Rant #2,999: Que Sera Sera

Eek!
 
Did I over-sleep or what?
 
But I have an excuse.
 
I watched the Yankees game last night, or at least a good piece of it.
 
They lost to the Astros, they are out of it right now, and the team from Houston—not “How-Stun,” like New Yorkers pronounce it because of how we pronounce the famous street with the same name in Manhattan—goes on to play the Philadelphia Phillies in the World Series.
 
This same thing happens each and every year—or at least since the Yankees’ last World Series appearance and championship in 2009—and as I have gotten odder, I admittedly have less patience than I did as a kid.
 
My baseball season is over just like the Yankees’ season is, and if I watch even a few minutes of the World Series, it will be something odd.
 
The Yankees and I are literally tied together, and when they don’t make the World Series, neither do I.
 
I simply can’t bear to watch, although I do read about the games and catch up with everything by reading the newspaper and watching the news on TV.
 
Yes, I guess my actions are of someone who is a bit spoiled, but when the baseball season is over, it is basketball season for me, and I slide right over to watch the NBA and the New York Knicks.
 
No, I don’t go so all-in or all-out with the Knicks. They are perennial losers, haven’t won a championship in nearly 50 years, and they might not win another one in my lifetime.
 
But I do enjoy basketball, even though it is not as life and death for me as baseball is, pretty much because the Knicks really aren’t ever that good to begin with, and you take what you can get for them.
 
I know, the football season is in play right now too, but I simply can’t get into football anymore, and as far as hockey, as they say on Houston Street in New York City, “Fuggedaboudit.”
 
Baseball is my game, and the only team I root for is the Yankees.
 
I have to day that at least the Yankees are in the mix all of the time.
 
They have not had a losing season in 30 years, they almost always make the playoffs, and the team really is “America’s Team” when it comes to baseball and sports in general.
 
It isn’t the same for me, however, as I have grown older.
 
I don’t live and die with the Yankees as I once did.
 
I remember that as a kid growing up in Rochdale Village, South Jamaica, Queens, New York, in the mid to late 1960s and early 1970s, the Yankees were rarely good.
 
In fact, for most of those years, they were pretty bad.
 
But I lived and died with the Yankees, and it would often reflect in my demeanor for any given day. whether they had won or lost.
 
I remember that one guy once told me in school, “I can tell if the Yankees won or lost just by looking at you.”
 
And he was so right.
 
As I got older, the same thing applied, and the Yankees got better, so I guess my demeanor got better too.
 
But as I got even older, things changed, I had other priorities, and while the Yankees were still very important to me, there were things that wear clearly more important, like my family.
 
The Yankees were still very important, and will always be very important to me.
 
If a biographer wrote a book about my life, there would be a mention of the Yankees on just about each and every page of this book.
 
But while to this day I consider myself to be a huge fan of the team, I will still live a long life even though they lost yesterday.
 
My demeanor will be the same, but I know I won’t enjoy reading the newspaper today and the sports section in particular.
 
Heck, I will dread it.
 
But when someone recently asked me about how the Yankees would do in the playoffs, this was my answer, and it is quite a different answer than I would have had being asked the same question 30 or 40 or 50 years ago:
 
“You have to be in it to win it,” I replied. “But ‘Que Sear Sera, whatever will be will be.''”