Opportunities Missed, Opportunities Gained

            I have a long history of missed opportunities at Yankee Stadium. There was that game against the Royals that my brother and I decided to skip back in 1996, only to miss a walk-off, two-run homer by Darryl Strawberry. There was the playoff game against the Mariners in 2001, when I landed tickets only to fall ill the day of the game and miss it entirely, including a home run by my favorite player, Bernie Williams.

There was the game against the Red Sox back in 1993, when my friend Stew and I drove to Yankee Stadium to see then-Red Sox stars Roger Clemens and Wade Boggs take on the Yankees only to realize when we got there that Stew’s automatic car window wouldn’t close on the driver’s side. He said there was no way he was leaving his car window open in a city parking lot, so we drove home.             And, to top it all, there was that Billy Joel concert at the Stadium back in 1990, when Amy and I had field-level seats but got caught in so much traffic that we arrived in time for the second encore. We stood on the field and sang along to the final three songs.

            When you go to events, you’re bound to miss some things. I obviously have. But I don’t get to Yankee Stadium as much anymore, so there’s not much room for any regrets. If I go to a game, I stay until the end and enjoy every minute. That was the plan last weekend, when I went to the big ballpark in the Bronx with my family.

            My mother had a tough summer health-wise, and we’re all thrilled that she’s feeling much better. So we decided to celebrate her birthday with a game at the Stadium. We arrived in our upper-deck seats behind home plate in time for the Saturday matinee, with six of us excited to watch the game together – my mom, my brother, my wife, our two girls, and myself.

            By the time the first inning had ended, the game was one hour old. The Yankees held a 3-2 lead in this sloppy contest, and our younger daughter was already wondering when the game would be over. But the girls settled down and started to enjoy the details of this ballpark, from the foul poles to the flags atop the stadium to the groundskeepers dancing to the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.” Unfortunately, the Yankees and their opponent, the Oakland A’s, had not come ready to play their best baseball, and they dragged a 5-5 tie into extra innings.

            Our oldest daughter got caught up in the excitement of the late-innings drama, and we hung in there through 12 innings. When the 13^th inning began, we’d been in Yankee Stadium for five and a half hours. Everyone was hungry, and the girls were restless. By the time we’d made our way down to the lower level, the A’s had started the 13^th inning with three home runs, taking a 9-5 lead and sending us out of the park with no regrets. True, the Yankees would have last licks in the bottom of the 13^th, but we had seen enough for one day.

            We took the D train downtown, and got off on West 4^th Street to stop for dinner before driving home. As we walked toward the Italian restaurant we’d chosen for dinner, I passed another restaurant that had its windows wide open on this beautiful evening. As I glanced at the tables and diners to my left, I noticed a wide-screen TV behind them. And on that TV, I saw a live shot of Yankee Stadium. Atop that image was a score: A’s 9, Yankees 9.

            Say what? My mouth dropped. I turned to my mom and told her what I’d seen. She called out to the others, who found another restaurant window in time to stand on the sidewalk and watch the Yankees score yet another run in the 14^th inning to win by a score of 10-9. We stood beside a man who’d left the game himself, back in the eighth inning, and he shared high-fives with us after the winning run crossed home plate.

            Sigh.

So yes, the Yankees did execute the ultimate comeback while we were cruising along an underground tunnel in Manhattan. And yes, we missed it all. Add it to the list, right?

            But I have to say, I have a different spin on those missed opportunities at age 41. Sure, I wasn’t there to see the end of the game, and it was chaotic and dramatic and wonderful for the home fans. But remember, this day was never really about a baseball game. It was about a family celebrating a birthday, a mother, and good health. The only missed opportunity would have been to not go at all.

            And that’s how it’s always been. The day my brother and I missed the Strawberry home run? We actually spent that afternoon hanging out together at the Jersey Shore. The time I missed that playoff game because I was ill? I got to relax at home with my wife, and she pampered her sick husband. The day that Stew and I missed a game because of his window malfunction? We ended up taking another car to enjoy a nice dinner together that night.

            The Billy Joel concert? Well, that just stunk however you look at it. No silver linings there.

            But last weekend, as the Yankees gathered around home plate to celebrate their win, my family stepped into a fabulous restaurant on Houston Street to cap our day together. The girls had perked up, they were hanging out with their uncle and grandmother, and my mom was telling stories. The pizza arrived at our table, and we dug in hungrily.

            It was a success, however you look at it. There are no regrets about quality time with the people you love. And hey – somehow in the midst of it all, our baseball team had won a ballgame. Go Yankees. Go Mom.

