My Road To Becoming a Huge Yankee Fan

So I started watching baseball in 1989.  My first actual memory of Major League Baseball was watching the 1989 World Series.  This was the Oakland A's vs the San Francisco Giants.  I was sitting up in my parents' bedroom and all of the sudden, there was an earthquake on tv!  I do not know officially if this part of the story is true, but ingrained in my memory is Phil Rizzuto saying "HOLY COW! WE'RE HAVING AN EARTHQUAKE!"  I truly don't know if he was even on the air or not, but that sticks in my mind, true or not.

Regardless, I know I had to be watching baseball that season, otherwise I would not have cared about the World Series.  That being said, I don't remember anything before that.  Combined with Aunt Arlene giving me a Jose Canseco baseball card collecting book (Mike Draney got the Don Mattingly one) for Christmas, I naturally liked the A's for a short period of time.  They were the hot team, and I ended up collecting 132 different Jose Canseco cards through the years.  (If you want to see them, I still have the collection in my basement somewhere.)

This was THE book!

In 1990, I remember sitting in the TV room and Grandma and Grandpa Pizzano were over, hanging in the living room with my mom.  They called me in and I yelled back out to them with excitement:  WAIT!  I'm watching the Yankee game and there is someone who's batting who's so good they call him "BAM BAM!"  So I watched Hensley Meulens' at bat and then went out to the family.

That season ended with the A's in another World Series (which I'm pretty sure I watched them lose from my parents bedroom in our Pocono house) and then a birthday present from Grandma and Grandpa. . . . . .  A video tape of the 1990 New York Mets season.  I watched that video tape OVER AND OVER AND OVER again.  I had it memorized about as well as I do any episode of Saved By the Bell.  I knew every detail, down to the black cat that crossed past the dugout, the "chin music" from Frank Viola, the opening scene showing the chains on the spring training fence for the lockout, the Pittsburgh pirates dominance, I can hear the guys voice in my head while i type this.  So I knew everything there is to know about the 1990 New York Mets, so of course, I followed them for a minute.

My first baseball game - it was a Mets vs. Braves game with dad and Grandpa.  The Braves won 3-2 and after the game, we went to the Hearth.  My dad and I went to town on a bottle of ketchup during that meal, that's for sure!   And back then, I still liked pickles, which was always a highlight of the Hearth, for anyone who remembers that.

My 2nd game was the Yankees vs the A's.  My dad almost got a foul ball at that game, but he lost out because he was not willing to crawl under some woman's seat to get it.  Stump Merrill was thrown out of that game and the final score was 10-8.  I don't actually remember who won, but I am pretty sure that was the score.

My first autograph (besides MC Hammer) - was at the Raritan Expo Center in Edison.  Dad brought me to meet Mickey Mantle, Frank Robinson and Monte Irvin.  This was the beginning of the hobby that I still am big into, in fact, probably bigger now than ever before.  But considering my first run at autographing being Mickey Mantle, I would say that I was set up on a path to have that as a hobby for a long time coming.  The interesting thing about this is that while my Dad (and Mom) took me to games as a kid and helped nurture his young son's interest in sports, he was never really all that into watching sports on a daily basis.  This was possibly because he was up at 3AM or earlier every day to go to work and really was not going to make it through a whole game anyway.   We were REALLY into collecting baseball cards and when I say collecting cards, I mean 10s of thousands of cards.  We'll get to that another day.  But looking back on things, I am not sure what made him decide to bring me to meet Mickey Mantle and the others.  I'm sure I didn't ask for it, in fact, I probably had no idea how big of a deal this actually was.  He must have seen an advertisement for it somewhere and felt like it would be a great opportunity for us.  27 years later, I don't really care WHY.  All I care is that we did it.  Whatever made him decide to bring me to this, it was a GREAT decision and one of my favorite memories as a kid.  AND I have this ball and a photo of me with the Mick hanging in my basement.  Thanks Dad!

(BTW, $37 to meet Mickey, get the autograph and take the photo! Only $17 for Frank Robinson)

And just for good measure, my MC Hammer autograph . . . . . 

