On Friday, April 20, 2012, Boston's Fenway Park celebrated its 100th anniversary. Fenway is one of the great old ballparks, one of the few remaining "originals." As with Chicago's "Wrigley Field," it embodies the tradition that so many baseball fans cling to in a fast-changing world. For those of you too young or foolish to have not visited Brooklyn's Ebbets Field, you can approximate the experience by visiting Fenway. Both parks had capacities in the low 30,000's, pillars that you have to peer around and, in the case of Ebbets,' a right-field wall that was the mirrror image of Fenways's fame "green monster." By way of confession, I should state, out the outset, that I am a Yankee fan and--as such-- a bit of an apostate when it comes to topics like worshiping at Boston's cathedral of baseball. That said, the fortunes of the Yankees and the Red Sox have been intertwined for much of those hundred years. While it is true that those fortunes have most often favored the Yankees, there have been exceptions, and some of them (think 2004) have been notable.
There have many great baseball rivalries. In my native City of New York, the many World Series between the Yankees and their inter-borough rivals, the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers, tested many familial loyalties during the World Series of my youth. In the American League (once called "the Junior Circuit"), there is no comparison to the level of partisanship as that brought out by meetings between the Sox and the Yanks. Unfortunately, the level of discourse between the fans of our two great cities brings little pride to the two teams which represent us. I can't remember the first time I heard the fans start chanting "The Yankees suck," or "The Red Sox suck," with equal animosity. It seemed to be carrying partisanship to a new low, a low--I'm sorry to say--has yet to ebb. This attitude had its apotheosis in the form of a character I encountered last month at a Mets-Tigers Spring Training game at the absurdly named "Digital Domain Park." This fan (or non-fan) was wearing a baseball cap with initials I couldn't quite make out. When I got closer, I saw it was an intertwined "Y" and "H." Embroidered on its back were the words "Yankee hater." What, I wondered, was this guy for? I mean, isn't it preferable to be known by what we are rather than that which we are not?
I have a small confession to make. On that famous (or infamous) day in early October, 1978, when Bucky Dent ended the Red Sox's season with a home run over the green monster from which his team never recovered, I exulted. While that may have been excusable on a normal day, I was home from work that day, ostensibly to observe the Jewish New Year and contemplate a year on which I would aspire to higher goals. I couldn't help it. I spent many of the high holy days of my youth home from school, rooting for the Yankees as they took on the Giants, Dodgers (and, even once, the Phillies) in the World Series. When the Red Sox lost the 1986 World Series as a grounder rolled between the legs of the hapless Bill Buckner (who--good for him--returned to Fenway on Friday), I vowed I would no longer delight in the Red Sox's misfortunes. They had, I reasoned, suffered enough. No more schadenfreude, the special pleasure on takes in another's misfortune. Yes, I would still root for the Yanks when they played the Sox, but not root against the Red Sox, or take pleasure in their failure. I know this is a fine distinction, but one not lost on the baseball fans among my readership.
My resolution lasted until game three of the 2004 of the American League Championship. Remember, it was almost exactly a year from the day on which the Yankees had (yet again) broken the hearts of Red Sox Nation when the weak-hitting Aaron Boone with an extra-inning game winning and season-ending home run off knuckleballer Tim Wakefield. The Yankees were decisively winning game three against the Red Sox, but this was not enough for me. I watched until the last out of that humiliation, cheering each and every insult until the Yankees ended the lop-sided slugfest 18-9. "Pour it on," I exclaimed, providing a working definition of the schadenfreude I had resolved to avoid just eight years before. Some resolve! You know what happened next--the Red Sox won the next four games for the Pennant, and went on to sweep the Cardinals in the Series, their curse-breaking first since 1918. Serves me right. If God intervenes in baseball games, I was getting my just desserts. Actually, I would never pray for divine intervention in a sporting contest, and do not believe that God is a baseball fan or--if He is--that He favors one team over another. If I'm right, perhaps He could cut the Chicago Cubs a little slack. As for the baseball gods (lower case), they surely exist, and were watching me carefully back in '04. They certainly played a role in the Yankees' three wins in the 2001 World Series, giving our wounded and terrorized City of New York hope. These baseball gods act in strange--and, sometimes--wondrous, ways. They are baseball fans, and help balance things out--except when they are being perverse (which is often).
