Letter to Hal Steinbrenner

On the advice of one SJ44, famed poster from The Yankees LoHud Blog, I have handwritten the following letter to Hal Steinbrenner.

I realize the letter is likely to go unread or otherwise be ignored and acknowledge the baseball-is-a-business mantra and all it refers to, and that they are unlikely to care about the ramblings of a 22 year old graduate student, but, hey, I got to procrastinate.

















For those that are not paleological experts:

To Hal Steinbrenner:

I was born in 1986, about two months before Phil Hughes. I am too young to remember the Yankees before Derek Jeter—in fact, the very first game I watched on tv was the Jeffrey Maier game during the 1996 ALCS. So for me, this October is unfamiliar territory. I’m not used to not having playoff baseball!

I have, however, made peace with that—after all, the cool thing about baseball is that you can play it again in the spring. That’s not my concern.

What does concern me, however, is what I—and not just me, but those of my age—are supposed to do about going to games at the New Yankee Stadium.

See, most of us are in or just out of college. Some, like me, are masochists slaving away in graduate school, but most are still just trying to find a job. It’s a tough situation—the economy is bad—when I talked to my father about it, he says that it’s never been this bad in his lifetime, and he was born in 1950. My father wouldn’t exaggerate—he graduated from Wharton and predicted what would happen back in March. My older brother works for a major investment bank and for a while we have bee paying a lot of attention to the situation. So my friends and I are aware that it’s a no-win situation.

Many of us would like to be able to attend Yankee games, as perhaps one way in which we can enjoy an evening after a rough, fruitless ay of job searching or to reconnect with some of our best childhood memories.

The problem is, on the whole, with the current prices for the new Stadium, we can’t afford anything more than bleacher or tier seats. As for season tickets, the only way for us to do that would be splitting a partial plan in the bleachers.

It might not, right now, seem like a big deal that a bunch of college kids can’t afford baseball tickets, but the fact is, in a few years, we will be the ones that you will target to buy season tickets to renew for decades to come. If we can’t afford tickets now, how are we supposed to be convinced that we’ll be able to afford decent seats in a few years—when more of us will have not just ourselves but our families to support?

I understand the need for corporate sponsorship and thus corporate boxes. That alone is not the problem—the problem is that it comes at the expense of possibly alienating the fan base that already has a hard time still trying to recover from the wounds of 2004 and now the wounds of 2008.

We want to support the Yankees. We’ve been paying so much attention to Scranton and Trenton that almost any Yankee fan my age can tell you about Austin Jackson, Jesus Montero and Mark Melancon. We want to be there in late 2009, 2010 and 2011 when they (hopefully) make it to the MLB level club. We want to be able to tell our children that we were there to witness the founding of the next Yankee dynasty, tht we got to see it close up, where we could see Jorge Posada wave to his kids in between innings, where we could see Joba Chamberlain wipe the sweat from his brow before striking out Dustin Pedroia, where we could see the marks in the grass from where Robinson Canò made a diving stop to keep a Carl Crawford line drive from going into right field an allowing Tampa to tie the game, where we could see Derek Jeter’s 3000th hit and Mariano Rivera become the all time saves leader.

We want to be able to return home to our blogs, where we can post photos from the game we went to and share the experience with those of us who, in California or Texas, can’t be there as well.

We don’t want it to cost the same as a vacation to Disneyland.

In the short term, I’m sure there won’t be any issue selling tickets to the new Stadium and I realize that baseball is first and foremost a business, so I realize the likelihood that many of us will still be paying a small fortune for decent seats for a long time to come.

However, baseball is a sport built on the possibility of hope, and so, I will hope.

Thanks for not trading Hughes,

Rebecca G

25 September 2008

To a Wyoming Senator that Caught the Last Home Run at Yankee Stadium

[I actually tried sending this email to the email address listed on the state senator's webpage--sharshman@wyoming.com, as the folks at River Ave Blues have encouraged, but I got this message in response:


I'm sorry to have to inform you that the message returned
below could not be delivered to one or more destinations.

: Permanent Failure: Mailbox would exceed maximum allowed storage

Maybe I'll try sending it again in a few weeks. After the election.]




Hello--

How's Wyoming? I've never been. My brothers both have, though, and they agree--it's a beautiful place and a haven for outdoor sports. That's not something you often get in New Jersey or in the Bronx so I guess I'll have to make my way out there some time. I've been killing to go kayaking, real kayaking, for ages.

I hope you liked your trip to New York. It's a great city, isn't it?

You should have been here for the Super Bowl last year, the entire city, even Jets fans, banding together to support the Giants, who were beyond lucky to win that game. It's the City's first professional sports championship since 9/11--the Devils won the Stanley Cup in 2003, yes, but they belong to New Jersey.

