Think we could get tickets to the game? William asked the next morning. The Yankees were playing the Mariners in the American League Championship Series that night.
I doubt it...Really, darling…it's the playoffs and it’s Yankee Stadium.
Yeah, I guess.
But we could go to the Bronx and…you know…walk around and get a feel for it.
And that's what we did. We hopped into a subway car packed with giddy Yankee fans. We skimmed along the rails and mingled as if we belonged. At the Yankee Stadium stop, we hustled outside, shoulder to shoulder, only to discover all the stadium ticket booths locked up tight.
We walked in a giant circle around the stadium. There were no tickets for sale...except...wait a second—
Single seat, single seat! a voice cried out from the one tiny booth left open.
William hatched a plan. We'll buy two separate singles and find a place to sit together.
Scheme in hand, he pulled out a credit card for the pudgy seller. The poor guy, crammed like a sausage into his workspace, shot us an intense look.
Two singles, please.
One! he screamed at us in typical New Yorker fashion. He pounded the seating diagram, his stubby finger landing on the single seat in the entire stadium available for sale. I'm tellin' ya, I have one single ticket. Ya want it or not?
No, but thanks, anyway. We backed away.
Well, it was a nice try, I said. We almost—
You wanna see the game? The voice came from over William's shoulder.
Turning around, we came face to face with a man, standing alone, with two tickets shoved toward us.
Uh, sure—
Here, take these. Have a good time.
It was a command, not a wish. And he was gone. Instantly. Disappeared, vaporized before we could pay or even thank him. Dazed, we looked at the two bleacher seat tickets, then to each other to confirm this wasn't a dream.
And that's how we got into, hands down, the best baseball event of my life. When the national anthem played, we cried. An eagle named Challenger flew from the bleachers to the mound, and we sniffled some more. The crowd stood for every one of Roger Clemens' two-strike counts, and for every Derek Jeter at-bat. We cheered and howled, hot dogs held high, as if we were one of these brave souls and not recently flown-in Angelenos.
The game remained scoreless until the eighth inning, when Bret Boone hit a solo home run and New York worried. Bernie Williams countered with a solo homer in the bottom of the inning and New York rallied. With the game tied and the stadium on its feet in the bottom of the ninth, a 25-year-old rookie, Alfonso Soriano, hit a two-run homer to win the game for the Yankees…and we discovered, in the best way possible, that NYC was going to be A-OK.
Frank Sinatra sang "New York, New York" at the top of his lungs and we screamed until our voices were ragged.
Williams would soon retire, Soriano would eventually be traded, and Joe Torre would end up crossing the country to manage the Dodgers. And on September 21, 2008, a final game was played at Yankee Stadium. But for generations to come, people will tell tales of that stadium. Ours will include a story of the day New York City gave two out-of-towners a big, fat hug and assured us everything was all right.
We drank in the cold October air and laughed like giddy drunks.
No comments:
Post a Comment