by Jane Heller
“I raised my kids in a very structured way with the right schools and the right this and that,” she says. “When my oldest daughter began having her first experiences with men, I thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown. Part of it was that I had buried my past so deep that I never wanted to see it again. I had reinvented myself. In therapy I realized that my experiences in the past were the fun aspect of me, the exciting aspect of me, and I shouldn’t bury them. It helped to be open about all this and laugh with my daughter about it. I can look back and say, ‘God, that was fun.’”
Patty nods. “It was a whimsical, magical time.”
We finish lunch and say good-bye. I walk to the hotel feeling envious. I am not wishing I had been a groupie. The longing I am experiencing now has more to do with that playfulness. When did I lose my playfulness when it comes to the Yankees?
By late afternoon I am sneezing and hacking along with Michael, and there is no way I can go to tonight’s finale against Seattle. We watch on TV.
Hughes goes six innings in one of his best outings yet, and Joba retires the side in order in the top of the seventh. The Yankees are down 2–1 with only two hits—until A-Rod belts his 511th homer in the bottom of the inning, tying Mel Ott and the score. The Yankees score five more runs before A-Rod steps to the plate for the second time in the inning. And for the second time, he homers—this time tying Eddie Mathews and Ernie Banks. The Yanks are up 9–2, and Michael and I chant “MVP!” Abreu scores on a wild pitch in the bottom of the eighth, and Mo works a scoreless ninth.
The Yankees win 10–2. I down a little plastic cup full of NyQuil to celebrate.
The NyQuil makes me high. As I slip into sleep, I have this fuzzy vision of myself leaping into the air with joy that the Yankees beat the Red Sox at Fenway Park in their last matchup of the season.
Thursday is getaway day, and all I feel like doing is getting more sleep. My head is pounding and my body aches, and I am flushed and chilled at the same time. But my cold is merely a nuisance. Michael’s is threatening to turn into something worse, given his compromised immune system. We take a cab to Newark airport for our 12:20 ExpressJet flight to Kansas City.
At the airport I ask the man at the ticket counter about our flight’s equipment. He tells me it is a 50-seater—a “baby jet.”
The Embraer 125 baby jet lands in KC, where our hotel, the Inter-Continental at the Country Club Plaza, is where the Yankees will be staying.
I remember it is Suzyn Waldman’s birthday. I call room service and order a dessert with a candle in it and a card from me and ask that it all be delivered to her room as soon as she checks in.
Michael and I are bundled up in bed slurping chicken soup when she calls to say thanks for the birthday dessert, which the hotel initially sent to the wrong room. We laugh about how lame the InterContinental is.
Our colds are a little better when we wake up on Friday. We head down to the lobby. Yankee fans have gathered to see the players board the team bus for Kauffman Stadium. I see Wilson Betemit standing near the entrance. Maybe he is my Yankee.
“Wilson?” I say.
“Hey,” he says with a big smile.
“Hey.” I am not sure how much English he understands. “It … is … great … to … meet … you.”
He laughs. “Have a nice day.” And off he goes.
We leave the hotel and walk to George Brett’s restaurant. George Brett is the Cal Ripken of Kansas City. Everything here is named after him.
We sit at a table by the window and survey all the baseball memorabilia on the walls. Two women in Yankees shirts are at the next table.
“Have you flown in from New York for the series?” I ask them.
“We drove in from Nebraska,” one of them says. “It’s only 3 hours away.”
“We came to see Joba, our local hero,” says the other. “His father, Harlan, and a whole gang of family and friends have come, too.”
I look in the other direction and spot a father and his freckle-faced son sitting at a table in the back of the restaurant.
“They’re the same father and son we saw at Spuntini in Toronto,” I tell Michael.
“They are not.”
“Jorge came over to talk to them and we were trying to figure out how they were associated with the Yankees, remember?”
He is still not convinced, so I get up and go over to their table.
“Excuse me,” I say. “Were you two eating dinner at Spuntini when the Yankees were in Toronto?”
