Pinstripes

Sophomore year of high school, I was a textbook Northern California nerd, a geek, a sissy. Inside, I was troubled; at home, I was a troublemaker, so my parents sent me off to an all-boys Jesuit college prep as a boarder in the hopes I'd straighten up. (Intepret that as you will.) The school valued academics and athletics, and most students excelled in one, if not both. A sissy, yes, but at least a studious one, I was somewhat in my element. I kept to myself, but when bored I drifted down to the basement to read or watch television. Unfortunately, during the early weeks of school the two sets seemed perpetually tuned to Charlie's Angels or sports--football or baseball.

My father was a baseball fan, a former high-school player who followed the A's and the Giant's on the radio; my younger brothers actually played Little League. I was too restless, too imaginative for the longueurs of baseball. Nevertheless, that fall in the dorm, I wandered down to the basement and stood in the corner watching the odd game over the shoulders of boys who could track the pitch count without trying, remembered who the matchup in the last no-hitter, knew a balk from a ball. New York could have been in China; same with Los Angeles. Yet some, despite Bay Area-SoCal division, stayed loyal to California and pulled for Dodger Blue; others, whether from family tradition, league loyalty, or sheer transcontinental contrariness, pulled for the Bronx Bombers. My decision came easily, if hormonally: Bucky Dent was simply cuter than Steve Garvey.

Whatever my personal motivations for watching, the game began to yield a sense of its mysteries that fall; the New York franchise, a sense of its sportsmanship and history, its notoriety and celebrity. Jackson. Dent. Munson. Through the cheers, jeers, and boos of the other students, the play-by-play of Howard Cosell and Keith Jackson, and growing familiarity with a now-legendary roster, I slowly, by default more than design, became a Yankee fan. And a baseball fan. And a sports fan in general. My Yankee loyalty was tested through the years; as an adult watching with friends in the stands at Candlestick Park or the Oakland Coliseum, I even tried to muster some affection for either of the Bay Area franchises, but I couldn't. The Giants belonged to my brothers, and the A's to Dad. Besides, I'd already surrendered my affections; I couldn't regift them. Fifteen years' residence in the Big Apple and attendance at many, many games later made the , but the lounge in the bottom of O'Donnell Hall remains the crucible where that first link, however uncertain, however odd, was made.