A little over a month and a half ago, I sat in the dining room at a fancy Boca Raton country club, and over pizza and steamers, heard my grandmother talk about watching the Brooklyn Dodgers in their glory days. I heard about cutting class to see the team win in 1941–and seeing her teachers at the game, about watching Pee Wee Reese and Roy Campenella, and, of course, Jackie Robinson.

The next morning, as my brother and I said our good-byes before we were about to head north, she made us promise that we’d come visit again, and that this time we’d stay for longer.

We both promised.

These are the things that haunt me, haunt me as I stroke her hand while she’s in an ICU bed, haunt me as I labor to understand monosyllabic words and short sentences from half-paralyzed lips, haunt me as I think about how for so long she’s taken care of us and now we have to take care of her.

These things haunt me then, and haunt me long after.

They haunt me in the nursing home, when every day I also say hello to Nana’s roommate, who’s blind but still tells my cousin that she looks like her daughter; they haunt me when I watch Nana try to eat pureed kosher mush since she’s still too weak to swallow solids; they haunt me when I look at the photos of a smiling, vibrant grandmother and I realize that it might be years before we get that back. If ever.

They haunt me, still, tonight, when I am, after a three day drive-and-train adventure, back in New York. They haunt me when my first game at Yankee Stadium this season just happens to be Jackie Robinson Day, and the conversation in the Pavillion dining room replays itself, word for word. Baseball. Brooklyn. Reese, Rickey, Robinson.

If I had known then, what would happen just a few weeks later, I would have pushed for more, more information, more stories, more memories.

After all, history books only tell you so much.

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Because I have seen so little baseball this season, I don’t realize that CC Sabathia is in the middle of attempting a no-hitter (or, as it were at the time, perfect game) until I casually check Twitter and see someone say something about the P-word.

As soon as I see it, my stomach lurches.

I’m not a baseball player, manager or broadcaster, but I believe, with all my being, as if I were a member of that fraternity, in the power of the Jinx.

I know, I know, it’s been disproven time and again: the Jinx is not really a Jinx. When he was pitching his perfecto, David Cone would be in the clubhouse in the bottom half of the innings and heard Michael Kay talk, ad naseum, about said achievement.

So why do I find myself screaming my head off (in front of some very bewildered family) when Joe Buck says “CC Sabathia is pitching a No Hitter”? Why do I buy into a superstition when I don’t adhere to most other ones?

I know, of course, that I can’t control whatever action happens on the field. If I get too involved, I’m accused of living my life vicariously through the athletes who are playing the game. I should be able to talk about the Perfect Game and the No Hitter all I want, but I feel dirty even if I call my brother to tell him he should probably turn the TV on right about now, if he wants to see something special.

Why this jinx, though?

Why does this one have so much sway?

The reason could be pretty simple, basic psychology: we so enjoy seeing the unusual, the record-breaking, the extreme accomplishments, that we want to do something, anything in our power to make it happen.

Since we can’t be on the field ourselves, pitching the baseball or calling the game, we resort to something much less tangible–our superstition.

So, someday, another pitcher will throw a no-hitter or a perfect game–just don’t expect me to say anything until after it’s long done.

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Opening Day is not Opening Day.

Opening day is when you cut class and go watch your favorite players in action, finally, once again.

Opening Day is when everything in the world is good.

Opening Day is when you feel alive again.

This year, it’s different.

This year, I spend Opening Night on my grandmother’s porch, reminiscing with my cousins about childhood memories, about relatives long and recently lost, and the conclusion that right now, baseball simply does not matter.

As I write this, the Yankees have blown a 5-1 lead and are trailing 8-7. I have no idea how this happened, but I know Granderson and Posada hit home runs, and that the Yankees tend to lose to the Red Sox in April, and then wallop them in August.

The Yankees, I know will play on. They’ll remain constant, if not exactly regular. As the summer progresses, with each day there will be another game, some wins, some losses, some rainouts, but baseball will remain constant.

But (grammatical faux pas aside), these moments with my family, I’ve learned the hard way, will not always be here.

So you take advantage of it when you can.

Baseball will wait.

