Being a fan....
I’ve been a sports fan for pretty much my entire life. It’s served me well both on a personal level and on a professional level. When I wanted to make friends when I started working on Wall Street without coming across as flirty, being able to talk intelligently about NY sports teams was huge. More importantly, there is a rumor that my love of sports was for my husband and I started dating way back when. But I have had the pleasure of meeting fans of my team’s arch-rival, the Evil People, and having some great conversations about the game of baseball. It’s cool.
I became a Yanks fan because my brother and I, separated by 18 months, used to fight all of the time. It took my sister arriving about 6 years later to break up the fighting. Anyway my brother instilled in me the very important lesson of “once you pick a team, you can’t change it”. Unlike most kids who wanted to emulate their older sibling(s), I always felt I should do the opposite. So he, as was the rest of the family, was a Mets fan, and I then made a lifelong choice – I became a Yankees fan. Coincidentally, this was in 1977. Yeah, you could say that I got the better end of the deal since ’77.
As the regular readers of this blog know, I am a die-hard Yankee fan to the point where the officiant at our wedding announced that the Yankees had won earlier that day. Of course I already knew the score even though my Blackberry was confiscated but that is besides the point.
OK – so where is this going? One of the players on the Yankees, Alex Rodriguez, is having a ridiculously fabulous season. Note that Marc absolutely hates A-Rod because of his promise to stay in Seattle and then bolting to Texas.
I was watching the game yesterday as I was working out, and A-Rod hit a HR in the 4th inning. I was impressed because it was the 4th game in a row that he clocked one. He gets up to bat in the 6th inning and spanks another one. I’m just nodding my head in disbelief. Keep in mind that A-Rod hit 2 home runs in the same inning earlier in the week against the Mariners. The last time that happened on the Yankees was 30 years ago just to give you some perspective on the achievement.
As I was recovering on the couch from some birthWEEK festivities (more on this in another post tomorrow) this morning, an acquaintance of mine IM’ed about my out of date tagline that the ‘Yanks are pathetic’. I informed him that since the Yanks had not lost since I put that tagline on, I was not going to change it. Yes, I am strange. See here for more idiocy on my part.
So during this IM chat, A-Rod came up to bat. The person on the other end was watching on his end, as was I. And what do you know – A-Rod bashes another home run. My IM buddy’s response, “Oh my God”. My thought was “why in the world is the opposing team pitching to this guy since he seems to own the opposing team’s staff?” in addition to being completely awed like my friend. Needless to say, A-Rod has a high probability to win the MVP award. I really hope he can replicate this success in October, if my boys get that far.
Lost in all of this is the season that Jorge Posada is having. Posada is the catcher who has had to deal with the long list of people who pitched for the Yankees this season. The catcher is also a physically grueling position because you are squatting for a long time; I don’t even want to know about the amount of squats he does. Jorge (think – hor-hay) has the 4th highest batting average in the American League and he is on the older side for a catcher– 36 years old.
On the more depressing side of things, apparently the NY Giants defense decided not to show up this evening. Bummer.