Last Man Standing (One Sixty-Two: Day 96)

Writer’s note: One Sixty-Two is a season-long series of blog posts connecting baseball’s major-league players to life’s universal themes. Just as there are 162 games in a season, so there will be 162 posts in this series. Let’s play some ball.

Day Ninety-Six: Ramon Santiago, Detroit Tigers

Wade Boggs has 3,010 career base hits, but the most famous at-bat of his career involves none of those hits. Boggs’ most-viewed at-bat shows him waving helplessly at a biting slider on a July 4th afternoon in Yankee Stadium. The pitcher, Dave Righetti, responds to this miss by hugging his catcher, Butch Wynegar. The Yankees storm the field.

Righetti has thrown a no-hitter against the Boston Red Sox on this day in 1983, and Boggs is the final out. And 27 years later, even though Wade Boggs has a plaque in Cooperstown and Dave Righetti does not, our visual history always shows Righetti as the better player. Thousands of people each year see that clip of Righetti dominating Boggs, while far fewer see any of the opposite-field singles that led Boggs to five batting titles and 12 All-Star Game appearances. That’s what happens when you’re the final out of a no-hitter – you live in infamy, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Ramon Santiago is no Wade Boggs, but he’s certainly had his share of hits in a nine-year career spent mostly with the Detroit Tigers. Yesterday, though, Santiago was called to the plate to pinch-hit against a man who had retired 26 batters without allowing a hit. As Tropicana Field reverberated with a roar not often heard in that building, Tampa Bay Rays pitcher Matt Garza had one more out to go in his quest for the first no-hitter in Rays’ history. Instead of sending starting shortstop Danny Worth to the plate for the third time, the Tigers sent up Santiago.

And so here it was – Santiago would either break up the no-no, and avoid falling on the wrong side of history, or he would succumb to Garza and see himself, decades from now, making that final out again and again.

He swung hard – let’s give him that. But Santiago got under a Garza fastball, and lifted a lazy fly ball to right field. Ben Zobrist, who had saved the no-hitter with a leaping grab earlier in the game, had no problem with Santiago’s pop-up. Garza had his no-hitter – the fifth of the year in Major League Baseball, with more than two months still remaining in the season. The Rays jumped all over Garza, reporters interviewed him on the field, and a teammate gave him the obligatory pie in the face.

As for Ramon Santiago, he went back to the dugout, surely hoping that his team would play a better game the next day. And assuming they don’t get no-hit again this evening, the Tigers can only improve. But even if he leads his team to victory with three home runs today, Santiago can rest assured that those homers will be contained within a 24-hour news cycle. After that, they’ll be forgotten.

His final out against Garza, however, lives forever. Someone has to make that final out, and yesterday it was Santiago. He can take solace in the fact that his final swing was much more impressive than that of Wade Boggs some 27 years ago. He did make contact, at least. But the ball didn’t drop for a hit; it was caught. And so, Mr. Santiago, we welcome you to the 27th Out Club. It's a lifetime membership. Mr. Boggs will be here to greet you shortly.

Welcome to Boston (One Sixty-Two: Day 16)

Writer’s note: One Sixty-Two is a season-long series of blog posts connecting baseball’s major-league players to life’s universal themes. Just as there are 162 games in a season, so there will be 162 posts in this series. Let’s play some ball.

Day Sixteen: Victor Martinez, Boston Red Sox

There were days, Victor, when a 15-16 start was met with shrugs. Never acceptance, but a shrug nonetheless. Maybe a bitter “here we go again” tossed in as well. I know you’re still new to Boston, Victor, having come over from Cleveland at the trading deadline last July. But you missed the eras when 15-16 was met with patience.

There were those 86 years, of course, in between world championships. As generations of Red Sox fans grew up rooting for the team that Babe Ruth had left behind, the Sox had some pretty ugly records at times. For instance, the Sox had a string of 15 straight losing seasons from 1919-1933. They finished 42 games out of first place in 1954, and 40 games back in 1965. And yet, despite those dark years the Red Sox always managed to rise up again and field terrific teams. With players such as Ted Williams, Carl Yastrzemski, Jim Rice and Wade Boggs, Boston won 85 games or more a total of 30 times between 1938 and 2003 – only to claim not a single championship. In fact, the Sox made the World Series just four times in that span, losing in the deciding seventh game every time. Meanwhile, the Yankees claimed 26 world titles between 1923 and 2000, a record for professional American team sports.

