic.  The perfect capper to a charmed career.

That, my friends, is what it means to be clutch.

It is totally en vogue to hate the Yankees; ask any Met fan, and you will hear -- at length -- why the Yankees are an abomination, about how the fans are douchebags, about how we bought all of our championships, and mostly, how Derek Jeter is probably the most overrated player since Yogi Berea or Joe DiMaggio. But I would like to think even the most ardent of haters have to give props to what can only be described as a "Field of Dreams" moment from a guy who seems to have made a Hall of Fame career of big moments.

So I take this time to join in the "Thank You Derek" chant, and raise a glass to salute Derek Jeter for the finest 20 years of my baseball fandom.