“We were there,” the father says. He smiles but is a little stunned.
“My husband and I were at the restaurant that night.” I point at Michael, who is hiding his face, pretending not to know me. “You were talking to Posada, and we were wondering how you knew him.”
“I’m Tom Goodman,” he introduces himself. “My company, Goodman Media International, handles the PR for Joe Torre’s Safe at Home Foundation.”
“Tom Goodman? Did you by any chance grow up on Oak Lane in Scarsdale?”
“I did!”
“We were practically next-door neighbors!”
Tom invites me to sit down with him and his son Matthew. I wave Michael over to join us. Yankeeville is a small world.
While the four of us eat lunch together, I give Tom a little background on the book and my unsuccessful dealings with Jason Zillo.
“Why don’t you try Rick Cerrone, who ran the Yankees’ media relations department until the end of last season,” he suggests. “He might be an interesting person to talk to. I’ll e-mail you his contact info.”
There is a city bus called the Royals Express that stops at the different hotels in the Country Club Plaza and takes everybody straight to Kauffman Stadium for each home game. About 40 of us pile onto the 5:25 pm. bus to tonight’s series opener, and most are dressed in Yankees gear. I stand in the aisle, sandwiched between strangers, just like on the subway. I find myself body to body with a barrel-chested man with bleached platinum hair. He is wearing a Yankees T-shirt, a Yankees cap with a blue interlocking “N” and “Y” that light up when he flicks a switch, Yankees sneakers, a Yankees wristwatch, a Yankees necklace, and a Yankees earring.
“What’s up with all the Yankees stuff?” I say.
“I’m from Bayonne, New Jersey,” he says.
“And you traveled to Kansas City to see them play?”
“Been a Yankee fan my whole life.”
“I can see that.” He is a vision of Yankee-ness.
“You haven’t seen this.” He lifts the sleeve of his T-shirt to show me the Yankees tattoo on his bicep. “It’s permanent.”
“What if they keep losing and you realize they aren’t the team you thought they were?”
He gives me a look. “It’s permanent. I go down with the ship.”
A fiftysomething woman next to us chimes in. “I hate tattoos. But if I were ever going to get one, it would be a Yankees tattoo. And it would be a permanent one, because the way I feel about them will never change.”
I am struck by the unconditional love they feel, by their loyalty—the word Michael keeps using. It would not occur to them not to be Yankee fans. Their devotion has nothing to do with winning. They are faithful to their team, year in and year out.
Kauffman Stadium is bad ’70s architecture—something between a flying saucer and a concrete donut. The centerfield scoreboard wears the Royals’ crown. And fireworks erupt from the fountains out there after the last note of the national anthem is sung. And there are billboards advertising a George Brett MasterCard.
We ride the escalator up to section 316, row F—way up behind home plate on the first base side. Ian Kennedy is making his second start.
The Yankees jump on top 2–0, and the Royals tie it up in the bottom of the second. Kennedy goes five innings, and Farnsworth retires the side in order in the sixth.
With the Yankees up 3–2 in the seventh, Joba takes the mound. You would think we were in Nebraska with all the cheering. The woman behind us says she
is from Lincoln.
“Do you know Joba personally?” I ask.
She beams. “We all came to see him. He’s a fine boy.”
He throws a scoreless seventh and eighth.
Mo shuts the Royals down in the ninth for his 24th save. The Yankees win their third straight game and now have a three-game lead in the wild-card race over Detroit, who has knocked Seattle out of it.
On Saturday, I meet Larry Brooks for an early lunch in the hotel’s Oak Room. His once sandy brown hair has flecks of gray in it now, but that is the only sign that he has aged. He is fit with broad shoulders and a boyish smile. We laugh as we try to remember how long it has been since we have seen each other. Ten years? Fifteen? Too long, we decide.
We exchange updates on our lives and discuss hockey, Larry’s primary beat at the Post. Eventually, we get around to the Yankees. His column about last night’s game focused on Joba and his special relationship with his father.
