by Jane Heller
We venture out for dinner. It is 90 degrees and very humid. My hair frizzes instantly, and I curse it for not being the hair of, say, Reese Witherspoon. We stroll along the harbor area, which is packed with firefighters in T-shirts displaying their local communities. When we pass the Renaissance Harborplace Hotel on Pratt Street, I stop in my tracks.
“Let’s go in,” I tell Michael. “John Sterling said the Yankees will be staying here.”
“I’m hungry,” he says. “I thought we were eating.”
“I just want to see what it’s like.” I waltz through the front door. The lobby is way nicer than ours.
I approach the concierge, a man in a conservative dark suit. “Do you have any rooms available this weekend?” I ask. “We’re staying down the street, but would rather be here.”
“The Yankees are coming. We’re full.”
“Maybe if you just take a minute to check the computer, you’ll—”
“I don’t have to check. No rooms.”
I have been thrown out of better places.
Michael and I continue our stroll outside and peruse the restaurant options. We choose California Pizza Kitchen because it is the only place with empty tables. I order a veggie pizza, and Michael orders a pizza with pepperoni, onions, and spicy sausage.
“You must have a death wish,” I say, knowing this stuff is poison for someone with Crohn’s.
“Let’s get something straight,” he says. “I came on this trip to support you, but I also came to have a good time. So I’m eating whatever I want and going wherever I want and staying up as l ate as I want.”
Fine. I am not his mother.
Back in our room, I check how the Yankees did in their finale against the Royals. They lost 7–0. Igawa sucked, and A-Rod remained at 499.
“Sounds like we didn’t miss anything,” I say to Michael.
When he doesn’t answer, I turn to look at him. He is stretched out on the bed, his head on the infant-size pillow, groaning from heartburn.
Friday is our first full day on the road, and I am stoked. At breakfast we sit next to two beefy guys from New Jersey.
“Are you firefighters or Yankee fans?” I ask them.
“Both,” the beefier one says. He is digging into a steak. “I remember the first game my father ever took me to. I was 7, and I thought I died and went to heaven.”
“Me, too,” says the other one, whose hair is cut like a Marine’s. “It was a game against the Red Sox, and we beat the assholes.”
“My wife is writing a book about the Yankees!” Michael blurts out.
Both men suddenly regard me with shimmering respect.
“I wish I had your job,” says the beefier one.
“Yeah, give us some inside information about the Yankees,” challenges the Marine.
I pretend I have some by dropping John Sterling’s name, as if he and I are old friends. They are impressed but want more.
“The Yankees are staying at the Renaissance,” I say, like that’s a bombshell.
“No kidding,” the Marine says. “I thought they were at the Sheraton.”
“Not according to John Sterling.”
By midafternoon the temperature has reached 100 degrees. Michael’s toe is throbbing, so he hunkers down at the Marriott while I go stake out the Yankees.
There is a big crowd in the driveway of the Renaissance, with everybody jockeying for position behind a velvet rope, hoping to spot the players as they leave the hotel for Camden Yards. There are young boys brandishing baseballs. There are firefighters taking a break from the convention. There is an old guy who introduces me to his Yorkshire terrier. He tells me he and the dog drove down from Staten Island yesterday because the dog is a Yankee fan whose favorite players are Melky and Cano. And there are middle-aged women bearing digital cameras. They are not groupies; they are wholesome, soccer-mom types wearing Yankees T-shirts.
“A security guy said they were coming out at 2 o’clock,” one of them whispers to me. She loves the Yankees and will die happy if she gets a picture of Jeter.
There is a sudden commotion near the hotel’ s front door.
Okay. Here they come: Yankees in the flesh.
Torre appears first. He looks awful. Pale. Haggard. Balder than I realized. It has been a tough season, and he is wearing it on his face. He ignores the chants of his name and the outstretched balls of the kids and does his peg-leg walk to the parking garage where the team bus must be waiting.
Farnsworth does stop to sign and chat. Sure, he needs good PR, but I am surprised he is so friendly to the kids. I will not boo him tonight—unless he fucks up.