I'm sure as a sports fan you can get an idea of what Yankee Stadium means to the City. It's not just a place where they play baseball, it's part of the psyche, the consciousness, the being of the City. It identifies us, unites us, and is a place we can go to to live out some of our happiest memories.

Living in the Bronx has been a major culture shock to a girl from suburban New Jersey, but it is a vibrant community and now that I'm here, I absolutely love it. Like your state, it's a place that works its own magic. I'd love to take you to an Arthur Ave restaurant or let you sit in on my medieval history classes at Fordham University.

I can't put into words how much the Yankees mean to a place that for so long has been synonymous with urban decay.

So, while I congratulate you on catching the Jose Molina home run ball, I have to ask, nicely, if you would consider returning it.

You caught the ball, I'm sure you've taken pictures of yourself with the ball, you've seen it, you've touched it...most Yankee fans, myself included, have never caught so much as a foul ball and you caught something historic.

I can't speak for the Yankees, but I'm sure they'd be more than willing to send you all sorts of autographed memorabilia for that baseball or maybe get you tickets to a game at the new place, or pretty much, whatever you want.

But that ball deserves a place to rest not in a safe deposit box but in the New Yankee Stadium, reminding the fans that may have momentarily forgotten of their team's heritage, tradition, pride and importance both in the local community and in the larger context of the American sports world.

You will already be known as the guy to catch the last home run at Yankee Stadium and for that reason might find your name in the history and record books. You shouldn't need a baseball to prove it.

I hope the autumns in Wyoming are as pleasant as they are here, where we are approaching peak foliage--it's not Vermont, but it's ours. As is Yankee Stadium.

--

Rebecca
A Yankee Fan

An Open Letter to the 2008 NY Yankees

To the 2008 New York Yankees--

Hey. How's it going?

It's not been an easy season for you guys, I imagine. I get that it's a transition year. I get that things haven't gone according to script. Certain pitchers have gotten hurt or lost the strike zone. Certain hitters have missed over a month with injuries. I get that certain bullpen pitchers have not lived up to expectations.

Dude. Guys. You should know more than anyone else here that you can't write a season off on June 11th. 12th. Before the All Star break. I mean, you all know better than anyone else, that it's just a bad idea to give up on a season so early, so, for the love of all that's holy, can you please stop playing like that?

Look. I don't expect you to win 100 games. At this point, I don't expect you to win 90 (though you'll have to if you want to play in October). The thing is, though, I expect you to not give up on a game just because the other team has a lead.

I thought maybe we had gotten over this after last weekend. At least, that was my hope. Maybe we have and I'm just overreacting...but I can't stress how frustrating it is for a fan.

See, there are two ways to play .500. There's the way where you're like the Orioles--a team everyone expected to lose 100 games this year (okay, so technically they still can), a team everyone thought was the only one in the AL East to regress in the off season, and you go on and defy all expectations. It's the .500 where you fight every game, even the losses, and say, 'hey, maybe there's something here'.

Then there's the 2008 Yankee .500. That's the .500 where the effort looks lackluster, barely above minimum. It's where the games you lose are the ones you lost the second the other team scored their first run. It's where you don't get those extra insurance runs with RISP. It's the .500 where you keep waiting for that big run of 10 straight wins to come, to push you firmly over the edge...

...but if you keep waiting, it will never come.

I'm not saying everyone has to play like an all star (though it'd be nice). What I am saying, however, is that you guys have got to remember is that if you play good, sound, fundamental baseball, you'll win some games. If you play each game with heart--if you refuse to give up outs or remember to work each at bat to its fullest--you'll win some more. When you finally figure out that greatness (and a long win streak) comes to those who take it, and not those who wait, for it, you'll find yourselves above .500 for good.


Here's hoping.

Rebecca

An Open Letter to Alex Rodriguez

To Alex Rodriguez--

Hi. Like legions of Yankees fans everywhere, I found last night exceptionally painful to bear.

However, I'm not angry.

I'm disappointed.

I had thought that maybe this year you really did want to win, that maybe you weren't lying when you said that you wanted to stay, that you wanted to play in New York. That you would settle for a World Series.

I see that it is not the case.

I see now that you will do only as Scott Boras tells you, and I must say that as long as you keep that up, and keep playing only for the money, your legacy will be just as tarnished as others whose names are not worth mentioning.

Manyt of whom we call the greatest icons, such as Don Mattingly or Ray Borque or Cal Ripken, Jr played nearly their entire time for one team, even during some of their team's darkest days. You can't fault Borque for going to Colorado to win a Stanley Cup--20 years with one team is no small legacy.

What is your legacy with the Yankees? In the four years you were here, we had the greatest choke in baseball postseason history, and then failed to make it out of the first round. The Yankees were not Jeter's team, even though Jeter was the captain. Sure, in 2007 there were spots of promise, but on the whole they are not four years we will remember fondly.

My gut tells me, a few years from now, we'll consider the events of last night and today as the real turning point for the Yankees, the beginning of the return to greatness.

