Yankee dandy

Man, I'm over the moon about this one: Last night, I went to my first Yankees game at Yankee Stadium, where, perhaps for the first time in years, I felt like a kid again.

It's the lights that got me. I arrived at the stadium, handed my ticket over, pushed through a turnstile, walked down a tunnel, and was suddenly confronted by a battery of white floodlights. Then I utterly forgot that it was raining, that I'd spent $5 just to check my bag in a locker, that I'd be spending many more dollars on hot dogs and chicken fingers and beer, that my seat was all the way in the upper deck. This was Yankee Stadium, the House that Ruth Built, the home of champions. Everything around me was a reminder of the dominance of the New York Yankees, the most successful North American franchise in professional sports history. I felt small and inexperienced and apprehensive. Do I belong here? I wondered. Do I know enough about the sport of baseball to enjoy this? Am I going to witness history tonight? Where are the bathrooms?

There's somewhat of a backstory to this. For most of my life, baseball had been nothing but a stereotype -- "America's favorite pastime" -- with impenetrable rules. About the only thing I knew was that a guy throws a ball, another guy hits the ball with a wooden bat and runs around a diamond, stepping on bases as he does so, and if he's lucky or good, he gets back to home plate and scores. But I knew virtually nothing else. I never had to; I grew up on the baseball-free island of Borneo, where the favorite pastime is watching American documentaries about Borneo just to laugh at the way Westerners pronounce "orangutan."

The last two years of my life I spent teaching myself the ins and outs of the game, mostly because I felt ashamed for being an American resident who was completely ignorant of baseball. [A similar shame prompted me to learn, among other things, the rules of American football, how to sing "America the Beautiful", and how to identify American Idol winners by hairstyle.]

I don't claim to know that much about baseball, but one thing I know is that you can learn an awful lot, even if you're as ignorant as I was, just by watching Yankees games on TV. So until last night, that's exactly what I'd been doing for two years.

But man, nothing beats going to a game in the Bronx. My co-worker and friend CSG had two free tickets and offered one to me, and even though I'd already made plans for the evening, there really wasn't a question of whether I should take the ticket.

The thing about baseball is that if it's raining hard enough, they'll delay the game, which is how we found ourselves sitting in a summer downpour waiting for the clouds to roll off. About an hour after the game was supposed to have started, a rainbow appeared over the stadium, and the sky cleared up. Game on!

If you really want to know how the game went, read the Associated Press recap here. I'm here to tell you about the things I didn't know from simply watching a game on TV:

• The best deal on concessions is the chicken fingers, by far. I mean, they weren't cheap -- this is a pro sporting event, after all -- but they're a better deal than a $5.25 no-frills hot dog. Even the New York Times agrees somewhat. Here's a list of great ballpark food (go here and click on New York).
• The beer sellers only call out "last call!" to get you to buy beer. They stuck around at least 45 minutes after "last call."
• If you buy a bag of Cracker Jacks for $5.75, just give the vendor $6.00 and tell him to keep the change.
  
• The people around us all seemed to know each other. At first, I thought they were one big family who'd come out to see the game together, but then I realized that they were all season-ticket holders and had come to know each other as neighbors.
• During the rain delay, the stadium played "Soak Up the Sun" by Sheryl Crow over the PA system. It seemed like a cruel joke. But then they played some Springsteen and Sinatra and all was forgiven.
• Women in the Bronx have really big chests. It sort of makes it hard for them to climb up to the nosebleed seats in the upper deck.
  
• Yankee Stadium feels like it was built for champions. The outfield grass is immaculate. The upper deck rises sharply around the field, almost majestically, like walls of a canyon. Even I, a mere spectator, felt like a champ.
• It was also thrilling to hear Bob "The Voice of Yankee Stadium" Sheppard announce the players over the PA, especially when he pronounced Derek Jeter's name. "Now batting for the Yankees... shortstop... number two... Derek... Jeetuh... number two."
• It's sort of a cliché, but you know what else you can hear? The sound a bat makes when it smacks a ball out of the field for a home run -- one of the greatest noises in sports.
  

You know those Japanese or Singaporean or Filipino people who grow up listening to Elvis Presley and then decide in their old age to make a pilgrimage to Memphis just to see where The King lived and died? That's not how I felt when I went to Yankee Stadium. I didn't grow up watching baseball. I didn't even try to make it out to Yankee Stadium in the four years I've been in New York. I don't worship the likes of A-Rod and Jeter. Jorge Posada is not my favorite Puerto Rican.