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“The Dodgers won the pennant my senior year, must have been 1941.  We all cut gym class to go see the game.  We saw our teachers there, too.”

***

For a very long time, I’ve read about baseball in the 1940s and the 1950s.  I’ve read about the glory days of baseball in New York, of Yogi Berra and Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle, of Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese and Roy Campanella.

I’ve never, until tonight, actually talked to someone about it.

The way the face lights up, remembering one’s favorite players, how you could get into Ebbett’s field for $.10 and get a decent seat on the third base line for $.35, the despair when talking about the events of 1957…

Tonight, almost by chance, I had the chance to talk.

****

I’m in Florida for the weekend, and I’m staying with my grandmother.

I’ve known that Nana is a baseball fan and that she was a Dodgers fan, but not much more than that.

The dinner conversation tonight–over steamers, pizza and my brother’s steak sandwich–ambled like only a dinner conversation can, moving from one topic to the next.

First, it was food.  Then Europe. Then art.  Then a conversation about a house-museum in upper (way, way upper) Manhattan, and an off-hand remark about going to visit as a young girl.

“Nana,” I said, “I thought you said you grew up in Brooklyn?”

“I was eleven when I moved to Brooklyn.  I was born in the Bronx and lived in Manhattan.”

I did not know this.

“So,” I said, having never before made the connection, “you got to see the original Yankee Stadium?”

“Of course,” she said.  I can do the math in my head and realize that sometime between Nana’s birth and her move to Brooklyn, she got to see Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig play.  No wonder she likes baseball…

The conversation shifts, then, to the Dodgers, and to her memories of the team.

“Robinson, Reese, Campanella…I can’t remember who played first base.”

So begins a mad chase, my brother and I, using smart phones to try to pin down the first baseman.  I suggest looking for the 1955 Dodgers–the year they won the World Series–but Nana says that’s too late.

That’s when Nana says she’s thinking of the year the Dodgers won the pennant, the year she cut gym class to go see, and that year had to be 1941.

So we look up the 1941 Dodgers on Baseball Reference, and I read off the names.

Owen.

Camilli.  (Good old Dolph! )

Herman.

Reese.

Cooki–  Lavagetto

Reiser.

Medwick.

Walker.

“We had some outfield.”

We read through all of the names, Nana making her comments about the ones she remembers–Medwick, especially, since she always sat by third base.

We compare the roster in 1955–more names I recognize–Campanella, Hodges, Newcombe, Podres, even a 19-year-old Sandy Koufax.

Then comes 1957.

“I never forgave them.  I was done.”

That one line explains why I am a Yankees fan–there aren’t Dodgers in Brooklyn any more.

****

How often, I wonder, do mothers and daughters bond over baseball?

What about grandmothers and granddaughters?

We talk about baseball as something that’s passed from fathers to sons, and only recently from fathers to daughters, and yet, here I was, bonding with my grandmother, not over European art or literature or travel as we often do, but baseball (and a little Jets football, too).

So, sure, Nana can’t stand the Yankees, but I’ll give her a pass on that one.

She has memories, and with the memories come the stories, and just that little bit more texture to a world now relegated to books and old film.

Her stories make it real.

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Greetings, readers.

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? How have you spent your February?

Me? Pulled off a move (still in New York City, just a different place), griping about NBC’s Olympics coverage and making plans to go to my first (!) Spring Training game next weekend–alas, it’s not the Yankees, who are too far from my lodgings, but it’s the Cardinals and the Marlins, and how often does a Yankee fan get to see Pujols up close and personal?

So.

A few thoughts as Spring Training has begun to unfold.

1): I’m sure by now you’ve heard about the monster mash from teh Jesús.

I’ve waxed poetic about Montero before; as I told one of my drinks companions last night, there are very few baseball players I go ga-ga over; Mariano is one, Pujols is another, and Montero is easily the third.

