The Greenest Green

Before you golf fans get too excited, this is not a blog about putting. Nope. This one centers around the sport once commonly referred to as “America’s Pastime.” I thought it appropriate to write about my favorite sport during this gut-wrenching stretch of the season. Baseball, for me, is the sport that conjures up the most emotional memories a game can offer.

My first memories are lingering snapshots of experiences or snippets of knowledge. I know I never had a choice in which team I’d root for as a child. There are pictures of me no more than a month or two old with my head capped in navy blue and the white-embroidered, interlocking “NY.” Ever since, I have had the good and bad fortune of being a Yankees fan–a member of the millions of people cheering on the so-called “Evil Empire” to victory (and quite a bit of disappointment, too) season after season.

Starting out, my Baseball IQ was–to be generous–low. I didn’t understand much of the game when I was a little kind in the mid-to-late 80s cheering for the only two players I remember knowing on the team: Don Mattingly and Rickey Henderson. To be fair, the Yankees teams of the 80s WERE pretty forgettable. Let’s take 1987 for example (courtesy of www.baseball-almanac.com):

C Rick Cerone
1B Don Mattingly
2B Willie Randolph
3B Mike Pagliarulo
SS Wayne Tolleson
LF Gary Ward
CF Claudell Washington
RF Dave Winfield
DH Ron Kittle

Now, with his .241 avg. and 9 HR over a 10-year career, I’m surprised I can’t find my Wayne Tolleson jersey lying around somewhere. I could definitely go out and get one, though. Oddly enough, his jersey is the most popular one out there these days! I can hear it as if it were yesterday over The Stadium’s PA:

Now batting… #2… Wayne Tolleson… #2…

Well, something about that doesn’t seem right. In any case, I’ve digressed considerably from my original thoughts, so I’m gonna bring it back!

The one memory that sticks out completely above all the rest is probably the simplest of them all. It was the first game I ever went to. I was probably 6 or 7. I know I went with my dad and either Anthony Moschella or Ryan Herring (or both) and their dads. However, unlike most people (remember, my BBIQ…), I can’t tell you whom the Yankees were playing that night. I DO remember that they lost. But the vision that stuck with me ever since then is something I’ll never lose. And given The New Stadium configuration, it’s a memory that I may not get to share with future generations of Tamburros. I think a lot of people remember it the same way, and it went like this:

I was walking through the dirty corridors, dodging loud fans and hot dog carts, and staring at the numbers painted on the walls indicating the entrances to the various seating sections. Ours came up. I walked into the tunnel, up the ramp, out the other end, and there it was. It was the greenest green I’d ever seen. It was the bluest blue, the biggest big, the whitest white, the everything-est everything I’d ever seen, and it was better than I could have imagined.

It was at that moment that I fell in love with baseball. These days, it will never be the same as that moment, but I can still go back to that day when I want that feeling of pure awe. And, don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining at all. The New Stadium is awe-inspiring in its own right. No, you can’t get field seats very easily, and if you do, they don’t come cheap. But at the same time, there are far more people than the 17,000 or so that attended my first game with me.

That day is what I think about every time I go to a game. I think about riding in the rumble seat in the back of Ryan’s dad’s station wagon, waiting for what seemed like days in the George Washington Bridge traffic. I remember trying desperately to understand what the hell my dad was talking about when he showed me how to keep a scorecard. I certainly remember going home early to beat the traffic because the Yankees were getting beat pretty hard, and listening to the broadcast crackle in the speakers as I slowly fell asleep.

The perspective is different now. Baseball has changed in a lot of ways. I think it has changed mostly for the better after a difficult couple of decades with drugs and steroids tainting our idols. But if you talk to fans and watch the players, I think it’s finding its roots again as America’s Pastime and will always be what it always was: a great game, and the best we have. I may not be as green as I was when I first saw a game, but things do seem a lot simpler sitting in those blue seats in the Bronx. And I CAN tell you this: I still feel like a kid when I grab my mitt, force my 62-year-old dad to go out in the back and throw the ball around, and enjoy MY favorite pastime.

Enjoy the playoffs, my friends, and always love the game!