But when the Yankees won the game, and Sinatra's "New York, New York" came booming out of the speakers, and thousands of jubilant New Yorkers sang along, I couldn't help but join in. It was a great day to be in the greatest city on earth.

Fumbles

Glaringly obvious comment ahead: 2007 was a bad year for New York sports. The Knicks lost 15 of their last 19 games to end the regular season last season. Playoffs? Not even close. Two months into this season, they've won eight games. Eight out of 31. The Giants have more wins than that in 16 games.

Speaking of the Giants, they squeaked their way into tomorrow's AFC wild card game. I say squeak because there was a point in the regular season that New York fans began worrying their team wouldn't make the playoffs. Now that they're in, they have to contend with Jeff Garcia, an arch-nemesis if there ever was one.

In Major League Soccer (which, by international standards, is sort of like the soccer you play with your cousins on 4th of July weekend while waiting for the cheese to melt on the burgers), New York's Red Bulls were dismissed by the New England Revolution. (If this blog were titled One Year in Boston, there'd be plenty of good news in sports, by the way.)

I'd mention something about baseball, but it's too early in the day for rage and depression.

And what about my beloved Rutgers, the closest thing to New York's official college football team? They finished the '07 season with a 7-5 record, good enough to be invited to a bowl game so inconsequential that it's being played in Canada.

Winners and losers

My mother in-law, echoing a popular and accurate sentiment, often says, "New York loves a winner." This is especially true for the city's professional sports teams. Now, I'm no sports pundit, and the only pro sport I follow with any true conviction is basketball. Unfortunately for me, the New York Knicks, once an NBA powerhouse, has in recent years been about as exciting to watch as my cat's attempt to remove an ice cube from her water bowl. I did attend a couple of games last season at the famed Madison Square Garden, both times using free tickets, both times leaving disappointed as the home team sort of gave up altogether. I've never really been a fan of the Knicks, though, so it's hardly a personal loss.

For more successful sports organizations, there are always the Mets and the Yankees, New York's major league baseball teams. Confession: Having been born and raised in another country, I only recently figured out the game of baseball. Until about two or three months ago, I didn't know what RBI stood for. Until tonight, I didn't know what ERA stood for.* And I'm still learning. I don't know for sure if an understanding of various acronyms and statistical categories is essential to enjoying the "American pastime," but it sure does enhance the enjoyment for me. Tonight, as I watched the Yankees hold off perennial rivals the Boston Red Sox in the ninth inning to win the game by a precarious margin, it occurred to me that I might be in danger of becoming a fan.

It's not hard to be a fan of the Yankees -- they're the most successful North American professional sports franchise in history, winning 26 World Series championships (by comparison, the Boston Celtics, the most successful pro basketball franchise, have a paltry 16 NBA titles). Fairweather fans are a dime a dozen in this city, but still, you have to appreciate the support from the New York area for the phenomenal success of the Rutgers college football** team, who last year finished the season with a 10-2 record, the best in the school's history. Not too long ago, they were lucky to win two games in one season. When I was at Rutgers, several years ago, I never ever went to a game. In fact, when I was at Rutgers, I didn't even know how the game of football is played.

Rutgers is 40 miles outside of the city, but it's the closest you can get to a winning local college football team in a city that desperately wants a college football team to root for. I was on the train today heading back into New York from New Jersey, and in between standard announcements ("ThisstationstopisMetroparkpleasewatchyourstepasyouexitthetrain"), the driver came on the PA system to announce that "Green Bay is beatin' up on the Giants." Then he reported that "Rutgers is number nine in the country," meaning that the Rutgers football team was now the ninth-best*** college team in the nation, according to the AP Poll. In spite of myself, I let out a celebratory "whoo-hoo!" and the teenaged boy in a Nike baseball cap sitting next to me flinched and gave a me furtive glance, as if worried that I might behead him with my cellphone.

*Yes, I know I could have looked up these things online, or asked one of the many sports nuts I know, but it's been far more rewarding learning the game as I watch it on TV.
**By "football" I mean gridiron, or American, football. Not to be confused with "soccer" which, while indeed a beautiful game and one I grew up playing, is merely the second-greatest game in the world.
***Rutgers is actually ranked 11th. Apparently the train operator's information was as reliable as New Jersey Transit's schedules.