Rant #2,406: Love Is Like a Baseball Game

Yes, I am proud to be a baseball fan, and I am proud to be a fan of the New York Yankees.

(OK, non-sports fans, of which I evidently have many. This is your time to leave, because today's Rant is about baseball. I would love you to stay, to read on, to go with the flow, but if you have better things to do, then go ahead, I'm not stopping you.)

Now that we are approaching July 4, it is time to talk about our national pastime, baseball, which I feel is the greatest sport in the world because it is as all-American as apple pie (yes, I am sure that apple pie isn't all all-American, and neither is baseball, but I digress ... .)

Anyway, I have been infatuated by baseball since I was about seven or eight years old, but the love of baseball was really ingrained in me from the womb.

My father is a big baseball fan, a big Yankees fan, and I am sure at the time of creation, whatever atoms and neutrons for the love of baseball was transferred from him to me, and even from my mother to me, as she was a baseball fan growing up in Brooklyn during the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s--I mean, what Brooklynite did not love the Dodgers during this period of time?

My grandparents were also big baseball fans, in particular, my paternal grandfather. He absolutely loved baseball. I think to him, baseball represented America, and he loved this country as if he were born here. When he came here through Ellis Island, and discovered all the kids playing this game with a wooden stick and a ball, he immediately fell in love with the game, and he was a fan, at first, of the New York Giants, because he claimed that the Giants had more Jewish players than the Yankees or Dodgers did.

Honestly, I don't think any of these three teams had any Jewish players in the 1920s and 1930s, but him being a Giants fan made my father into a Yankees fan--my father did not want to root for the same team as his father rooted for--so the seeds for me were planted decades before I was born--and that is not including the interest my maternal grandparents had for the Dodgers, so many years before I was born, those genes were there for me when my time came around.

I honestly did not have much interest in baseball when I was a little boy. My father had the Yankees games on on WPIX-TV Channel 11 all the time, and I can distinctly remember one time, when we lived in Kew Gardens Hills, Queens, when someone hit a home run for the Yankees, he called me in to see the batter rounding the bases (it might have been Roger Maris hitting one of his 61 in 1961, but that I don't remember), and me putting up a fuss for him forcing me to watch the batter trot around the bases.

So in 1961, I was four years old, way too young--at least for me--to get into the game.

I also know that my mother bought me baseball T-shirts, and one that I wore had all the homerun leaders on it from I guess 1961. For some reason, the only face that I remember on the T-shirt was slugger Jim Gentile, who was on the upper left of the shirt along with the other faces that I don't remember, including Maris, Mickey Mantle, and others.

Anyway, fast forward to 1965. We were now living in brand spanking new Rochdale Village in South Jamaica, a heaven on earth place which is where I really grew up, from a baby into a young man.

I wanted to be part of everything, and the development had its own Little League, not at all affiliated with the real Little League, but that is what we had. I wanted to play with my new friends and the older boys so badly that I told my father that I needed a glove, I got one, and I ended up playing in that league until age 15.

But the real epiphany came to me in June of 1965. Like I said, I was just learning about baseball by being in the Rochdale Village Athletic League, was watching every game I could--including those played by the upstart team from my home borough, the Mets!--and getting into baseball cards. However, nothing could prepare me for the first Major League baseball game I ever attended.

I don't clearly remember the actual story, but I believe it was late June, right before school was being let out for the summer. My friend's father came upon tickets to a game at Yankee Stadium, and my friend and I played hooky that day from school, going with his father to the Stadium one weekday afternoon.

I had no idea what a major influence that one game would have on my life, and it had nothing to do with the outcome.

The Yankees were playing the old Kansas City Athletics that day, and we got to the Stadium in plenty of time to walk around. We entered the Stadium, and as we found out seats, we walked out into the seating area, and it all hit me like a brick.

The Stadium was so vast, the grass was so well cut, the environment was so perfect with the sun shining ... I fell for it hook, line a sinker, I fell in love with the game right then and there, and to this day, every time I go to a Major League baseball game, I get the same feeling, tempered by age, of course, but I can smell the peanuts and hot dogs just thinking about it.

The Yankees lost that game to the A's, but I was hooked. I have been going to baseball games for more than 50 years now, and my family and I will be going to another one in Tampa Bay when we vacation there later this month.

And from that first game at the big Stadium, the ball was set in motion, and I have gone to dozens of games since then. It was almost a rite of passage for me as I was growing up in Queens, and while I cannot go to as many games for a variety of reasons today, I still go, and I am still taken back by the vastness of what I am seeing in person.

I have seen in person some great games, topped by the 1976 American League Championship game where Chris Chambliss hit a walk-off homer against the Kansas City Royals to win the American League championship for the Yankees that year. I have been to a lone World Series game, and several other games where I either got a thrill or was severely let down.

That is baseball. There is always tomorrow.

I was a lousy baseball player, a lousy athlete in general, but I loved to play, whether it was in the RVAL or simply a pickup game of stickball or punchball or slapball or stoopball.

Baseball was firmly in my blood, and when I got married and my kids were born, it continued unabated.

My wife went from a Mets fan who grew up in the Rockaways to a Yankees fan when we got married, and my kids are surely not as intense as I am, but they are Yankees fans. Baseball is in their blood, too, but admittedly not like it is in mine.

Baseball to me is America, it is our national pastime, it is everything that is good about our country, and now our world, after the Yankees and Boston Red Sox completed that short, two-game series in England this weekend.

The Yankees are seven games in front of the Tampa Bay Rays in their division as we speak, and the Bronx Bombers--who have just set a record for the most consecutive games hitting at least one home run--are set to take on the Mets in Queens for the next two nights.

Then it is on to Tampa Bay, where I hope they can fully bury the Rays. We shall see.

I love baseball, plain and simple. It was my salvation as an unhappy teen living on Long Island--I could always turn to it for solace.

And now as an adult, it continues to give me the ultimate pleasure.

What's not to like?

Which is my segueway into ...

You will just have to wait until tomorrow to find out.