Confessions of a She-Fan (10 page)

Pettitte is on the hill tonight. He strikes out two of three in the top of the first. In the bottom of the inning, A-Rod comes up and the 500 Show starts all over again: the flashbulbs, the chanting, the holding up of signs and banners. He flies out.

It is 7–1 in the bottom of the seventh when A-Rod gets another turn. He has done nothing in this game. Nothing in days. He looks completely unnerved by the attention and pressure, and I feel sorry for him. Sure, he is a gazillionaire and the best player in baseball, but he is a psychological wreck right now. You can see it in his body language even from Tier 18. For this at-bat, everybody in the Stadium stands. He works the count to 3–1, then grounds out. I hear a few boos.

The 8–1 final is the Yankees' third straight win. We are on a roll.

Thursday brings another day game after a night game—and another trip to a hair salon. It is time to touch up my roots. Bruce, my colorist in Santa Barbara, applies my shade of blond every month, but he has given me my “formula,” and I hand it over to Trish at the Peninsula Hotel's Mélange Salon in the city. I want to look my best for dinner with John Sterling later.

Michael and I have brought our dress-up clothes in garment bags and plan to leave them at my sister Susan's high-rise apartment on the Upper East Side while we go to the game. She meets us in the lobby and introduces us to her doorman. His name is Hilton, and he is a Yankee fan.

“I heard about your book,” he says with a big smile. He is a handsome young man in his uniform. “Pretty cool.”

“Thanks, Hilton.”

“I heard about the hassles with the tickets, too.” He nods at my sister, who has apparently told him my life story. “I'll keep my ears open. I think one of the tenants here works for WFAN.”

“You really shouldn't go to the game,” my sister says once we are upstairs in her air-conditioned apartment. “It's too hot. You can watch it here, and we'll order lunch, and you'll be more comfortable.”

My sister is 7 years older than I am. She is also a mother, a grandmother, and a preschool teacher—very nurturing and much nicer than I am. I don't see her that often, since we live on opposite coasts. And we don't share the same
interests—she is a show-tunes person and I am a rock-and-roll person, for example—but we share an interest in the Yankees, and that is no small thing.

She and Michael persuade me that it would be silly to go to the game. So we watch it in her living room.

Clemens falters badly, departing in only the second inning after giving up eight runs. I am amazed at my sister's lack of anger at the Rocket. She doesn't throw cheese at Michael or me. The Yankees tie the score at 8–8 in the bottom of the frame, but the White Sox win the 4-hour contest 13–9 after Farnsworth watches two homers sail over his head and Cano lets a ball dribble through his legs for his second error of the day. A-Rod is still stalledat499, but at least he got a couple of hits.

Bob, my brother-in-law, emerges from his office in the apartment.

“How's the book going?” he asks. He is trying to quit smoking, but I detect a whiff of cigarettes on his clothes.

“I'm having trouble getting access to the Yankees,” I say.

He thinks about this. He always tries to help. He drove me around to look at colleges when I was a teenager and found me my first car and, of course, introduced me to the groupies who lived next door. “A friend of mine knows Bob Watson,” he says, referring to the Yankees' former GM, who is now the disciplinarian at Major League Baseball. “I'll ask him to put in a good word for you.”

I love that I have this grassroots support for my cause.

The Post House on East 63rd Street is a dark, clubby steak house filled with Upper East Side power brokers and their trophy wives. Michael and I arrive in our dress-up clothes and Sandy and Doug McCartney come along soon after. Sandy is attractive, with intelligent eyes and a warm smile. She jumps right in and starts talking, so there are none of the awkward silences that often accompany first meetings. Doug is tall and tanned and handsome, and he laughs easily. I am so glad they let us horn in on their dinner.

John shows up looking not the least bit weary from the marathon game he has just broadcast. He is nattily dressed in a dark suit with a white handkerchief in his jacket pocket. He is taller and trimmer than he appears on TV, but what gets me is the Voice. Unmistakable.

Since he is an Important Personage in New York, we are led to the Post House's best table. Once we are seated, I remind myself that this occasion is a
social get-together,and I rein in my impulse to grill him about the Yankees. Well,I do askance questions. He is very affableand charming and doesn't seem to mind.

