The Roads Less Traveled, Part 2

Yankees and Red Sox Road Trip, July/August 2012: My then-wife and I were getting pretty adventurous with our vacations. We decided to spend a few days in New York, a few more days in Connecticut and end the trip with a few days in Boston. She wasn’t a big baseball fan, so you can imagine how surprised I was when she agreed to go to games at the new Yankee Stadium AND Fenway Park. Then again, marriage is all about compromise.

 

July 29: I proudly walked into Yankee Stadium wearing a Phillies shirt, expecting to get needled relentlessly by New York’s notorious fans. I was both disappointed and relieved that aside from one snide comment, I was completely left alone. The Yankees were hosting the Red Sox in a Sunday night ESPN game, so the tension and anticipation in the ballpark were palpable. I had always hated the Yankees, and I still do to this day, but something unexpected happened during the game. I got the sense that these fans, while abrasive and loud, loved their team and knew their team. It was a level of passion I hadn’t even felt at Phillies games. As the game began, I couldn’t help but notice the father and son who sat just to my left. The father was teaching his son about the players and what was happening on the field, just like my dad did two decades before. Though he and I were clearly on opposing sides, the father and I gained a mutual respect for one another as the game progressed. It went to extra innings with the Yanks and Sox deadlocked, 2-2, but my wife, her friend and I left after the ninth to avoid the subway rush after the game (the Sox would go on to win 3-2). As we got up from our seats and the father got up to let us pass, he and I actually engaged in a brief man hug and wished each other a good night. Here I was, embracing a Yankees fan at a Yankees game! It was actually the most positive fan interaction I’ve ever experienced with a stranger at a baseball game. That sure was a life lesson I’ll never forget.

August 2: The polar opposite occurred four days later in Boston, which is a shame because for years I’d dreamed of going to Fenway Park. The stadium itself was beautiful, but the hard seats were very uncomfortable, and the passionate vibe I’d felt at the Yankees game was replaced with bitterness. The Red Sox were in the midst of a disastrous season under manager Bobby Valentine, who lasted just that one year. The fans were not happy, and that contempt hung heavy around the ballpark. The Sox didn’t help, getting blanked 5-0 by the Twins, a team with a record even worse than Boston. My wife and I were so happy to get out of there. I used to like the Red Sox, especially when they stuck it to the Yankees in the 2004 ALCS, but this game began a turnaround in my thinking. I came the rest of the way after their sign stealing scandal and the fans hurling racial slurs at Orioles outfielder, Adam Jones. Now, I’m actually looking forward to my next trip to Yankees Stadium, but I don’t know if I’ll ever return to Fenway.

 

One final thing I will say about Yankee Stadium and Fenway is that traversing the interior of both is like walking through a museum. The venues pay wonderful homage to the long and celebrated histories of their franchises. They belong high on the bucket list of any serious fan.

Christmas comes ear-LEE

Cole Hamels is now a No. 4 starter.

Let me repeat that.

Hamels, the crafty left-hander with a career ERA of 3.53 while pitching in one of the most hitter-friendly parks in baseball, is the fourth-best starting pitcher in his team's rotation.

Most teams are happy if their No. 4 reaches the sixth inning, but the Philadelphia Phillies really won't have to give the sixth inning a second thought in 2011 after they pulled off the deal of the century Monday night. Cliff Lee, the most pursued player in the offseason, is returning for his second tour of duty with Philadelphia. He helped us reach the World Series, and exactly one year after we sent him packing, he turned down more lucrative deals with the New York Yankees and Texas Rangers to come back for five years and $120 million.

Things like this just don't happen, do they? It's like getting a winning lottery ticket, losing it and the lottery printing you a another copy of the winner.

OK, it wasn't quite that easy for Ruben Amaro and the rest of the Phillies brass, but it's not everyday in this present climate that you offer a guy less money than the competition and end up with him. Lee has not only proven himself as an elite pitcher, but an elite human being who unlike some others (ahem...Jayson Werth) considers multiple factors in a potential deal over just dollars and cents.

