Yankees Musings

I found a bunch of blogs on mlb.com. Of course, I only read Yankees ones...why bother reading anything else?? It made me think about how I started paying attention to the team in Pinstripes, and why I'm so excited to get Jasmine into them from the start.

Back in the mid-90s, when we didn't have cable, Mom and I would watch the postseason together. The first year we watched Seattle (Randy Johnson, Ken Griffey, Jr., Joey Cora...) because that's where she's originally from and that was as much reason as we needed.
During the winter, as usually happens, they got rid of most of the players we recognized. I don't remember if we watched them the next year...I remember rooting for the Indians one year because we liked Orel (I'm not even going to try to spell his last name)
Then one year, when I was in college, we started watching the Yankees play. (96, maybe?) There was something different about them. They were a real team. They were good sports, and great players, and very united.
When we got cable (again) we discovered we could watch many more games during the year, and stayed with the Yankees.
Mom watched more games than I did, and if I was at home but not watching with her, she'd call for me every time Jeter came up to bat: "Derek Jeter is up to bat, and he's still single!" Each and every time. Before I knew it, I was watching with her, and we'd both cheer on the whole team, not just Jeter.
We went to our first game in spring of 2002, in Toronto's Skydome. Roger Clemens pitched, I was sick with strep (didn't know that's why I was feeling so horrible until the next day...I hope I didn't give it to anyone else!) and we lost miserably. But it was still an amazing feeling, realizing that these players we had seen on TV were there, in front of us, and those foul balls could actually hurt!
We went back the next spring, and this time we won, I was healthy, and we had a blast.


That summer, I met Josh and got married
and we went to New York for our honeymoon. (we got married that weekend so we could be in NY for the game against the Red Sox!!) Our first game together, in the back row of Yankee Stadium (no, he wasn't being cheap, it's that hard to get tickets to those games!), watching the biggest rivalry in baseball. Thankfully we won! What an amazing game :-)

Now, without cable once again, we listened to many of the games this season. Much of the year was heartbreaking, though there were wonderful things too. Jeter's first grandslam, Giambi's amazing comeback, Robinon Cano and Wang's amazing rookie years...just beautiful.

Next spring we'll join my parents once again for the annual trip to Toronto, this time bringing Jasmine with us. It's never too early to teach her about the wonderful Yankees!