By Danny DiPierro
I can certainly relate to your [sadness] about Rupert Murdoch and the current Dodger ownership. I've had to deal with the megalomaniac felon George Steinbrenner (and now his sons) since the 70's. I've always rationalized: "It's like being an American in spite of Nixon, Reagan and Bush I & II". Would be so much happier with O'Malley or Oakland's Haas family (guess you have to be named Walter), but there just doesn't seem to be very many owners out there like that.
But I do find it really hard to believe that anyone could actually be "revolted" by the likes of Derek Jeter, Joe Torre, Bernie Williams, or Mariano Rivera. This modern era of the Yankees since 1995 is pretty solid, a little straight if you really get down to it. They even used to tell Mattingly and Munson to shave and cut their hair! I always leaned more towards the likes of Boomer Wells and David Cone, or more recently Giambi and Swisher, but jocks are mostly just jocks.
Hey, I've heard every "Yankees Suck" rant that there is. I've been in Fenway Park at a Yankees/Red Sox game, even! And I do have a book in my library titled "The Official New York Yankee Hater's Guide". I simply smile and look at history and Cooperstown. I really don't have to argue too loudly.
I think Ken Burns did a fairly good job giving me the true background of how baseball (and particularly the Yankees and a few other teams) has run the show with money, power and politics all the way back to Spalding at the very beginning. I certainly had been quite naive to all of that until maybe the 70's with George and free agency.
But my love of baseball/Yankees is not so much nostalgia as it is primal. My Mom and brother and I watched Yankee games religiously all summer long, keeping score in front of the TV. Every day as I played sandlot games I fantasized about being Joe Pepitone at first or Mantle in center or at bat. And every year my Dad took us to a double-header to watch Mickey and the boys. There was really nothing better than that smell of cigar smoke outside and organ music on the PA, and that amazing green grass with white lines, or the sound of the crowd cheering (and stands shaking like a subway train) when Mantle hit a home run, amazing!!! And who did the broadcasting, sharing every baseball story I ever learned from? Red Barber, Mel Allen, Phil Rizzuto, Gerry Coleman, Joe Garagiola, these guys watched and even played with Ruth, Gehrig and DiMaggio, or against Satchel Page and Ted Williams, in 100 World Series games!
Ah, growing up in the1950's era of NY Yankees/Giants/Brooklyn Dodgers! To be perfectly frank, as a kid, the fantasy of a "team of giants" first caught my imagination, visions of Jack (from the Beanstalk) and Paul Bunyan stomping around the outfield! It was ironic that I really became an avid Yankee fan during the '62 Yankees/Giants World Series, with a transistor radio and all day games played at the end of my 6th grade school day. That line drive from McCovey to Richardson cemented it. (Remember, it was not too many years after the devastating Bill Mazeroski walk-off that left Yogi and Mickey devastated in Pittsburgh.)
With a legacy of Joe DiMaggio/Jackie Robinson/Willie Mays/Duke Snider/Pee Wee Reese/Casey Stengel/Leo Durocher/Roy Campanella/Yogi Berra/Mantle and Maris/Whitey Ford/Sandy Koufax, it was pretty hard not to believe that the center of all of the baseball world was NYC, if not right in the House that Ruth Built in the Bronx itself! Like most everything else, the medium is the message! McLuhan and Andy Warhol knew what they were talking about.
I couldn't change this deep heritage any more than I could forget I come from New York, or that I live and love art and/or that I'm Italian-American.
Hope to see you [at a game] this summer.
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