Then there were the Braves who were for some reason on EVERY NIGHT on TBS during a big portion of my childhood.  In addition to this, I'm pretty sure that Jay Brock went to Braves Spring training when I was in 3rd or 4th grade, so we were kinda looking at lots of baseball cards and stuff for the Braves before he went out there.  I had my own little tomahawk and even . . . . . . the most embarrassing part - I had my own braves Jacket.  (by the way, My mom will NEVER let me live down the fact that i left that jacket on a bus in 6th grade)  I even made a tomahawk out of paper.  What a wack job.

In 1993, the Rockies and Marlins came into existence, so the "in" thing was to like one of those.  I chose the Rockies.  That lasted about as long as it takes to buy a hat.  That was it.  Anyone remember who was the first pick in that expansion draft?  David Nied mean anything to you?  :-)

In what must have been 6th grade, my dad and Mr. Brock signed me and Jay up for a 1-week baseball camp at Yankee Stadium.  If nothing yet cemented my Yankee fandom, this was about to put things over the top.  We spent a week playing on the field at Yankee Stadium.  Joe Peppitone and Roy White were the guest alumni clinicians and it was a dream come true week.

With that camp came 2 free tickets to one of two games of our choice.  We chose September 4, 1993.  This turned out to be Jim Abbott's no hitter vs. the Cleveland Indians.  We had LOGE level seats.  I'll never forget the last out.  After Randy Velarde threw that ball across the diamond to secure the final out, I through my soda up in the air, realized what I had done, looked over at the guy who it landed on - he looked at me and we both just shrugged our shoulders and got back to screaming and cheering!

1994 was the Strike year and 1995 was upon us.  This is where I can remember things starting to really matter to me, more than just being a kid who think he likes baseball.  I recall a band dance at the church by the jug-handle on Broad Street near Colfax Ave.  It was playoff time and the Yankees were playing the Seattle Mariners.  This was the first time that I really felt like I could not keep my eyes (or ears) off of the game.  I cared SOOOO much what was going to happen in that series.  There was a small tv in the kitchen that i guess the adults were watching while they chaperoned and I had my walkman on so I can listen.  I went outside to listen during the big times or disappeared to the tv if possible.  As we all know, they lost that series, but I was absolutely hooked at that point.  Lucky for me, the Yankees were about to start their most recent run of greatness.  By the way, does anyone remember the OTHER song they tried to have the grounds crew do besides YMCA that year?   It failed miserably, but I will never forget.  Imagine if it stuck?  The Macarena.  :-)

So that's the "short story" of where my baseball fan life began and how it led me to the Yankees.  It's funny.  I ask my student often which teams they like, in whatever sport they follow.  They are often so non-committal.  If they do give me an answer, I always find myself asking them HOW they became a fan of those teams.  It's usually just based on something cool that happened to that team recently or whatever the hot team is.  Sometimes it's because their dad loved that team and often, the kids now don't follow teams, they follow players.  I have no judgment on them if they are not sure, or if they change teams, or if they have a favorite team but then also follow another team that is actually good.  It's what kids do.

I have no shame in the fact that I bounced from the A's to the Mets to the Braves to the Rockies, etc.  If you notice, in there was a constant bounce back to the Yankees.  On tv, going to games, getting autographs, playing on the field for a week, etc. . . . . but when you are 9 and trying to watch baseball and get interested, the 1990 NY Yankees, outside of 2+ months of Kevin Maas (who i met at Herman's Sporting Goods in the Willowbrook Mall, BTW) were not really something that was easy to watch.

(Kevin Maas @Herman's)

They were kind of boring.  Those other teams that I watched, for however brief as it may have been, kept me interested in the game enough to keep watching the Yankees, develop a love for the game and wait it out until my deep down favorite team was entertaining to watch.  Who knew they'd become what they did!  Lucky me.

These days, they Yankees can go through a 20 year losing streak and nothing would take me away.  (talk to the Knicks die-hards about that . . . . . )  Lucky for me, I don't foresee that happening any time soon.