Culture QotW: Take Me Out to the Ball Game

Which team are you rooting for this baseball season?

Three words: New York Yankees.

(ducks as blunt objects fly her way)

Seriously, I am a Yankees fan.

I'll confess that I don't follow them as religiously as I did as a kid (okay, so I can no longer reel off the roster by number, name, stats, etc.)  I don't even watch the games terribly often, though I'll follow the scores.  And, incidentally, would y'all win a World Series already, 'cause this is getting downright embarrassing!

When I was but a small ubicaritas (and far from being a diva), my dad would tell me stories about the old-time Yankees: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle.  He instilled in me a love of baseball.  If you ever want to see what my dad is like physically, in his manners of speech and dress, his love of the game, his wonder at the unknown, and yes, even his cap--watch Field of Dreams and, particularly, watch the James Earl Jones character in the last scene.  He is so much like my father that I'll cry whenever I watch Field of Dreams.  No, my father isn't black, but overall, they are so much alike that it's amazing.  At this last scene, James Earl Jones is playing an older man who has been disappointed for much of his life, but has seen how incredibly beautiful baseball--"the thrill of the grass"--really is.  He's no rock star; he's somewhat overweight, looks like moving is somewhat awkward and difficult, is wearing slacks and a button-down shirt and a flat cap, and is sitting on the bottom step of a set of aluminum bleachers with his legs akimbo and a thick book on his lap. 

(where was I again?  Oh, right.  The Yankees.)

Now, growing up on Yankees baseball as I did, I naturally had a few favorite players.  I watched David Cone's perfect game start-to-finish.  Ditto Roger Clemens'.  Derek Jeter was never a favorite, but he is one of the few players who has been with the Yankees ever since I can remember.  My favorite hero of all time, though he died years before I was born (heck, a few years before my dad was born), was Lou Gehrig, AKA the Iron Horse. 

I went to Yankee Stadium exactly once.  I remember that it was in June, and I was nine or ten.  I remember being in complete awe that I was actually standing in The Stadium.  My dad has always called it The Stadium, as if there were no other.  To us, there wasn't.  See, The Stadium has more history than most in the country.  It is one of the older stadiums still standing.  Imagine that as a kid, you've grown up listening to stories about the Babe, the Iron Horse, the Mick--and then you go and see the field on which they played.  Ruth would have been hovering over that home plate, and just waiting for that perfect fastball that would end up in those center field stands.

This will be the last year that anyone gets to play on the same ground on which Ruth and Gherig played.  Because, you see, George Steinbrenner has decided to tear down Yankee Stadium and rebuild it elsewhere, making it more "modern" and "family-oriented"--read, makes even more money than it does now when games at The Stadium are closer to sold out than anywhere else in the country, despite the older field and ghastly neighborhood.  (Steinbrenner, for this you will rot in hell.)  Okay, so the neighborhood is atrocious (my father swears that he once saw cannibals dancing around a large pot in an alley, but he's always been prone to slight exaggeration), and The Stadium is a bit grungy and certainly old fashioned.  But the truth is that Steinbrenner just doesn't get it.

Fans don't go to see the Yankees to be pampered in reclining box seats.  Fans don't avoid Yankee Stadium because of the neighborhood.  Those who aren't fans but go to The Stadium anyway go there because of the history.  And the fans really aren't interested in be-bopping mascots.  They want to see their Yankees play where their Yankees have always played.  And they'll fill the seats and shell out goodness-alone-knows-what for bleacher seats just for that privilege.  There's this fantastic scene in Finding Forrester (a rather obscure Sean Connery flick that isn't one of his better films) in which the cynical and depressed writer and his over-enthusiastic young protege end up standing alone on the pitcher's mound of Yankee Stadium and discussing the ghosts who must be there.

Did I mention that Shoeless Joe is one of my top ten favorite books ever?  Field of Dreams was good, but the book was a thousand times better.  Trust me.

Possibly one of my favorite pieces of history about the Yankees is the story of Lou Gehrig.  Yeah, the guy for whom Lou Gehrig's Disease was named because he had it.

Lou Gehrig was a fantastic ball player and even more fantastic human being.  He was never so famous as the Babe, but then the Babe was a world unto himself.  They played together, and, despite some differences, made up in the end.  Gehrig was the son of German immigrants who felt strongly that baseball was more of a waste of time than anything else, but who eventually permitted it because of the money he made doing so.  His stats are nothing short of impressive: a 2,130 game playing streak (despite 17 hand fractures over the years).  He batted over .300 for 12 years STRAIGHT, and, in 1927, hit 47 home runs.  This was the year that the Babe hit 60, but until September the two were about equal in their home run records.  In 1932, Gehrig became the first American League player to hit four homer in one game. 

Despite these stats, Gehrig was frequently overlooked by the media, and never really attained "star" status.  A very humble man, he was once asked about being in the "shadow" of the Babe.  His reply?  "It's a pretty big shadow, so I have room to spread myself."

1938 was the first year that Gehrig's average fell to below .300.  Doctors were uncertain what was wrong with him, but it was plain that he was growing weaker.  Indeed, a fellow team mate observed that Gehrig, when playing golf, would wear tennis shoes and slide his feet through the grass because of the effort it took to step in cleats.  In 1939, despite a lack of diagnosis, Gehrig's condition grew worse.  Manager Joe McCarthy, however, refused to take him out of the lineup until Gehrig took himself out.  After a simple play at first that he nearly flubbed in May of 1939, Gehrig was complimented by his team mates for making the save.  He never played again.  Shortly afterwards, he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis by a team of doctors at the Mayo Clinic.

On July 4th, 1939, the Yankees held a "Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day" in his honor.  Many Yankees, former and current, spoke about his character, his talent, his humility, his courage.  When Gehrig walked out onto the field to accept the award, several things were noticed.  First, that this man who had recently been a great athlete could barely walk to the pitchers mound.  The awards and plaques (from everyone from the City of New York to fellow ballplayers to the Stadium groundskeepers) were too heavy for him to hold, and he would have dropped them had someone not helped him lower them to the ground.  Second, his eyes were full of tears.

So many men in his condition would have been angry or resentful.  All Gehrig could say was,

After he gave this speech, the entire team was sobbing openly.  Babe Ruth, who had refused to speak to Gehrig to to a remark from Gehrig's ever-outspoken mother, had tears pouring down his face as he wrapped his arms around Gehrig.

Gehrig may have quit baseball, but he remained active in the community.  He soon requested a place on the juvenile parole board of New York, in order to help kids who needed such support.  He would refuse to allow the media to watch when he visited correctional facilities and spoke with the inmates.  And he never lost his genuine joy, whether it be for himself, a friend, or someone completely unknown to him. 

An example of this is described in an article by Bob Considine, a friend of Gehrig's.

"...on June 2, 1941, Lou called me from his office...He...kept up a lively interest in research into the disease that had driven him out of baseball.  It was a note about the latter that prompted his phone call.

'I've got some good news for you,' he said.  'Looks like the boys in the labs might have come through with a real breakthrough.  They've got some new serum that they've tried on ten of us that have the same problem.  And, you know something?  It seems to be working on nine of the ten.'  He was elated.

I tried not to ask the question, but it came out anyway, after a bit.

'How about you, Lou?'

Lou said, 'Well, it didn't work on me.  But how about that for an average?--nine out of ten!  Isn't that great?'

I said yes, it was great.

So was he."

Yes, he was.

On the day that Gehrig died, the mayor of New York City ordered that all flags be flown half-mast.  Unrequested, every other major league ballpark in the country did so as well.

So yes, I'm a Yankee fan.  And yes, this man is one of my heroes.