In an odd twist of fate, we have Amaro to thank for setting up this "fearsome foursome" of pitchers that may provide enough of an edge over a wildly inconsistent offense. Had he traded for Roy Halladay and kept Lee before the 2010 season, it's likely he wouldn't have traded for Roy Oswalt at the deadline. Sure, he would've saved himself a lot of grief, but things could not have worked out better for him or the team.

Lee made it clear several times over the past year that he didn't want to leave Philadelphia after the 2009 season. He loved his teammates, he loved his coaches, he loved the fans and so did his family.

And my fellow Phillie fans, pay your respects to Kristen Lee, Cliff's wife. She reportedly had just as much of a say in this decision, and why shouldn't she? I mean really, where would any of us be without our wives? She loathed the poor treatment she received from Yankee fans during the ALCS in October, while the Lee's most fond memories during the last two years of frequent city-hopping were apparently made with Philadelphia.

The best part: all of the high-prized free agents are gone, and the Yankees didn't land any of them. In the end, their bottomless wallets got the shaft from Lee twice in less than six months, and he returns to the place he never wanted to leave.

Welcome home, anointed one, and hang your red stockings with cheer.

The Big Stein demands final calzone

The baseball gods have been rewarding my patience over and over again for the past several years. Some presents have satisfied trivial hopes, others have been monumental. I got to see two Phillies win back-to-back Home Run Derbies. Two Phillies won back-to-back MVPs. The Phillies made the playoffs for three straight years and won their first world championship in my lifetime. An unbelievable five Phillies took the field for the 2009 All-Star Game in St. Louis. And now after 14 years of waiting, I finally see the National League win the Midsummer Classic this year. As an introverted, hometown Phillies fan with a lower class background, I was born to be an underdog, and the NL underdogs finally pulled one out.

Those same baseball gods opened their gates this morning to welcome home a true giant of the game, George Steinbrenner. Despite the hostility I feel toward the New York Yankees, particularly after watching my team lose the World Series to them last year, I must pay grudging respect for a man whose death at the age of 80 dealt a huge blow to the game of baseball.

Grudging respect is what I conveyed to the TV screen when I watched the last All-Star Game ever played at the old Yankee Stadium, and when I saw the last-ever game played there two months later. Grudging respect was what I gave to Yankee captain Derek Jeter in a column I wrote about the second World Baseball Classic, when he led a determined United States team with his words and his bat.

I have to try hard to fathom the loss that the Yankee organization and fans are feeling because for everything there is to love about Steinbrenner, there are an equal number of things to hate. I don't subscribe to the notion that winning is everything, and I despise the practice of trying to win a World Series by filling your roster with over-priced free agents. I question Steinbrenner's morality due to many of the decisions that he made during his four decades as the owner of the Yankees.

However, I'm certain that when Steinbrenner took the job in the early 1970s, he knew it would be his last. All die-hard baseball fans understand the great tradition of baseball and the significant place it holds in the fabric of American history. Much of that tradition can be associated with the Yankees, and Steinbrenner put his heart and soul into returning the team to prominence and carrying on the torch.

The Boss also softened up in his final 15 years as owner. I actually rooted for the Yankees in the World Series during their dynasty years in the latter half of the 1990s, and those Yankees were built the right way with a significant number of their contributors coming from their farm system.

Reggie Jackson, Dave Winfield and Don Mattingly can't make this claim, but today's Yankee players admired "Mr. Steinbrenner" for the care he showed to them, the fans and the organization. Until his health declined, he was a visible, accessible owner who wanted nothing more than his players to win and take pride in donning the New York pinstripes. The legacy of the Yankees was one he understood, cherished and helped continue into the new millennium.

I still can't wait for the day when the New York Yankees are no longer the best team in baseball, and millions of fans agree with me, but I can't ignore the lost presence of such a giant to the team and to the sport. We can hate the Yankees all we want, but we must all admit that we would love to have the vision and success of George Steinbrenner.