|
|
(Enter the username and password above that you entered while signing up for email or the discussion board)
|
|
|
July 8, 2002
Rob “Soma” Collins
Yanks-Suck.Com
Bleeding Red in the Big Apple
“Reeeeeeggie…Reeeeeeggie!” I recall screaming out as I sat there wearing my navy blue cap with that infamous interlocking NY, holding a pretzel in one hand and shaking my Yankee pennant in the other. Those were the days. Those were the days indeed. Little did I know, however, I was being indoctrinated into the largest cult that mankind has ever known…Yankee Fandom. Yeah, so there I was, a cute little kid in a Yankee cap, that mind you was a few sizes too big for my head, mindlessly chanting for one, Mr. October. The year, 1977…the place, Yankee Stadium, sitting to my left is my father (for the sake of anonymity, we shall call him Papa Yankee Fan). I was but a mere four years old, and this was my first experience at a major league baseball game.
You see I was born in the Bronx, Boogie-Down through and through. By birthright I was to be ordained a Yankee supporter. This would have been the case had Papa Yankee Fan had his way. But a funny thing happened on the way to baseball nirvana, I became a blue and red bleeding Sox fan. Growing up in the Bronx is hard enough as it is, but being a Sox fan growing up in the Bronx is the equivalent of Vanilla Ice accidentally wandering into a death-metal club. In other words it was terrible. Papa Yankee Fan, to his credit, did everything he could to raise me like every other kid in the neighborhood. He brought me to the games; he bought me the caps, the shirts, the jackets. You name it, he did it, and it almost worked. I was about as close as you could come to being “brainwashed” into the Cult of Yankee Fandom, Papa Yankee Fan was seeing to that. He had good intentions; he just didn’t know what he was going to be up against. Let me tell you, my dad, Papa Yankee Fan is one of the greatest guys in the world; he just has one glaring flaw…his unquestioned loyalty to that group of miscreants that call 161st St. and River Ave. home.
Everything kind of came to a head one late spring afternoon in 1978. During our street’s annual block-party, my father called me over to his table. I walked over and sat down. Before me were several of the men from the neighborhood. My father proudly looked over at me and uttered the following phrase, “Son, name the Yankees starting lineup for the guys to hear.” As my father’s smiling face glowed in anticipation of my response, I proceeded to perpetrate possibly the greatest injustice ever levied by a son against his father. I looked up at the men sitting at the table and said, “I don’t like the Yankees.” Papa Yankee Fan looked puzzled. With that, his best friend, Rick asked me, “If you don’t like the Yankees, what team do you like?” When my rebuttal statement left my lips, you could literally see the heart fall out of Papa Yankee Fan’s chest, hit the concrete below, and smash into tiny little pieces. I of course responded with, “The Boston Red Sox.” From that day forth, my life in the Bronx would never be the same. Could you imagine the shockwave that rippled through my tight-knit community upon hearing this? That is the Bronx equivalent of heresy. Needless to say, I caused Papa Yankee Fan many a sleepless night, wondering where he went wrong, and what he could have done differently to avoid this monumental embarrassment. “Not his son, it couldn’t be.,” whispered those who knew my dad. After all, my dad was Mr. Yankee to everyone on the block.
How could this have happened you ask? Well, what nobody knew was, my grandfather (God rest his soul), had been pumping me full of Red Soxisms. He’d tell me stories about Ted Williams and Jimmie Foxx, about Lefty Grove and Joe Cronin. By the time it was all said and done, I was a five year old with intimate knowledge of the pre-World War 2 Red Sox. I took it all in, day after day, he loved to talk about his days growing up in Framingham and playing ball in a Massachusetts semi-pro league. Most of all though, he loved to talk about his Red Sox, nothing brought a smile to his face more than recounting a William’s homerun or a dramatic win over the hated Yankees. I soon came to find out that I was not his only disciple. My older cousin (we will call him Jimmy Beans) was also shown the light early on. Sadly, almost as soon as my grandfather had opened my eyes to the world of Red Sox baseball, he was gone. We knew our duty, though, to carry on our grandfather’s tradition and love for the Sox.
