Rebecca Allen

So I’m watching the World Series. Yankees vs. Phillies. This is Serious Business to me, but let’s back up a little: everyone gets a special glow when their team is in the WS. I’d hazard to say, especially if it’s the first time they’ve seen it, or the first time its happened in a long time.¹ For a lot of fans, this happens when they’re pretty young. Not so for me.

For me, even though the Yankees have won a whopping 26 World Series…es, including several in my lifetime, this feels a lot like my first. I didn’t grow up watching baseball; I don’t think I’d ever actually watched a game until I was 20. I was a junior in college, right outside Boston. The 2003 American League Championship was everywhere. It was high drama: bench clearing brawls! Evil Empire vs. Perpetual Underdogs!² Seven games! An entire city’s hopes and dreams riding on the last game! And then — !

And then –!

Aaron Boone, baby.

Junior year, I wasn’t in a great place in a lot of ways. I’d never watched baseball before, but I needed something exciting and happy right then. There was no way to avoid the series in Boston, and I’m only partially joking when I say I became a Yankees fan out of spite. But the real reason? The moment I realized that it wasn’t just a passing fancy or mild distraction while I was incredibly stressed out?

Aaron Boone’s walk-off home run in the eleventh inning, after Pedro Martinez pitched seven excellent innings and then broke down and gave up the lead. My sister had to open at Starbucks the next day; she’d given up earlier in the night and gone to bed, telling me to text her if anything extraordinary happened. I sent her a few frantic, exclamation-point-filled messages, and somewhere around the tenth inning finally gave in and called her, dragged her out of bed so she could watch, too. It sounds cheesy, but Aaron Boone hit that home run, and my heart sang:

Hey, Becky. Welcome to baseball fandom. Sometimes you’ll want to tear your hair out, sometimes you’ll have to hide your face in a pillow, you’ll be inexplicably superstitious about this one area of life even though you aren’t in any other aspect of life. You’ll occasionally turn down a chance to hang out with friends so you can stay home and watch a game; you’ll spend hours looking up acronyms and trying to figure out what the hell statistics mean. You’ll hold your breath and scream at your television. You’ll discover a malicious streak and a tendency towards violent cursing.³ You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll bond with friends over something you never knew you loved until just now. Have fun.

Of course the Yankees went on to the World Series that year, and lost in six games. (Booooo.) I spent the off-season frantically trying to fit 20 years of indoctrination into a few months. And watching now, six years later, is a different experience entirely. I actually know what’s happening when I watch games. I know who the people are, and how they got here. I have a lot emotionally invested. I write schlocky blog entries.

And in October, with the Yankees up two games to one, while I watch and bite my nails and my heart stops with every hit? It’s a stupid corporate slogan, but a part of me actually does live for this.

Let’s go Yankees.

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A very brief update on that whole writing goal situation: I’m still on track. But it’s haaaaard. I’m at a point where it’s a battle to get it done and I send my friends whiny emails, because revising is not my strength. But I’m doing it.

Image shamelessly stolen from Google image search.