Wang walks past the crowd without a smile or a wave, but I give him a pass for it. He is painfully shy, according to Peter Abraham, who tells us this sort of thing on his blog.
Molina comes out of the hotel, and everyone yells, “Melky!” Well, Jose is still pretty new to the Yankees, so mistakes are inevitable.
Michael Kay not only walks right over to the kids standing behind the rope but also stays for several minutes to sign autographs for them.
I sense that A-Rod will not be coming through the front door like the others. It is probably in his contract that he has his own special exit.
The crowd is beginning to disperse when a stocky dark-haired man in his early forties makes his way out of the hotel and waits for a cab. It is Peter Abraham. I recognize him from his picture on the blog.
Forgetting that I am not wearing makeup or a bra, never mind that my hair is a fright wig and my clothes are soaked with sweat stains, I rush over.
“Hi, Peter,” I say, extending my hand. “I’m a big admirer.”
He regards me with caution. For all he knows, I am the local bag lady. But he shakes my hand.
“I read your blog religiously.”
“That’s great. Thanks.”
“I’m writing a book about the Yankees!” I blurt out, just like Michael did this morning. “I’ll be following them the rest of the way.”
“I wrote a book about Wang,” he says. “It was a bestseller in Taiwan.”
“Congratulations.” I am about to ask him if Jason Zillo is really the devil, but his cab pulls up.
“Nice meeting you,” he says and drives off.
I should have suggested a drink after the game tonight or lunch tomorrow. I need to be more social.
I go back to the Marriott and call John Sterling on his cell phone. I leave him a message asking if he wants to get together with Michael and me over the weekend. I also leave a message for Peter Abraham at the Renaissance asking if he would let me interview him for the book.
John returns my call. He is busy this weekend but proposes that we have dinner in New York next week with Sandy and Doug McCartney, the Santa Barbara couple who put us together. He says that Thursday is a day game, so we could all meet in the city that night. He also apologizes for not being able to help me with Zillo. I thank him for trying and tell him not to worry about it because I might have a way in through Jean Afterman. He is impressed and says he hopes it works out.
We arrive at Camden Yards for the 7:05 game. It is everything everyone says about it—the perfect place to play baseball. With its historic brick warehouse in the background and its high-tech scoreboard in center field, it is old-fashioned and state of the art at the same time. Field of Dreams meets urban downtown.
We pass Boog’s Barbecue, the food concession owned by former O’s first baseman Boog Powell. The line is too long. We settle for Attman’s Deli. We take our trays of food and ride the escalator to the top level of the park, where kindly ushers point us in the direction of our seats.
We find row LL, section 308, on the right-field side. We are about to bite into our turkey sandwiches when a group of firefighters appears and insists we are in their seats. “This is row L, not double L,” one of them says after we show him our tickets. “Your seats are up there.” He points skyward.
I can’t believe there is an “up there” because we are already up th
ere as far as I am concerned, but we apologize and go in search of our correct seats, which are near the very top of the stadium. If the first seats were in the nosebleed section, these seats are in the brain aneurysm section. It is hot and sticky and close up here, and it smells like the inside of a beer can. Jean Afterman better come through. I can’t spend days and nights like this, so far away from the field that the players are microscopic. Camden Yards is beautiful, no question, but I miss my green Barcalounger in the living room.
As we wait for the game to start, we are forced to watch a Cal Ripken video on the scoreboard. He is God here.
First up is the resumption of the June 28 game that was suspended by rain with the Yankees up 8–6 in the eighth. Myers is on the mound. He does his part and makes way for Mo, who gets the save, and the Yankees win.
Pettitte is the starter for the “real”game, and he pitches in and out of trouble. By the end of the third, it is 3–1 Orioles.
I get tapped on the shoulder.
“Is anyone sitting there?” a woman asks, pointing at the empty seat to my right.
“Not that I know of.”
“Do you mind if I take it? Somebody vomited on the seat behind me.”
