My job is covering sports. Typical days revolve around traveling, interviewing sports figures, and discussing slightly more than the who, what, when, where, why and how.
Many have told me that mine is the greatest job in the world: I get to talk sports, go to games, meet sports figures, and interview them on a regular basis. Toss out the usually lousy spreads in the media press room that give me angina, and there really are no complaints about my line of work.
Except one. I don’t get to be a fan. It’s something called journalistic objectivity: Call it like you see it. Don’t take sides. Just the facts, Ma’am.
 Like Mecca is to Muslims, Yankee Stadium is to baseball fans (even if you hate the Bronx Bombers). |
Usually, my seat is above yours in the quiet press box where the only peep you’ll hear is the wrapping of fingers on a keyboard. No cheering, no chants, and rightfully so—it’s a place of work.
But last Friday night, for the first time in 18 months, the media pass was ditched; the keyboard got packed away with the recorder along with any idea of work. The ’04 Cavalier got filled up and away it was on a six-hour journey to New York City where my old college mate and best friend, Mike, and I headed to a Yankees game.
Besides seeing my old pal, the purpose of the trip was to see Yankee Stadium for the first time in my 28-year existence before it becomes a skeleton in 2009.
Let’s get this straight: In no way shape or form have my allegiances left the Philadelphia Phillies for the pinstripes of the Evil Empire. Nor was there any sipping of the Yankee Bandwagon Kool Aid (although I do wonder if it’s cheaper than the $9 beers), and the only reason my hat collection includes George Steinbrenner’s boys is because it was “Cap Night” at the ballpark.
There are three great memories that I will forever carry as a baseball fan: (1) my first Phillies game with my dad; (2) taking in a Red Sox game at Fenway Park back in 2003; and (3) pacing up the concourse, a hot dog in one hand and a beer in the other, on a 68-degree spring evening and then walking into Yankee Stadium’s upper deck with the smooth sound of Bob Sheppard gracefully introducing the Bronx Bombers as he has for over five decades: “Batting third…number 53…Bobby…Abreau.” At the sake of sounding overdramatic, never in a baseball context have the blues been bluer, the whites been whiter and the greens been greener.
Mike and his wife walked to our seats—I stopped and stared, looking at Monument Park where the likes of DiMaggio, Mantle, Munson, and Ruth are honored. I gazed into the infield to see two future Hall of Famers, Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez, tossing the ball in warm-ups like school kids before Little League, and of course, I fixated on right field where a man who’s always been a personal favorite, Roger Maris, once stood.
For five minutes, I was a kid again, seeing a baseball stadium as more than just a place of work, seeing it once again, as a fan.
There was the famous “roll call,” where all nine Yankees on the field pay their first-inning respects with a tip of the cap as the right field bleachers chant their names until the outfield faithful are recognized by said player.
This wasn’t the American League Championship Series. It was the first Friday in May in Yankee Stadium. The opponent wasn’t the hated Boston Red Sox, it was AL West cellar dwellers, the Seattle Mariners. This was simply 49,500 baseball fans at Yankee Stadium. And the best part: For one night, I got to be one of them.
Wes McElroy hosts “The Final Round” on ESPN 840. Monday-Friday 4pm-6pm