My resolution lasted until game three of the 2004 of the American League Championship. Remember, it was almost exactly a year from the day on which the Yankees had (yet again) broken the hearts of Red Sox Nation when the weak-hitting Aaron Boone with an extra-inning game winning and season-ending home run off knuckleballer Tim Wakefield. The Yankees were decisively winning game three against the Red Sox, but this was not enough for me. I watched until the last out of that humiliation, cheering each and every insult until the Yankees ended the lop-sided slugfest 18-9. "Pour it on," I exclaimed, providing a working definition of the schadenfreude I had resolved to avoid just eight years before. Some resolve! You know what happened next--the Red Sox won the next four games for the Pennant, and went on to sweep the Cardinals in the Series, their curse-breaking first since 1918. Serves me right. If God intervenes in baseball games, I was getting my just desserts. Actually, I would never pray for divine intervention in a sporting contest, and do not believe that God is a baseball fan or--if He is--that He favors one team over another. If I'm right, perhaps He could cut the Chicago Cubs a little slack. As for the baseball gods (lower case), they surely exist, and were watching me carefully back in '04. They certainly played a role in the Yankees' three wins in the 2001 World Series, giving our wounded and terrorized City of New York hope. These baseball gods act in strange--and, sometimes--wondrous, ways. They are baseball fans, and help balance things out--except when they are being perverse (which is often).
But Friday was a special day for me as a fan of the great game of baseball, one on which we all recognized that the two teams share a unique history. It was very touching to see the players on each team wearing the sparkling colors of the uniforms they wore on that long-ago afternoon in 1912 when they met on the day Fenway was first opened. While it would have been unsportsmanlike for the Yankees to refuse to wear their old "New York Highlander" uniforms, it was strangely poignant to see the Yankees share this special occasion with the Red Sox. Although the Highlanders would not become the Yankees until the next year, the "road" uniform looked very familiar to me, and not at all out of place. The same was true with the Boston "home" uniform. Boston, unfortunately, like certain other teams (the New York Mets, for one) have adopted the use of multiple uniforms; black, green, striped, you name it. I like the fact that the Yankees have stuck with pinstripes for the Bronx and gray for "roadwork." The uniforms of 1912 did not have numbers on the back, an innovation begun by the Yankees in the '20's, then representing one's order in the line-up (e.g. Ruth batting third, Gehrig in cleanup, etc.) Even to this day, the Yankees and the Red sox have happily resisted the urge to put people's names on the uniforms. It is, after all, a team, although--as Jerry Seinfeld so correctly put it in this age of free-agency--the only thing that stays the same about teams is (sometimes) their uniforms. Back in the bad old days of the reserve clause, we fans were spoiled by growing up with the same players, until they were traded, retired or put out to pasture by the all-powerful management.
Anyway, Fenway Park was resplendent in all its urban glory, and the sight of two hundred or so of its former players (including such stalwarts as Pedro Martinez, Carlton Fisk and Carl Yastremski) appeared from the doorway in centerfield. For me, the passage of time was epitomized by Johnny Peskey (92) and Bobby Doerr (94) by two aged Red Sox being led out in wheelchairs by Jason Varitek and Tim Wakefield. Not that I need any reminders of the passage of time, here were two contemporaries of Phil Rizzuto and Hank Bauer--competitors of my youth, being wheeled by two recently retired rivals of my adulthood--worthy opponents all. While there may have been some dry eyes in the house, mine were not among them. Whatever deference the Yankees might have had to the celebration of Fenway's centenary ended with the timeless cry of "Play Ball." The Yankees crushed the Sox 6-2 with five home runs (including two by Eric Chavez, and one by almost Red Sox Alex Rodriguez, which went completely out of the ballpark, landing somewhere on the historic streets of Boston). But if the Yankees' victory on Friday was an anti-climactic end to a century of baseball at Fenway, the beginning of their second century was something far worse.
The Red Sox fans were in a festive mood. Their pitcher, a crafty young man named Felix Doubront was shutting down the Yanks, while the Sox seemed to be tacking on a run or two each inning. By the 5th, it was 9-0 (yes, the score of a forfeit), and gleeful chants of "Yankees Suck" could be heard throughout the stands. After giving up a solo-homer to Mark Texiera in the top of the 6th, Dumont was given the rest of the day off, a win apparently safe in hand. The Yankees scored seven runs in the seventh and repeated the feat in the eighth. That's where it ended, 15-9.
Was I happy? Sure. Did I gloat? Not me, I'm a changed man. Besides, the baseball headlines were not in Fenway. They went to Phil Humber, who just happened to pitch a perfect game that same afternoon for the White Sox. See, the baseball gods always get the last laugh.
The Red Sox fans were in a festive mood. Their pitcher, a crafty young man named Felix Doubront was shutting down the Yanks, while the Sox seemed to be tacking on a run or two each inning. By the 5th, it was 9-0 (yes, the score of a forfeit), and gleeful chants of "Yankees Suck" could be heard throughout the stands. After giving up a solo-homer to Mark Texiera in the top of the 6th, Dumont was given the rest of the day off, a win apparently safe in hand. The Yankees scored seven runs in the seventh and repeated the feat in the eighth. That's where it ended, 15-9.
Was I happy? Sure. Did I gloat? Not me, I'm a changed man. Besides, the baseball headlines were not in Fenway. They went to Phil Humber, who just happened to pitch a perfect game that same afternoon for the White Sox. See, the baseball gods always get the last laugh.