And then, as you know, Victor, things did change. Your current teammate, the big lefty named David Ortiz, turned into the true Babe Ruth of Beantown, leading the Red Sox to their historic wins against the Yankees and Cardinals to claim the 2004 title. Then in 2007, Ortiz and Co. won it all again. Boston has won at least 92 games seven of the last eight seasons, and has become the standard by which 21st-century baseball teams are measured. Fenway Park, always a cinch to draw more than two million fans a year, now pulls in more than three million. Baseball executives study the moves of your general manager, Theo Epstein, as a model of how to build a winning team that also keeps an eye toward the future.

That’s how the Sox got you, Victor. You were smashing balls all over the place in Cleveland, but Epstein wanted your bat enough to give up young players for you. But not his best young players. He held the line, and got you anyhow. Now you’re starting in front of the team’s captain, because the Sox want to win at all costs. So does all of New England, as they tune in each night to listen to your team’s games from the Connecticut coastline all the way up to the tip of Maine.

You’ve finally started hitting the ball in recent days, Victor, just as you’ve done throughout your career. So it’s time you really thought about this – there’s an entire region of the nation about ready to lose their Cracker Jacks if you and your boys don’t start winning games. Embarrassing losses at home to the Yankees are the final straw.

You’re a catcher, Victor, and you’re a great player to boot. So you know what it’s like to carry a team. It’s getting to be mid-May, and the Boston Red Sox are not a 15-16 team. Fenway Park heroes get their numbers retired on the façade beneath the upper deck in right field. Your number 41 would look real nice up there. New England awaits, Victor. Your turn to bat.

Rivalry Royalty

Watching the North Carolina-Duke men’s basketball game last night was a little like watching Yankees-Red Sox, circa 1992. The rivalry was there, sure. The fans were intense, as always. But the talent was not the same.

Eighteen years ago, the Yankees and Red Sox both finished at least 20 games out of first place, both with losing records. That was the last time that neither New York nor Boston finished in the top two in the American League East standings; most years since then, they have both finished in the top two. The last dozen years, in particular, have seen the Yankees and Red Sox bring their storied baseball rivalry to an unprecedented level of excellence. Since 1998, in fact, Boston has won at least 92 games nine times, while New York has done it 10 times.

In the same way, it’s typical this time of year to see both North Carolina and Duke ranked in the top 10, both battling furiously for the Atlantic Coast Conference title and a top seed in the NCAA Tournament. Since 1975, only two seasons have ended without UNC or Duke having won either the ACC’s regular season or tournament titles. The two schools have a combined 32 Final Fours and eight national championships between them.

I’ve been fortunate enough to see the UNC-Duke rivalry up close – first as a student, then as a sportswriter. And I’ve been lucky enough to see the Yankees-Red Sox duel many times from the seats of Yankee Stadium and Fenway Park. They are, without question, the two most impressive rivalries I’ve ever witnessed in sports. The histories of the teams, the settings for their games, and the intensities of their fan bases all play a role in this. But the most important piece to these great rivalries is simple: It’s the quality that the teams produce, year after year.

You can say you’re a Red Sox fan and you hate the Yankees. But the reality is, a Boston championship is indescribably sweeter if it involves a hard-fought win over New York (see 2004). You can say that God loves the Tar Heels so much He made the sky Carolina blue, and that the Blue Devils truly belong in hell. But you know, deep down, that no UNC title is worth winning without some dramatic wins against Duke (see 2009).

These two rivalries are as revered as they are because of the high standards that all four clubs aspire to year after year, and the astounding levels of success that all four have achieved. You don’t need to be the champion every year to still be the team to beat. The Tar Heels, Blue Devils, Yankees and Red Sox have achieved so much success over the years that the best measuring stick for their progress has been the games they play against their heated rivals. It’s not just bragging rights they want in Chapel Hill, Durham, the Bronx and Kenmore Square; it’s an idea of just how good they are.

That’s why last night’s UNC-Duke game was such a letdown. Sure, this year’s Duke Blue Devils are a top-10 team, and they can hit three-pointers from anywhere on the court. But they’re not a complete team, and they don’t look like a real contender for an NCAA title. Duke may hold on and claim the ACC title, but that has more to do with a weak ACC conference this year than with the Blue Devils’ prowess. North Carolina, just 10 months removed from its fifth national title, lost four starters to the NBA and doesn’t have enough experience to compete at its usual level this year. This year’s Tar Heels are scrambling just to keep their record above .500.

And so, as the veteran Blue Devils fended off the young Tar Heels last night in Chapel Hill, I was reminded of how dreary those early-90s matchups were between the Yanks and the Sox. Sure, Boston still had Roger Clemens and Wade Boggs, while New York had a veteran Don Mattingly and a young Bernie Williams. But the teams didn’t have much sizzle to them, and therefore the head-to-heads didn’t carry the weight that they so often had and would in the years to come. (Even the one game with sizzle – Clemens pitching on a Saturday afternoon in the Bronx – lost its luster when I got my friend lost on the way there, and we ended up in Bogota, N.J. Bogota, by the way, just happens to be the hometown of former UNC sixth-man Pat Sullivan.)