Guthrie, Baltimore’s pitcher, has the lowest ERA in the league right now, and all the Yankees can do with his 98 mph fastball is ground out. The only excitement comes whenever A-Rod steps to the plate. Thousands of flashbulbs go off simultaneously, and it is like a fireworks show on the Fourth of July. Everyone wants a shot of him grooving his 500th, but he does not oblige. He goes 0-for-2. He is pressing. At least that is what it looks like from up-up-up here.
In fact, all the Yankees look flat, feeble. They go down 4–2. The only good thing they do tonight is to demote Igawa again.
On Saturday Michael comes with me to watch the players exit the Renaissance, but he doesn’t hide how bored he is.
“It’s like watching grass grow,” he says.
We leave and walk over to the Babe Ruth Museum, where we admire all the memorabilia. I choke up when I watch the video of the Mick talking about the Babe. The Yankees are deities for sure.
After a quick nap, Michael and I are back at Camden Yards. We go early tonight so we can watch the Yankees take batting practice. There are 48,000 other sweaty people with the same idea waiting for the gates to open. The vast majority of them are dressed in Yankees gear. The man behind me is from Bellport, Long Island, and drives down for every Yankees–Orioles game. The man to my left is from the Bronx and makes the pilgrimage, too.
The gates open, and there is a crush to get to the food concessions. I am dying to try Boog’s Barbecue, so we wait in line for 20 minutes. Boog’s is clearly the most popular spot, and after one bite of my pit turkey platter, I know why. The food is outrageously good. The platter comes with a roll stuffed with smoked sliced turkey that is smothered in spicy barbecue sauce, baked beans, and coleslaw. Michael, who should not even be looking at spicy food, loads up his plate and wolfs everything down. I keep my mouth shut about what he is putting into his inflamed intestines.
We are in section 354, row AA—above the Yankee dugout instead of way out in right field. We have missed batting practice but are in our seats in time for warm-up exercises and yet another Cal Ripken infomercial on the Jumbo-Tron. Melky is doing leg kicks as if he were auditioning for the Rockettes. Matsui is performing sort of a Riverdance routine. Jeter plays long toss with Cairo. A-Rod sprints. It is both disconcerting and reassuring to see the players without the benefit of TV cameras. They are no longer characters in some long-running prime-time series.
After their warm-ups, they take refuge in the dugout while the rest of us swelter. The announcer welcomes us to tonight’s game and reports that it is 94 degrees. The people sitting next to me are a sweet middle-aged couple who took a 3-hour bus ride from Easton, Pennsylvania. The young punks on Michael’s side are drunk even before the national anthem begins.
In the top of the first, the flashbulbs go off when A-Rod is batting, but he doesn’t hit the big one. In the bottom of the inning, Clemens serves up a double to Brian Roberts, and the Yankees are down 2–0 before I know it.
Two male Orioles fans behind me are debating Kevin Millar’s role with the 2004 Red Sox.
“Wasn’t he the one who wouldn’t give the championship ball back?” one of them says.
I turn around and say, “No, that was Doug Mientkiewicz. He plays first base for the Yankees now, but he’s on the DL. He had a cervical sprain, a slight concussion, and a broken bone in his wrist as the result of a collision with Mike Lowell.”
They look at me as if I have six heads.
A twentysomething woman in the section below us is wearing a white veil and carrying a sign that says “Bride to be would love to kiss Joe Torre.” Next to Michael, one of the punks—they are now stinking drunk—throws a cell phone at the girl with the sign. He escapes ejection by telling the security guard that the phone “just slipped.” When the coast is clear, he laughs and says to his friends, “That’s how you’re supposed to get a wife: Throw a cell phone at her and knock some sense into her.” I think longingly about my green chair in the living room. When I watch games at home, the only obnoxious person I have to deal with is me.
The Yankees look indifferent at the plate until the top of the ninth. With the O’s ahead by 7–1, Abreu comes up as the potential tying run, with A-Rod on deck. He strikes out. Game over.
On Sunday we discover why Jorge does not catch day games after night games. Who wants to get up early after going to bed late?
