The Love of the Game
People are often surprised to find out that I’m such a passionate baseball fan; I usually answer, only half-jokingly, that I never stood a chance to not like baseball. I’ve been told that I’ve been watching Yankee games with my dad since I was born—he would come home from work, put me in my bouncy seat, and we would watch baseball together until I fell asleep. I would say that in America baseball is traditionally thought of as a sport for fathers and sons, but for me it will always be something special I share with my dad. Originally I was a captive audience, but something has kept me watching for nineteen years. Being a baseball fan means you are part of something larger than yourself, something that is hard to put into words. My “official” ethnic makeup is Irish, German, Italian, and Polish, but being a Yankee fan is of equal importance to my family’s history, which is why I consider baseball to be such a huge part of the city’s ethnic heritage.
The Jennings family’s love of the Yankees goes back to my father’s father, who became a fan when the team was beginning to gain prominence in the late 1920s and early 30s. Unfortunately I never met him, as he died years before I was born, but we are still linked by our Irish blood and the New York Yankees. My father inherited his love of the Yankees from my grandfather, and passed it on to me. I love when my dad talks about watching the Yankees as a boy growing up in the Bronx during the 40s and 50s, mainly because I find it incredible that he grew up when Mickey Mantle was patrolling center field and Yogi Berra was crouching behind the plate. But fittingly for my dad, his favorite player was neither of those men. It was Bill “Moose” Skowron, the hard-working, blue-collar first baseman who generally played second fiddle to a team of flashy superstars.
My dad’s love of Moose Skowron describes to me why the Yankees have become such an iconic part of New York. Even though the team has always been loaded with superstars, these men all still have traits we identify with and value in our own lives. This was especially true when my dad was growing up, as even the highest-paid players needed to find menial jobs in the offseason in order to provide for their families. But even though many New York ballplayers have become some of the most famous athletes in American history, almost all of them came from backgrounds as unremarkable as our own. Lou Gehrig, the legendary Iron Horse, was the only surviving son of German immigrants before he was “the luckiest man on the face of the Earth”. Mariano Rivera, almost universally acknowledged as the greatest closer in the history of baseball, grew up playing catch with a milk carton glove and balls of fishing net in Panama City. Even Alex Rodriguez, the wealthiest player in baseball, was raised by his single Dominican mother and learned to play ball through the Boys and Girls Club. They all came to the Yankees to try to make better lives for themselves and their families—the same reason why immigrants have been coming to New York for centuries.
With this in mind, I asked the biggest Yankee fans I know why they identified with their favorite players. I was curious to see whom they would select after sifting through nearly 100 years of history, varying personalities, and a wide variety of ethnicities. Both my 17 year-old brother Brian and my father’s colleague Felix chose right fielder Paul O’Neill because of their appreciation for his unbridled intensity and passion while playing in a game, evoking memories of their own childhood enthusiasm. My mother said her favorite is Derek Jeter, not for his Hall of Fame-worthy statistics, but because as a parent she admires his selflessness and charitable nature. My best friend Alex roots for Alex Rodriguez because of their mutual Hispanic heritage and because he is so polarizing (or, as he put it, “pretty much everybody else hates him, and I seem to like who everybody hates”). Four people with three different favorites, and yet they all agree on one thing—out of the 25 men on the team at any given time, they identify with the ones who are most like themselves, and none of them chose a native New Yorker. O’Neill hails from Ohio, Jeter is from Michigan, and Rodriguez grew up in Miami. And yet, their love of baseball has allowed them all to mesh seamlessly into New York culture, much like how immigrants from foreign countries bring their unique backgrounds to build on the existing New York ideals.
As for me, my favorite player is Jorge Posada, the recently retired catcher from Puerto Rico. Although I’m not Puerto Rican, I always identified with the fire Jorge brought to the field. He was never the most vocal member of the team, but he was always fiercely loyal to the city and his team, and one of the quickest to jump in and defend his teammates in an argument. I have always admired him for exemplifying loyalty.
And for my picture—this was taken in the right field bleachers of Yankee Stadium, home of the wildly passionate Yankee fans known as the “Bleacher Creatures”. You can see that each fan wears a different player’s shirt on his back, but the fans are unified by their love of the Yankees. Maybe they are third generation Yankee fans like myself, maybe they’re at the stadium for the first time, or maybe they’re rooting for the player from their homeland. Like New York itself, everyone there comes from a different background and has a different reason for coming out to the stadium, but everyone is united by the love of the game and the New York Yankee culture, bridging the gaps between us in a way not much else can.
-Emily Jennings