North Carolina, at 2-7 in the ACC this year, is truly down on the canvas for once. While the rest of the conference gloats at the fall of the mighty, America’s best college rivalry suffers. The standards have been lowered, and who really likes it when your top rival is a punching bag?

Before we get too worried, though, let’s take a look forward. This year’s number-one high school recruit, 6-foot-8 forward Harrison Barnes from Iowa, recently chose UNC over Duke, joining two other nationally-touted recruits already on their way to Chapel Hill. And so the rivalry breathes on, and the balance of power shifts again.

As for baseball, the Yankees and Red Sox have carefully improved their teams again this off-season, spending their money on pitching and defense to add to their already-impressive batting lineups. There will be no letdown in that rivalry in 2010, and both teams will be favorites to make the playoffs once more.

I will root for the Yankees whenever they play the Red Sox. And while I won’t actually root for the Red Sox in their games against other teams, I won’t be too upset if August rolls around and the standings show New York and Boston tied for first place. It may cause some butterflies in the stomach, but you know the saying: Nothing that’s worth having comes easy.

Friends and Enemies

When I lived in Massachusetts, I used to go out for jogs wearing my Yankees cap backwards. That way, by the time the Red Sox fans noticed what I was wearing, I’d have passed them by already. We lived on the North Shore of Boston from 1999-2004, during the heart of the modern-day Yankees-Red Sox rivalry. My jogs through Salem and Marblehead may have shielded me from the Boston baseball fans, but other social interactions brought me face to face with the Fenway faithful.

Red Sox fans are not the type to hide their passions. By the turn of the century, Red Sox fans my age had spent their lives rooting desperately for men like Carl Yastrzemski, Dwight Evans, Mike Greenwell, Wade Boggs, Roger Clemens, Mo Vaughn and Nomar Garciaparra. They had watched these men perform majestically, only to fall just short at the finish line or in the playoffs. And when a flamethrower named Pedro Martinez arrived in Boston with a glimmer in his eye and a championship in his sights, these fans began filling Fenway Park every day and night, no matter the month or the weather. They began, in some small way, to believe.

They were rooting for and believing in my least favorite team in baseball, and I watched their passion with no small measure of dread. I, like so many Yankees fans, had reveled in the fact that New York had won 26 titles since acquiring Babe Ruth from the Red Sox in 1920. I had come to see Boston’s annual autumn fade as a seasonal rite of passage, and as validation that I was on the right side of the greatest rivalry in sports.

But then I got to know large numbers of Red Sox fans. I worked alongside them in public schools, I worshiped beside them in the pews of my church, and I shopped alongside them in supermarkets and shopping malls. And as I met these people and talked with them, I found myself making genuine friendships with people who wore that Old English “B” on their heads. I found myself going out to eat with them, inviting them over my house, and even going on weekend vacations with them. And while we engaged in some trash-talking when it came to baseball, the rest of our time together was spent talking about other things – the kids we taught in school, or the kids we raised at home, or the world events around us.

It is late September in 2008, and the landscape of the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry has changed dramatically since I moved back to the New York area in July of ’04. Three months after we moved, the Red Sox pulled off the greatest comeback in baseball history to defeat the Yankees for the league pennant, then went on to win their first title in 86 years. Three years later, Boston won the World Series again. This year, they’re on their way to yet another postseason. The Yankees and their vast history of success are taking a year off from postseason play in ’08, and they haven’t claimed a title in eight years.

I still keep in touch with several of my Red Sox-rooting friends. When we talk, I wish them the best and tell them their team is great. At 37, I have come to a place in life where my emotions are not guided by the successes and failures of baseball teams. I have reached a point where I can watch the Red Sox win a championship, and instead of feeling bitterness I can think with affection of the friends I know who are filled with joy at that moment.

I would still prefer that the Yankees be the ones winning, and I’ll still root for the other 28 teams over Boston any day. I still like to pick certain Red Sox players and envision them as evil incarnate (my current choice: Kevin Youkilis). But that’s just for fun. The Sox are a baseball team, and I don’t even know the players personally. The friends I have, however, are true and genuine. I know that. And I think there’s something pretty cool about them feeling some thrills when their favorite team wins.

So on we go, into another October. I’ll read about the Yankees’ plans for off-season moves. And, if the cheers from New England reach my ears, I’ll fire off another congratulatory e-mail to some delirious friends in red and blue.