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The seats I had been able to secure for the Yankee Stadium games really did, as a Yankee fan might put it, suck. We were in the bleachers, Sec. 57, Row N. Seats 18 and 19. Realizing this ahead of time, we made a prudent decision to wear no Bosox garb, for we knew the bleachers in both Yankee Stadium and Fenway were hostile territory for members of the other tribe.
If anything, the bleacher gang in the stadium was a bit more civil than I remembered it from earlier years, and I think there are three reasons for this. First, the bleachers are now the No Alcohol bleachers, and that means you can't so much as buy a 3.2 beer beneath the stands. Second, it is the nature of the post-season to have people like, well, me and Jane—who can get their hands on tickets somehow, and who might in fact be supporting the enemy—in these bleacher seats, squeezing out the rabid Yankees fans who filled them during the 81 regular season home games. And third, this year the Yanks fans seem to have forsaken the hoary old slogan "Boston Sucks" in favor of the more inventive and certainly more dignified "Nineteen Eighteen!" Chanted over and over again at high volume, this war whoop leant to the bleachers an air of sophistication. The bleachers are seldom subtle, but there's something subtle about "Nineteen Eighteen!"
Jane and I, cowards, were traveling incognito. Others braver than we had their B hats on, and the most flamboyant of them were already engaged in taunting matches with their New York counterparts. I won't say the taunting was good natured; it was not. In fact, I saw a weird, diabolical dynamic at work in the first two or three innings. Yankee fans would goad the Beantown loudmouths into ever more demonstrative support of the Bosox and then something—a knocked-over Coke, a thrown peanut—would take the action to another level. One of the many layers of security would rush to the scene of the crime, and at this point the Yankee fans, who of course constituted an overwhelming majority, would point as one to the Red Sox fan and would shout something that amounted to "Instigator!" The Sox fan would be escorted from the stands, his thirty dollars forfeit. I saw this happen at least thrice on Wednesday night, twice more on Thursday. Yes, you are receiving the reporting of a dyed-in-the-wool Boston fan, but I am a journalist first, and I say this is what I saw. I think it was a pre-conceived plot to rid the bleachers of all Red Sox rooters. It was Bosox cleansing.
Whether it was in fact a strategy or just a methodology that developed on the fly, it had the effect of making Jane and me all the more determined to remain under cover. Jane simply sat on her hands. Beginning in about the third inning, when it was clear that Wakefield's knuckleball was devilish tonight and the Sox might get to Mussina, I determined to have some sport with my neighbors. I started issuing proclamations that never violated my Red Sox allegiance but that could be interpreted variously by my Yankee-fan cohorts here in the (sorta) cheap seats. To whit: "Jee-zus, he throws the thing sixty g-d miles an hour!" A mere statement of fact, which elicited this sympathetic response from the fellow to my left: "I know it! And they're swinging like Little Leaguers at it! I could hit this guy!"
"No question!" I agreed.
Things started going very well indeed in the middle innings when Ortiz launched the shot that may land any minute now, Walker followed with the foul-pole knock and Manny urged one over the fence in right center. My three reactions, as issued to seatmates:
"Godawlmighty, will you look at that! I guess you don't want to go three balls on that guy!"
"I can't believe the ump overruled the foul call!"
"Inches!"
All opinions were true enough, and would have been equally on target in Fenway. Life is context.
Jane risked the occasional smile at my little game, but I could tell we were in no way suspected. In fact, we began to develop friendships with those around us, and if they wondered at us not cheering the (precious few) Yankee hits and (barely more) Yankee strikeouts, it wasn't evident. The guy in front of me, a beefy lad in a T-shirt, became something of a buddy. He knew his baseball, and we began to discuss moves and countermoves. This made things trickier for me, because I couldn't very well aver that, say, Manny's the best run producer in baseball in a situation such as the present, but rather that Manny is a tough dude to be facing in this instance. Over the innings, a real baseball bond began to develop between me and this guy, and I began to feel a little badly that our relationship was based on such a cheap sham, a sham entirely of my making. If he had known me for a Sox fan, I was sure, then he would hate me. And yet here I was, knowing who and what he was, and I liked him. Disquieting, but then ...
The Sox were comfortably ahead, 5-0. Truth be told, I was happy to be in a beer-free environment; frustration was thick in the air above the bleachers. The Yankee fans turned at times to the other entertainments, which as a Sox fan I couldn't abide. Yankee Stadium has adopted many of the Showtime aspects of NBA basketball games: superloud music (the usual we-will-rock-you and we-are-the-champions junk), excruciating video games on the message boards and hackneyed between-innings schtick. Believe it or not, the infield sweepers still must dance during their 5th-inning rounds to the Village People's "YMCA." I mean, that's just gotta go. I asked Jane, "I wonder if they're still playing 'The Curly Shuffle' on the message board at Shea?"
I think if you had asked me a couple of days ago if there was a rule concerning the time allowed to elapse between half innings I would have answered, "Sure. There must be. Three minutes? Four?"
Today, I'm convinced otherwise. The Yankees have blown open the seventh inning stretch from interlude to intermission. It begins with a moment of silence. Fine. Then Ronan Tynan, the big, sweet Irish tenor, delivers an a-capella rendition of "God Bless America," replete with the introductory verse that no one knows, plus many dramatic pauses. "Not exactly the Kate Smith version," someone said. Then, finally, comes "Take Me Out to the Ball Game." Then, extra-finally, comes a loud, obnoxious video-led performance of a lunatic doing something called—and to the tune of—"The Cotton-Eye Joe." It makes "The Curly Shuffle" look like Ballanchine.
"What's with 'The Cotton-Eye Joe'?" I asked.
"Dunno," one of my new pals answered. "They've been doin' it for years."
They have? Maybe so. And for years I've been in parts of the stadium where beer is sold, and I've been getting a beer during the interminable seventh-inning stretch.
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