So there we were, Jimmy Beans and I, growing up together as the only two Red Sox fans in the Bronx. Both of our mothers were much more sympathetic to our fondness for the Red Sox, then were our fathers. After all, they were sisters, and it was their father who imparted his wisdom upon my cousin and I. They even went so far as to buy us both full Sox uniforms. Needless to say, we wore them proudly…we even wore them to a Yankee-Red Sox game at the stadium in 1980…that was a mistake. Picture this, you are seven years old, your cousin who is 13, your mother, and your aunt are sitting in the loge section on the first base side of Yankee Stadium. You are sporting your brand new Red Sox uniform, when you begin to hear it. “BOSTON SUCKS!!!,” and then there it is again, “BOSTON SUCKS!!!.” You are not quite sure why these things are being said, but just as you are turning to ask your mother a question, you see your cousin get hit in the head with a half-eaten ear of corn. An ear of corn for crying out loud! I didn’t even know you could get corn in a baseball stadium. While reeling from the shock of the corn fiasco, I feel a drop of liquid hit my neck, and then, like an Indian monsoon, came the beer shower. From every direction, it was surreal. I could not believe that people could actually do something like this. Our mothers grabbed us and ran to find security. On the way up the stairs, however, Jimmy Beans and I raised our arms triumphantly in the air, to show Yankee Fandom that we could take all that they could dish out. This was my first “first-hand” experience with the heated Sox/Yankees rivalry. It would not be my last.
Several years had passed, Jimmy Beans and his family moved to Queens, and life in the Bronx got progressively worse. You see, now that I was older, verbally defending the Sox quickly became a thing of the past, I was forced in many cases to have to physically defend my allegiance to the Sox. My record in baseball-related fracases was a respectable .500, not too bad considering I was often outnumbered. Slowly, however, it just started to become accepted that I was a Red Sox fan. In fact, I became the go-to guy when it came to baseball knowledge. But just when things were starting to get a wee bit easier, Papa Yankee Fan dropped a bombshell. We were moving to Long Island. To tell you the truth, moving to the suburbs was kind of appealing. I just assumed that there was more to do in the suburbs. So in June of 1986, we packed our bags and set out across the Whitestone Bridge en route to suburbia. Things were great; in fact they could not be better. I made tons of friends and got involved in all sorts of activities. The best part about it was that nobody was a Yankee fan. They were all Met fans. How happy this made me. I mean come on; the Mets had a likeable team that year, I even adopted them as my National League rooting interest. Fast forward…October 1986…ha ha ha, how things can change in three months. I went from owning a New York Mets cap to hating the Mets more than I ever hated the Yankees. Was this physically possible? Apparently so, because it happened. In the event that anyone reading this does not understand what I am referring to, please cease reading this article and crawl back under your rock. That is all that I will say about that nightmarish night.
Well, I could go on about the later years, but honestly what is the point? We all know what transpired. The Sox always seemed to tease us, but could never get over that hump. The scourge that is the New York Yankees went on to achieve unprecedented success. They won title after title, while we were busy signing Jose Offerman to a $26 million contract. The intent of this article was to let some of you into my world, allow you to see what it was like to grow up with one foot in the fire. My years in the Bronx were some of the hardest that I will ever face. Would I trade them in? Not on your life. I believe that it was the hostility and humility that I was forced to accept at the hands of my Yankee-loving peers that made me the Sox fan that I am today. So in a way, I am eternally grateful to the Cult of Yankee Fandom. I am eternally grateful to my dad, Papa Yankee Fan, for instilling a love of the game in me. I am most grateful, however, to my grandfather. He gave me the most genuine of joys, the life of a Red Sox fan, and there is nothing that could ever take that away.
Email Somarob.
|
|
|