There is a light drizzle as we ride up the escalator at Camden Yards at 12:15. The announcer comes over the speakers to tell us the game will be delayed until 2:05 and that in the meantime we are welcome to watch live coverage of Cal Ripken’s induction into the Hall of Fame on the Jumbo-Tron. I am sure Cal is a terrific guy, but I am getting sick of him.
Eventually, the sky brightens, the tarp comes off, and we find our seats in section 332, row LL—still in the upper deck, but the best ones yet. We are in the midst of a “Wang section.” There are over a dozen Taiwanese fans waving Taiwanese flags.
“People in Taiwan idolize Wang the way Americans idolize Elvis,” one of them tells me.
In the first inning, A-Rod comes up with bases loaded and strikes out. He comes up again with bases loaded in the second and grounds out. He must be seriously constipated.
It is a seesaw battle the rest of the way. Farnsworth serves up a two-run homer in the bottom of the eighth,but the Yankees win10–6 and avoid the sweep. After the game, Kyle complains to the media that he has not been used enough and did not come to the Yankees to sit on the bench. He may have signed balls for those kids at the Renaissance on Friday, but he is a big stupid crybaby.
The good thing about a day game is you get to go to an actual restaurant and have dinner that night. Michael and I take a cab to Obrycki’s, Baltimore’s famous crab house. The waitress delivers the crabs on a tray and dumps them onto our table, which she has covered with brown paper. She covers us too—with bibs—and brings us wooden mallets and a garbage pail. We pound our crabs. Pieces of meat fly into our eyes, our hair, everywhere but our mouths.
We have survived the first stop on our long journey and are in the mood to celebrate.
AL EAST STANDINGS/JULY 29
TEAM W L PCT GB
BOSTON 64 41 .610 —
NEW YORK 56 49 .533 8.0
TORONTO 52 52 .500 11.5
BALTIMORE 49 55 .471 14.5
TAMPA BAY 39 65 .375 24.5
Week 18 July 30, 2007
Pop-ups are Alex’s kryptonite. He dropped one in the first inning on opening day. Derek and Robbie hid their faces in their gloves and died laughing. Derek looked over and yelled, “Jesus Christ! Catch the ball!” Last year Alex would have beaten himself up and the game would have gone to hell. But this year he laughed it off. This game is so hard and so humbling that if you can’t laugh at yourself it’ll bury you. I’ve been there.
Thunderstorms are forecast for Monday, the Yankees’ off day and our getaway day. We are supposed to take some claustrophobic little US Airways Express flight up to New York this morning, but I can’t summon the courage. We rent a fire-engine-red Toyota Matrix from Hertz, drive north on I-95, and pull into my mother’s driveway in Westchester by midafternoon. She has lived in the same house for more than 30 years. Most of her friends have either downsized or moved into assisted-living facilities, but she will not hear of leaving. That house is home to her. I am envious. I have lived in so many places—New York, Connecticut, Florida, California—that I have no real sense of “home” anymore.
“Hello!” I say as Mom waves to me from the front door. She looks adorable in her jeans and sweater and pink lipstick. She has shrunk another half inch since my last visit, but she is otherwise a miracle of nature.
She hugs me, then Michael. “I bought cold cuts and potato salad and an Entenmann’s coffee cake.”
Later, she drives me into the village, where she drops me at her hair salon. I have a blow-dry with Katya. I could have washed and dried my own hair, but a few years ago I came to the sobering conclusion that I have absolutely no command of a blow-dryer. So I seek out professionals.
I spend the rest of the afternoon doing laundry and talking to my mother while Michael naps. I tell her about all the cities we will be going to and all the teams we will be playing, and she gives me a look like she thinks I am crazy.
“What?” I say.
“I know you love the Yankees, dearie. I love them, too. But it sounds so exhausting.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Do they feed you at those baseball stadiums?”
“Yes, Mom.”
“How will you get enough sleep going from hotel to hotel?”
“I just will.”
“There are a lot of maniacs out there,” she says, wagging an arthritic finger at me. “You have to be so careful these days.”