I love the rituals of baseball – like the seventh inning stretch, when
everyone gets up and goes for a drink or a hot dog. I love the lunatics in
the bleachers who live to catch a home run, and come equipped with a mitt
just for that unlikely coup. And I love the humour of the game and its
aficionados.
If you are in New York, take a trip out to The Stadium, as we fans call Yankee
Stadium. It’s the first step to addiction.
The Bleacher Creatures, the hardcore fans above right field, can be
aggressive: their favourite chant is not exactly poetic, but it has a
powerful cadence that print cannot capture: “Yankees baseball! Yankees
baseball! Mets suck! Boston sucks! Everybody sucks! Yankees baseball!” (The
Mets are the Yankees’ local rivals.)
The Yankees have something no other team can match – a belief that they are
entitled to win. With that goes a New York irony and a love of baseball
tradition. Baseball is strangely antique and riddled with folklore. And
Yankee Stadium is at the heart of this American obsession.
It’s an obsession that writers and intellectuals share with blue-collar
workers: John Updike claims to have moved from New York to New England to be
closer to the Boston Red Sox, and Philip Roth’s novels are peppered with
baseball references.
Writers love the old-time baseball managers, like the Yankees’ famous Casey
Stengel, whose often brusque sayings are close to their hearts: “The key to
being a good manager,” he once said, “is keeping the people who hate me away
from those who are still undecided.”
The trip out to Yankee Stadium in the Bronx is a ritual for me. The Bronx, as
Tom Wolfe made all too clear in The Bonfire of the Vanities, has declined
from its glory days as a place of excursions, mansions and expensive burials
for the rich in Woodlawn Cemetery. Yet both Yankee Stadium and Woodlawn are
worth visiting for what they tell you about the history of New York, its
astonishing building, its extremes of wealth and deprivation and its
perpetual and restless flux.
The stadium will be entirely rebuilt by 2009, more or less on the same site.
The original stadium – altered in l974 – will be replicated underneath a
huge new extension of glass and steel. This tells you something of the hold
the place has on its avid fans, rather in the way that the old Arsenal
stadium had on its devotees.
As is the trend with contemporary sports, 6,000 seats will be lost to
hospitality boxes. And after a minor uproar, the traditional hot dogs,
always described as the best in New York, will be supplemented by a variety
of ethnic food.
The Yankees acquired their home in 1923. Since that day their most famous
players, including Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio (who was married to Marilyn
Monroe), the catcher Yogi Berra and Mickey Mantle have entered the baseball
pantheon. An emotional Gehrig told fans that he was dying, and gave his name
to Lou Gehrig’s Disease, a form of multiple sclerosis.
Home runs are what you hope for when you go to Yankee Stadium. It has been
called the “House that Ruth Built” after the portly genius Babe Ruth whose
amazing home-run record came about partly because the stadium favours a
left-handed hitter – the right-field fence being much closer than the left.
It is one of the peculiarities of baseball grounds that all are different,
with different dimensions, dugouts, fences, diamonds, and mounds from where
the pitcher goes through his ritual of stares, scowls and violent
propulsion. And when you go to a game at Yankee Stadium, you are in reality
not just going to a sporting event, but entering into the conscious drama
that is New York life.
It all starts with the West Side subway up to the Bronx. Try to get to a game
when the Yankees are at home to the Red Sox. Their rivalry has gone on for
decades and produces a particular atmosphere. The moment the teams appear,
the Yankees in their traditional pinstripe, unchanged for 60 years, the Sox
in – yes – their equally traditional red socks, causes the scalp to pucker,
like an oyster waiting for the lemon.
And then you wait in the crowd, sipping a cool Bud while your hot dog oozes
sauces, and wait for a home run to come your way...
Justin Cartwright’s most recent book is The Song Before It Is Sung (Bloomsbury,
£16.99).
Need to know
The Sporting Traveller (01737 244398, www.the
sporting traveller.com) offers baseball-match packages to all the main
cities. A three-night trip to watch the Yankees is about £750pp.
The Sporting Traveller also offers trips to NFL American football games. A
three-night break to watch the New York Jets play the New England Patriots
is from £722pp. It also offers NBA basketball match packages.
Major League Baseball (www.mlb.com) – the
season runs until November 1 this year. It is usually possible to buy
tickets for matches at the last moment. New York Yankees (http://newyork.yankees.mlb.com).
Mr. Cartwright is mistaken. The Major League Baseball season runs until only September 30.
TJ Cassidy, Arlington, Virginia, USA