Every year around this time, with the opening of a new season of Major League baseball, I cannot help but to think of possibility and promise. I also think of those times during my childhood when life was little more than launching tennis balls over chain-link fences with a wiffle bat, trading baseball cards with Nelson ("Do you have Don Mattingly?"), visiting the Stadium to watch my beloved Yankees, or trying to find a left-hander's mitt that felt just right. It all sounds like nostalgia, sure, but to me baseball is far larger than training one's eye on the trajectory of a curveball, tight and sharp; the game, rich with contradictions and history, is representative of life as an adult: the brute force of the daily grind versus the grace and candor of time spent with family, loved ones.
*
I'll never forget the first time, during the early 1990's, when I walked through the gates of Yankee Stadium. I remember gasping at the sight of the infield, the empty seats, and the famed facade, a hold-over from the Stadium's early years, when names like Ruth, Mantle, Maris, and DiMaggio held significance not only over the rest of professional sports, but over New York City itself. It all seems so much smaller on TV, I thought to myself as the Yankees warmed up on the field prior to playing the Milwaukee Brewers (then still a team in the Central Division of the American League), and of course the Stadium was much larger in real life than it could appear on television or in the mind of a little boy.
On that evening, whose warmth I still feel every single time that I hand my ticket to an usher at the Stadium, I heard for myself the thunderous crack of bat meeting ball--"that's a home run!"--and was witness, for the first of many chances, the home team managing to eke out a win in the early summer, in what would be another hopeless season (the Yankees would only win about sixty-five games that year).
Oh, to feel that wonder again.
*
My Dad accompanied me to a Yankee game once and promptly fell asleep. His verdict? "So boring!"
We haven't seen eye-to-eye since.
*
During my sophomore year in college, I decided to take a summer job at Shea Stadium, home of the Mets (just like the "Cathedral" in the Bronx, the ballpark in Flushing is due to come down after the end of the current season). It was one of those thankless jobs, one of many that young people take in order to make some money during the time between semesters, in which I was charged with selling bottles of Coca-Cola, hot dogs, popcorn, ice cream, lemon ices, and, if lucky, cotton candy.
With my Mets jersey, to which a button with the price of a soda ($3.25) was attached, I walked into the stands and belted out my tired refrain:
Hot dogs! Get yer hot dogs, heee-ah!
Ice cream, ice cream! Get yer ice cream, heeeeeee-ahhhhhhh!
The most I ever made during a game that season was $50. The least I ever made was $3.00, when I was told to sell lemon ices during a game in which a massive rain storm passed over Shea. Needless to say, the stands were empty when the skies cleared during the sixth inning, and I walked around trying to sell ices to the fans that decided to remain, over and over. Over and over I walked, the ices melting, melting...
*
Yankee Stadium, like so many other fields before it (Seattle's Kingdome and Pittsburgh's Three Rivers Stadium come to mind), will be razed at the conclusion of the 2008 season, will meet its fate with crane and wrecking ball. With it will go the memories that I've accumulated over the years: the yelling, the tears, the pure joy that could only be the product of the perfect game that is baseball, of a creation that, in some ways, is more about myth than reality.
*
A new season has begun. Will my team reach another World Series, or will I have to keep making excuses for a collection of players who make upwards of $200 million?
*
I know I am more whole, somehow more alive, when I am holding a ball in my left hand, its red seams tightly wound and crisp, staring a batter down into oblivion.
[D | R]
*
I'll never forget the first time, during the early 1990's, when I walked through the gates of Yankee Stadium. I remember gasping at the sight of the infield, the empty seats, and the famed facade, a hold-over from the Stadium's early years, when names like Ruth, Mantle, Maris, and DiMaggio held significance not only over the rest of professional sports, but over New York City itself. It all seems so much smaller on TV, I thought to myself as the Yankees warmed up on the field prior to playing the Milwaukee Brewers (then still a team in the Central Division of the American League), and of course the Stadium was much larger in real life than it could appear on television or in the mind of a little boy.
On that evening, whose warmth I still feel every single time that I hand my ticket to an usher at the Stadium, I heard for myself the thunderous crack of bat meeting ball--"that's a home run!"--and was witness, for the first of many chances, the home team managing to eke out a win in the early summer, in what would be another hopeless season (the Yankees would only win about sixty-five games that year).
Oh, to feel that wonder again.
*
My Dad accompanied me to a Yankee game once and promptly fell asleep. His verdict? "So boring!"
We haven't seen eye-to-eye since.
*
During my sophomore year in college, I decided to take a summer job at Shea Stadium, home of the Mets (just like the "Cathedral" in the Bronx, the ballpark in Flushing is due to come down after the end of the current season). It was one of those thankless jobs, one of many that young people take in order to make some money during the time between semesters, in which I was charged with selling bottles of Coca-Cola, hot dogs, popcorn, ice cream, lemon ices, and, if lucky, cotton candy.
With my Mets jersey, to which a button with the price of a soda ($3.25) was attached, I walked into the stands and belted out my tired refrain:
Hot dogs! Get yer hot dogs, heee-ah!
Ice cream, ice cream! Get yer ice cream, heeeeeee-ahhhhhhh!
The most I ever made during a game that season was $50. The least I ever made was $3.00, when I was told to sell lemon ices during a game in which a massive rain storm passed over Shea. Needless to say, the stands were empty when the skies cleared during the sixth inning, and I walked around trying to sell ices to the fans that decided to remain, over and over. Over and over I walked, the ices melting, melting...
*
Yankee Stadium, like so many other fields before it (Seattle's Kingdome and Pittsburgh's Three Rivers Stadium come to mind), will be razed at the conclusion of the 2008 season, will meet its fate with crane and wrecking ball. With it will go the memories that I've accumulated over the years: the yelling, the tears, the pure joy that could only be the product of the perfect game that is baseball, of a creation that, in some ways, is more about myth than reality.
*
A new season has begun. Will my team reach another World Series, or will I have to keep making excuses for a collection of players who make upwards of $200 million?
*
I know I am more whole, somehow more alive, when I am holding a ball in my left hand, its red seams tightly wound and crisp, staring a batter down into oblivion.
[D | R]
5 comments:
A home run by Rivera! Take me out to the ball game, take me out with Matsui! Buy me some peanuts and cracker jack, I don't care if I never get back, let me root, root, root for Hideki,
yes, he's married, it's a shame. For it's one, two, three strikes, yer out, at the old ball game!
Danny that was so delightful to read! Thank you! Myella
Thanks, Myella. Hope you're feeling better!
I am I have finally after having pneumonia 5 tines this year been properly diagnosed with a genetic immune disorder..which is very treatable and hopefully I will not have so many trips to the hospital! Thanks!
danny, i think you'll have to reinact the snack vending for us some time... i can just hear it, "heeee-yaaah"... priceless!
and myella, i'm so glad you're feeling better and have gotten your dna all sorted out!
rl
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