John Sterling walks in. Years ago he was an usher at Larry’s wedding, so they spend a few minutes catching up. Yankeeville is a small world.
“How do you think the Yankees will do if they get into the play-offs?” I ask Larry.
“They don’t have much chance to win the World Series,” he says. “And that would mean failure for them.”
“Yankee fans have to appreciate how hard it is to win,” I say.
Larry looks at me like I have had a brain transplant. “Where did that come from?”
Since tonight’s game has a 6:05 start, Michael and I head to the bus stop at 4:45. There is a large group waiting for the Royals Express, most of them Yankee fans. But I also notice a man wearing a Royals cap and T-shirt, and I am delighted. I have been eager to ask KC fans how they root for a team with a perennially losing record.
The man is standing off by himself. I walk over to him and nearly faint; his face is covered with tumors. His features are so distorted and disfigured that I think he must be wearing a Halloween mask. If you have seen The Elephant Man, you get the idea. His arms and neck are similarly lumpy. He wears his cap very low on his head. I cannot imagine what it is like to live inside his skin.
“Hey,” I say in my most chipper voice. “Are you going to the game tonight?”
“Yup.” He keeps his head down, not meeting my eyes.
“You a big Royals fan?”
This elicits a smile. “Been watching ’em a long time.”
“Have any favorite players?”
“Alex Gordon, our third baseman. Real good-looking kid. Played college ball in Nebraska like the Yankees’ kid, Chamberlain.”
“You don’t mind that the Royals lose so much?”
He bristles. “We won the World Series in ’85. I go to see ’em for better or worse.”
When the bus comes along, I wish him and his team luck and walk away counting my blessings,the way you do whenever it dawns on you how lucky you are. I am sure there are people with his disease who confine themselves to their house, never risking ridicule. And yet this guy not only ventures out in public, but goes to a baseball stadium, just so he can see his team play in person—and probably lose. If he is not a true fan, I do not know who is.
For tonight’s game we are in section 140, row EE, which is on the main level in right field, at the foul pole.
Pettitte gets the start versus Bannister.
The Yankees play home run derby. Damon and Betemit go deep. So does A-Rod—twice. In the bottom of the sixth, with the Yanks up 11–2, you would think the Royals fans would lose interest and leave. They don’t. In fact, they cheer loudly when their team scores a run off Chris Britton in the eighth.
We beat Kansas City 11–5, but the fans here are not the least bit upset. They have spent a sunny day at the ballpark, and life is good.
We take the bus back to the Plaza, where it is not just any Saturday night. Tonight is the special WaterFire—an annual event where fires are set in the man-made canals that weave in and around the shopping area.
“All this and the Yankees won,” says Michael as he snaps pictures of the flames reflecting on the water.
I don’t answer. I am studying my own reflection. I am thinking about the Royals fan on the bus. And I am wondering who the hell I am these days.
Sunday is getaway day for the Yankees, but not for Michael and me. The team is flying to Toronto after this afternoon’s game, but our flight doesn’t leave until tomorrow night at 6:00. I watch their minions load luggage onto their bus. It will be awfully quiet at the hotel without them. No autograph seekers. No groupies. No beat writers. No nutty hangers-on. No members of the traveling carnival, period. I will miss everybody.
Our own bus, the Royals Express, leaves at 12:25 for the 1:10 start. It is not crowded today, so we get seats. In back of us is a guy in his forties wearing a Red Sox cap. I ask him—nicely—what he is doing here. He says he is from Vermont and came to KC on business. When he found out the Yankees were in town, he got tickets for the game to boo them in person.
“Why are Red Sox fans so angry?” I ask. “You won the World Series in ’04 and beat the Yankees to get there. What’s your problem?”
“You beat us over and over and in the most horrible ways,” he says. “And besides that, Red Sox fans never let go of anything.”
He is still fuming about Boston’s loss to Baltimore yesterday.
“Dice-K walked three batters in an inning, and Francona didn’t take him out. The next batter hit a grand slam. That loss was totally preventable!”