Baseball Prospectus 2010 brings up an interesting point in their capsule review of Montero: sometimes, every once in a while, we’re gifted with a player whose, in their words, G-d given position is DH. As much as Montero’s value would increase as a catcher, he might very well debut as a DH–and if BP’s comparing him to Edgar Martinez and Frank Thomas, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

As it is, at some point, Nick Johnson will probably get hurt, because that’s what Nick Johnson does when he’s not busy owning our notion of .OBP, and he’ll need a replacement at DH. While DH’ing Posada and catching Cervelli for a couple games isn’t the worst thing in the entire world, by the middle of August we could very well be at a point where the Yankees would get the greatest benefit — roster hoop-jumping aside– from DH’ing Montero, and keeping Posada’s bat in the lineup at catcher.

We are, of course, a long way from that–Montero’s not yet played a game above AA. Then again, the guys who mashed similarly at AA at a young age–guys like Miguel Cabrera and Andruw Jones–didn’t spend much time at AAA, either.

The point here is that we’re probably looking at the best bat the Yankees have had in their system in a very, very long time–in terms of pure power, probably the best bat in my lifetime. Montero is employed by a team that plays in a league with a DH. If the need arises, and Montero performs in AAA as many of us expect, the Yankees should not hold him back.

Imagine if Edgar Martinez had been unleashed upon the Major Leagues before he turned 27….

2) Today was Picture Day. This year’s crop is much better than last year’s (and are viewable on Getty Images), but there isn’t any that rivals the pure shock value of Brian Bruney’s 2008 shot–where he was almost unrecognizable compared to his appearance in 2007. You wouldn’t think it possible to change your appearance that much in just a few months, but apparently it is.

3) I’m about to start reading Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract. I know, I know, it’s a book I should have read ages ago, before The Numbers Game or Baseball Between the Numbers, but for various reasons, I hadn’t purchased a copy till now.

I enjoy understanding what stats are supposed to tell you, but I’m not too good at calculating them. Thus, Baseball Between the Numbers is a favorite, but I haven’t been able to get through The Book–no fault of the author’s, the math just goes over my head.

Still, if anyone’s living proof that you don’t have to like math to appreciate sabermetrics, I’m probably it.

4) I’m not sure it snowed this much in any of my four years at Syracuse. Seriously.

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Ah, Fordham University.

If I could do a good Michael Kay impression, now is when I would do so.

However, since I can’t (not even a little), I’ll just leave you with this instead:

Yankees World Championship Trophy Pays Visit To Fordham University Rose Hill Campus This Sat., Jan., 23

***27th World Series Hardware treks up the Deegan to be displayed at Fordham Athletics Hall of Fame ceremonies, and during Rams vs. Temple Men’s Basketball Game***

New York, January 21, 2010 — The New York Yankees 2009 World Championship Trophy will depart from Yankee Stadium, travel north on the Major Deegan Expressway, across Fordham Road, and arrive at another venerable Bronx institution – Fordham University –  this Saturday, January 23, from 11:30 am to 4:00 pm for a special visit to the Rose Hill Campus.

Fordham will play host to the World Series hardware – the Bronx Bombers 27th championship trophy – will be on display during Fordham Athletics’ Hall of Fame induction ceremonies in the McGinley Center , and later at the Rams vs. Temple men’s basketball game at the Rose Hill Gymnasium. The public is welcomed (tickets for the Hall of Fame brunch are priced at $50 adults/$25 students and children, while game tickets are priced at $10 for adults and $5 for children).

An astounding number of Fordham connections helped the visit the visit to materialize. Recent Fordham/WFUV alum Ryan Ruocco (’08) tipped off executive athletic director Frank McLaughlin (‘69) with the brainchild. The idea was hatched because Michael Kay (’82), YES Network’s Yankees play by play voice and 1050 ESPN Radio host is Master of Ceremonies for the Hall of Fame proceedings. Ruocco works with Kay at both YES and ESPN. McLaughlin went into action, contacting a pair of Fordham grads now with the Yankees, Assistant Director of Corporate/Community Relations Rocky Halsey (’98) and Director of Stadium Tours Tony Morante (’79), who will escort the trophy to his alma mater.