The Yankees of '96-'01 knew it well.

No player is bigger than this team.

No player is bigger than this game.

When you come to this conclusion and start to play accordingly, you might again find me as one of your supporters.

Until then,

Rebecca.




(I have a prospective letter for Joe Girardi but will not post it until the news has been made official, that he has accepted the job).

An Open Letter to Joe Torre

This is long, rambly, and, well, I probably really shouldn't be that attached to the Yankees, but I had to do it.

I know, in all likelihood Joe Torre will never see it, but if there's any chance at all, (psst: pass it on?!) here goes:

Dear Mr. Torre—

This is going to sound a bit odd, but right now, if I could, I’d run up and hug you.

I know, I know, it’s odd, slightly inappropriate and liable to get me arrested, but it’s the truth.

See, I am too young to have known any other Yankees’ manager.

I’ve watched coaches for the Devils, Nets and Jets come and go, year in and year out, and half the time I’m not even sure who’s behind the bench, but for the past twelve years I’ve known that if I peer into a Yankee dugout, you’d be there.

I don’t even really know what to say. I’m sitting a few hundred miles away from Yankee Stadium in Syracuse, New York, where the air hangs heavy like a funeral shroud, and there are tears on my face.

My parents told me time and again that I shouldn’t get so attached to the Yankees, but I was never really any good at following instructions.

I’ve watched, wished, hoped, dreamed, cried, shouted, cursed, threatened violence, gotten violent, cheered and seen the improbable and the impossible.

The games I remember best are ones like the Aaron Boone game and Bernie’s catch of Piazza’s long fly ball to beat the Mets and Jeter’s flip to Posada to nab Giambi…but also ones that you may have forgotten:

I remember being down 6-1 to Toronto in the eighth in a pretty meaningless game, and listening to John Sterling call it as Bernie and Posada each went yard, with Grand Slams.

I remember coming back from a 9-0 deficit and winning the game against Texas…don’t even remember what year, just that we did it.

I remember beating Texas in a 21-6 game, and thinking I’d never see anything like that again (I was wrong).

I remember seeing Alfonso Soriano’s first major league at bat and thinking he was a guy that was going to be around for a while.

I remember back in the days when I still had to be in bed by ten, listening to the end of Yankee games on the clock radio I had in my bedroom, as John Sterling magically called “Yankees win! Theeeee Yankees win!”, soothing me to sleep.

I remember that the morning after I’d have to get my brother up for school and I’d try to come up with as creative a way as possible to tell him how the Yankees won or lost a game…I remember telling him once that the ‘fire put out the rain’, a reference to Bernie hitting a game winning HR in extra innings, as rain was coming down in buckets.

I remember watching game one of the 1998 World Series with my parents, having to tell my dad that Tino’s batting .125 in the playoffs was actually really bad, then seeing the count go full…and then…well, you know what happened.

I remember the very first Yankee game I went to—May 1999. I remember walking into Yankee Stadium and thinking I’d stepped into Heaven. I remember I had a strong dislike of Manny Ramirez then (as he played for Cleveland)…it’s good to know some things never change!

I remember Don Zimmer and Mel the pitching coach. I remember Jeff Nelson and Mike Stanton. I remember Chili Davis and Miguel Cairo and, hell, I even remember a random game in 1998 or 1999 where Mariano Rivera got the start.

I remember being in summer camp, and getting an email from my dad on 18 July 1999, with the Yankee score. I remember thinking first that the reporter was using ‘perfect’ in the metaphorical sense, then realizing he wasn’t, and then shouting it aloud to everyone, whether or not they cared.

I remember you, Joe Torre, being the constant. I remember what people said—that you were lucky, that the Yankees were a Porsche but any other manager would have driven the car off of a cliff.


I don’t know how else to put into words how much you managing the Yankees has been a part of my life.

I’m just a fan. I can’t speak for anyone on the team, or even any other Yankee fan.

Yes, there were decisions I didn’t agree with, things that might not have sat right, but I would tell myself that I’m not the Yankees manager. You don’t stay manager for long if you’re not any good, and well, if you pass the decade mark, you’re pretty damned good.

God, I know it’s corny, but I can’t imagine the Yankees without you there. I thought it would be hard to imagine the Yankees without Paul and Scotty B and Tino, and it was, but imagining the Yankees without you there is just damned near impossible.

I wish I could have been at the Stadium tonight, chanting your name, with the rest. I don’t care about what anyone says, but you were not good for the Yankees, you were amazing.

You gave us all something amazing these past twelve years. I was proud to be a Yankee fan in 1996; more than ever I am proud to be a Yankee fan in 2007.

So, I guess what I’m really trying to say is, Thank You.


I can thank the Good Lord for making me a Yankee fan, but I’m thanking you for never, ever making me doubt it.

Thank you,

Rebecca.