The decision I faced while growing up in the heart of Manhattan wasn’t difficult. Actually, it wasn’t a decision at all.
This was the late 1970s, and as far as I knew, New York had one baseball team: the Yankees.
They were the team of Reggie, Sparky and the Goose, of Steinbrenner, Guidry and Martin. They made the playoffs, they made the headlines, and they made me want to become a shortstop.
What about that other team in town, the Mets? Who could even name their players? John Stearns probably wasn’t a household name in his own household. Ed Kranepool sounded like an insurance man, not a first baseman. The Mets weren’t even as popular as the Jets, maybe not as accepted as the Nets.
So it had been decided for me. And it didn’t hurt that my father loved to tell me of his standing-room view for Game 5 of the 1956 World Series, the day Don Larsen was perfect. Or that whenever I visited my mother’s office, her boss would dip into his drawer for a treat: two box seats to a Yankees game.
My earliest memory of visiting Yankee Stadium wasn’t pleasant. I was bundled up like Santa Claus for Game 6 of the ’81 World Series. The Yankees had won the first two games, Los Angeles the next three. And on this cold October night, the Dodgers overwhelmed my heroes 9-2.
How was I supposed to know that over the next 13 seasons, the Yankees would not reach the playoffs a single time? There was no turning back.
When some of my friends cheered the ’86 Mets to a World Series championship, I branded them traitors. After all, I figured, what boy growing up when I did would not have loved the Yankees?