Men’s swimming record holder Akira Kosugi (CBA ’96), football Patriot League champions   and 2004 graduates Kirwin Watson (FCRH), wide receiver Javarus Dudley (CBA) and quarterback Kevin Eakin (FCRH), Ioana Dragan (CBA ’02, Women’s Tennis), and Sophie Namy (FCRH ’00 Rowing) – champions all – will be inducted into the hallowed Fordham halls, where they join the likes of Frankie Frisch, Vince Lombardi, Wellington Mara and Vin Scully in the Fordham pantheon, with the Yankees championship trophy present and accounted for.

Now, as a Syracuse graduate, I have to say that most of the time I am completley unaware that Fordham even has a basketball team, but my favorite memory from my time at Fordham?

Walking the long way from FMH to McGinley, past the baseball fields in the fall and spring, listening to the ping of baseballs off of the aluminum bats…

…(Yes, I’m overly sentimental, so what?)

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In a room in my parents’ house, there is a framed poster from the Met:  “Baseball cards from the Burdick Collection”, and it contains just that–images of baseball cards, as early as Cobb, and up to Willy Mays–five rows of four cards each.

I remember when the poster was first hung–I can’t tell you how my parents acquired it or, really, even, when, but I can tell you what I remember was my first impression:

Who were these guys?

There were maybe three I could identify–Babe Ruth (though the pinstripes on his uniform are completely faded), Mickey Mantle and Jackie Robinson.

But the others?  Joe Jackson?  Tris Speaker?  Satchel Paige?

Now, of course, it’s a little different.

So many years later, I am familiar with every name on the poster–even if not the intimate details of said player’s career.

Somewhere along the line, I learned baseball.

It’s a funny thing, baseball–because there is so much to it.  There’s the game itself, of course–the rules, the procedures, the scoring, the competition–but much more than the present, and more than any other sport today, there is also the history.

No other American sport has a history like baseball–one that goes as far back (if I remember correctly, we’ve traced it back at least to the eighteenth century in some form, maybe earlier), one that is as richly documented (even if the origins of the game itself are still shrouded in mystery) or one that has become so woven with the fabric of American society.

Somewhere along the line, any serious baseball fan learns the game’s history.  Whether they choose to do so through the narrative, like going through the museum at Cooperstown from start to finish, or through the statistics (check out The Numbers Game) if you have not already done so), whether it occurs through some form of osmosis or through careful and active study, it happens.

Somehow, somewhere, you learn who Babe Ruth was, and Lou Gehrig, and Joe DiMaggio, and Ted Williams, and Ty Cobb and Honus Wagner, and when you do, your experience of the game becomes that much richer.

Baseball is nothing if not for the stories that color its past, giving us fodder for G-d-only-knows how many books, movies, plays and superstition.

We can joke about there being a curse at Citifield, for example, but it takes on so much more meaning when one thinks about the billy goat curse of the Chicago Cubs (if you believe in that sort of thing, of course.)

We can delight in the Yankees winning the World Series, but the wins become something else when we remember that same emotion that we as fans feel may very well have been the same as our parents and grandparents–never mind the emotions running through the players on the field.

Without its past, baseball is just another game.

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At the moment, only one thought is going through my mind: No matter what, I will never feel like this again.

The Yankees will win more championships, but there’s nothing like the first time you’re really old enough to appreciate it, and the first time you get to watch it with the same people you have watched with the entire season.

There were seven of us tonight–Amanda, Ben, Joe, Mark, Larry, Brent and myself–and from the get-go, you knew something was up.

The Angels long having been left in the dust, we wanted more. The ALCS alone was not enough.

Brent and I were among the first to arrive. See how clean, how prepared the bar looks? Yeah, by the fifth inning, not so much. By then you could sense it.

A very blurry Ben and Larry.

If you ever get a chance to go to a bar and watch a game with Larry, I highly, highly recommend it. He is an optimist prime!

Brent and Mark.

I have it on good authority that those wings are very, very good. I can’t eat anything fried so I’ve got no idea, but Blondie’s has amazing soft pretzels, so I gorged on them. Actually, by the fifth inning I was so distracted by the game and OHMIGOD CHRIS MELONI that I wasn’t hungry at all.

Brent is gettin’ jiggy wit it!