I laugh at how much he reminds me of myself. “You have a very comfortable lead in the division.”
He shakes his head. “There is no such thing for a Red Sox fan. The Yankees can always come back and beat us. The fear never goes away.”
I pat him on the shoulder to console him.
Michael can’t believe I am being friendly to someone with that “B” on his cap. “What have you done with my wife?” he whispers in my ear.
As we start to get off the bus, I pass two elderly, silver-haired women sitting together in Royals T-shirts.
“Need any help?” I ask.
“With what?” one of them replies.
“Walking up the aisle or making it down the steps.”
“We’re fine, honey. Just catching our breath.”
“Do you come to the games very often?”
“Every Sunday, like clockwork,” the other woman pipes up. “First we go to church. Then we come see our boys. We never miss a game when they’re home.”
I wish them a good day and follow Michael out of the bus. “Talk about She-Fans. Those two are hardcore,” I say. “I love that their doubleheader is religion and baseball.”
We settle into our seats just in time for the national anthem. We are in section 307, row H—back in the upper deck but behind home plate instead of in the right-field boonies.
Wang is going for his 18th victory. He has Taiwanese fans here in KC. They are waving their little flags.
A-Rod hits his 52nd home run in the top of the first, and even Royals fans applaud. The guy has now homered in his fifth straight game.
The Royals tie the score at 3–3 in the bottom of the fourth on a bases-loaded double by Alex Gordon, the favorite of the fan on the bus. But the Yanks take a 6–3 lead on RBIs by Posada and Cano.
Farnsworth pitches a scoreless eighth. Mo is lights out in the ninth. And we sweep a team we needed to sweep. We have won five straight and are now four over the Tigers for the wild card.
AL EAST STANDINGS/SEPTEMBER 9
TEAM W L PCT GB
BOSTON 87 57 .604 —
NEW YORK 81 62 .566 5.5
TORONTO 72 70 .507 14.0
BALTIMORE 61 81 .430 25.0
TAMPA BAY 60 83 .420 26.5
Week 24 September 10, 2007
All any player wishes for is to know they’re in the lineup every day—no matter who’s pitching or how you’re swinging the bat. As the Boston series was coming up, Bowa kept saying, “Be ready to play. Your time is co
ming.” I said, “Bowa, I’m always ready to play.”
“I had another Yankee dream,” I tell Michael on Monday morning. “It was Damon this time. He needed to get in touch with his mother and asked me to help him find her.”
“You must really think you’re indispensable to the Yankees,” he says.
After breakfast I check e-mail. And—shock of all shocks—there is one from Jason Zillo!
“Sorry for the delay,” he writes. “If you are still interested, I may have a bit of time over the next few days while in Toronto.”
I scream with excitement.
I immediately reply that I am flying to Toronto tonight and will be available during the series anytime he is. I give him my cell phone number.
At 5:30 we board the Bombardier CRJ/100 at the KC airport. We land in Toronto without incident and move through Customs. Our officer is a tough guy, like the last one.
“What is the nature of your business in Canada?”
“I’m writing a book about the Yankees and am here to see them play the Blue Jays.”
“Too bad for you,” he growls. “The Yankees suck, eh?”
On Tuesday morning, I read in the Toronto Globe and Mail that it’s September 11—the anniversary of 9/11. I have been so out of touch with the real world that I forgot what the date signified.
Fortunately, they have not forgotten at the Rogers Centre, where tonight we open a three-game series against the Blue Jays. We are in section 113A, row 4—right on the field behind first base—and have a great view of the pregame ceremony commemorating 9/11 and New York City firefighters. As the Yankees stand next to each other along the first-base line, caps across their hearts, Canadian firefighters play “Amazing Grace” on the bagpipes. It is a beautiful and tasteful observance.
Hughes gets the start. He is not dominant, but he keeps the Yankees in the game. Posada hits his 20th homer to put the Yanks up 4–2, and they break the game open on Giambi’s grand slam. Edwar is brilliant in relief and Ohlendorf, the latest call-up, retires the Jays in order to end the game.