If you’re an astute observer, you’ll notice who the baserunner is–it kind of sums up everything.

We can sense it. Us and our pitchers of Brooklyn and Miller Lite–so many that we get one on the house–we can sense it.

Mark wanted proof he was here. Ergo, proof he was here.

Celebrating someone doing something in front of a CBS camera man. I can’t really remember what it was, except that after Matsui’s double we all jumped up and started chanting MVP! MVP! and really, at that point, there was no doubt.

Oh, and, GUESS WHO WAS IN THE BAR WATCHING THE GAME?!?

CHRIS MELONI THAT’S WHO!

They handed these signs out towards the end

I’ve also got videos:

1) That girl playing air guitar and generally making an ass of herself? Yeah?

That’s me.

2) The final out. We kind of went crazy. If you can’t tell.

3) New York, New York, one more time:

It was after this last song that tragedy struck:

I’ve had my camera for three years. In those three years I have without fail remembered to use the wrist strap when doing stupid things. Without fail.

Except last night.

While celebrating, one of us who shall remain nameless, knocked the camera out of my hand and it hit the table and then landed on the open lens on the floor.

Had the camera been off, or had it landed on the backside, it would have been fine.

Alas, such was not the case.

Meh.

BUT DUDE. MELONI! MATSUI! TWENTY SEVEN WORLD TITLES!

The best part?

Being able to experience it with friends that have been there every step of the way.

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(Idea h/t to Amanda Rykoff)

With apologies to the Blue Jays, Orioles, Indians, Royals, Twins, Rangers, Mariners, Athletics, Nationals, Mets, Braves, Cubs, Pirates, Brewers, Reds, Padres and Dodgers.

We have waited.

Since Luis Gonzalez blooped and since the demons of the Angels and since the great ALCS hangover and since the Collapse and since the Angels again and since the underachievers and since the midges and since the Final Season.

Since Spring Training ‘roids scandals, since an inauspicious start, since April rain, since 0-8, since having to start a .190 AA catcher (and the dreamy eyes of doom), since a Return, since the first walk off, since a dropped pop up, since the Boston Sweep Party, since it was cold, then warm, then cold again.

Since the start of October, since the excision of demons with one ninth-inning swing, since parting finally with the idle among us, since out-fundamentalling a team that couldn’t handle cold weather, since Halloween, since fall back weekend.

We have waited.

Now there is only one thing left us: One more win.

So close, and still we wait.

We wait as the college basketball season starts and football reaches the midpoint of the season.

We wait, leaving no discussion point unturned: Can Andy pitch on three days’ rest? Should Girardi be fired if Hairston starts for Swisher? Can Mariano pitch two? Even three? Will it rain? Is Utley still the MVP even if the Phillies lose?

We come up with playoff play lists and theorize as to how much someone would have to pay for us to part with game six tickets. We muse about the travesty of nightfall at 5.30 in the afternoon and laugh as beat writers post game threads 24 hours in advance (a mistake, they say…).

We wait.

In Spanish, the verb “esperar” means to wait.

It also means to hope.

We wait, and we hope.

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While playoff baseball itself can be entertaining, the experience is that much more when you are able to share it with others.

So it was, last night, when ten of us crowded into Blondie’s on 79th and Amsterdam. Well, originally it was ten, but the number grew as friends found themselves in the right place at the right time.

I’ve been in bars before, watched games on tvs before, but never like this–never a World Series game for my team, in a bar, on Halloween, on a Saturday night.

All it takes is the right thing happening at the right time–such was the case.

Man, we were loud.

Between chanting Let’s Go Yankees, demanding that A-Rod’s home run be called, well, a home run, and singing along to Enter Sandman (yes, they played it as Mo walked in from the bullpen), you may have thought that we were there, at Citizen’s Bank Park, watching.

Well, that or that we were all very drunk.

After you watch this video, you’ll probably think it was the latter:

[Warning: We are not good singers. Please do not play this video in front of your music class or anyone whose ears you would like to protect.]

(Photos are credit: Amanda Rykoff and Rebecca Glass. Video credit: Rebecca Glass)

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