“What if you have to go to the bathroom while you're on the air?” I ask, after having established that he has not missed a single game since he started with the Yankees in 1989.

“I hold it in until the game is over.”

“What do you do to relax after a game?”

“I watch tapes of
The Young and the Restless
and
The Bold and the Beautiful.
”

I notice his World Series ring. It is gold with diamonds studding the interlocking N-Y. He lets me try it on, and it is so heavy I can hardly lift it. He says the new versions are even bigger and gaudier. This one is big and gaudy enough.

The dinner is very cordial. As we are leaving the restaurant, John pledges his help with the Yankees once again.

“I don't know exactly what I can do, since Jason Zillo won't let you into the press box. Maybe you could interview the beat writers and ask them about the players.”

“Thanks. I'll do that.”

During the drive back to Westchester, Michael and I crack each other up doing impressions of John.

“It's an A-Bomb! From A-Rod!” I say in a mock baritone.

“Theeeee Yankees win!” Michael says in his deepest voice.

“Except they didn't win today,” I say in my own voice.

On Friday morning, I try Jean Afterman again at her office. Her assistant is brusque. She takes my number. I have a bad feeling about this.

I send Jean an e-mail, explaining who I am in case she is confused by all the info from Joe Longo and Brenda Friend.

My heart stops a few minutes later when I see her name in my in-box. She will be my advocate, I tell myself. She will understand the emotional component of being a She-Fan. She will “get” this.

I open the e-mail.

“Ms. Heller,” she writes. “This is a Media Relations matter and you should address any inquiries to that department. I have nothing to do with these issues.”

Talk about curt. She regards me as an “issue.” And she copied Jason Zillo. I am sure he is thrilled that I went over his head.

What is wrong with the Yankees? Don't they understand that I am their number one fan?

At first I panic that my publisher will void the book contract if I don't get access. But I call Marty, and he reminds me that this kiss-off is just a minor setback.

“Remember what I told you. There's always one player who will talk, and you'll find him—with or without their cooperation.”

He gives me the name of a ticket broker he has used in Toronto: Mike Chivlelli at Kangaroo Promotions. I call Mike and buy tickets for the games against the Blue Jays at the Rogers Centre next week. They are not cheap, but they take5minutes as opposed to the2hours I spent on StubHub.

Tonight the Yankees open a three-game series against Kansas City. My niece, Lizzie, and her husband, Aaron, will be at the game, and I look forward to seeing them. It is very hot and humid with a forecast of thunderstorms, so I stick my collapsible umbrella in my bag.

At the Stadium we take the escalators up to Tier 5, row V, the highest we have been so far—only three rows from the very top. We are directly above home plate, but we might as well be up in the blimp.

Wang is pitching,and once again there are rows full of Taiwanese people waving Taiwanese flags. I also notice that there are several groups of women sitting together. They are laughing and drinking and having a carefree night out with the girls. Has the ballpark replaced the singles bar? Is beer the new Cosmo?

Wang looks sharp tonight, his sinker making suckers out of the Royals batters. In the bottom of the sixth, the Yankees areup5–1 and the bases are loaded for A-Rod. It is sheer bedlam. Flashbulbs. Cheers. Stomping. Is this his moment? Will he finally hit number 500? He doubled in the third. Does he have his stroke back? No. He flies out.

Lizzie calls in the top of the seventh from the Loge section, where she and Aaron are sitting. She says there are plenty of empty seats and we should come and join them. We are only too happy to move down.

“Nice seats,” I tell her. “You can actually make out the players' faces from here. How much did you pay for them?”

“Sixty apiece on StubHub.” Like her mother, she has a calm, nurturing demeanor. She is a Yankee fan but takes their winning and losing as part of the natural order of things. I am the freakish She-Fan of this family. I wonder if I was adopted.

It is 7–1 in the bottom of the eighth when A-Rod steps in. A loud clap of thunder erupts and everyone jumps. If he hits number 500 now, with all the sound effects, it will be really dramatic. He flies out.

In the top of the ninth, the speakers blare Mo's theme song, “Enter Sandman.” As he finishes off the Royals, there are bolts of lightning in the sky. The crowd hurries out of the Stadium to avoid the sudden storm.

Lizzie, Aaron, Michael, and I head down the ramps along with 55,000 others. I have never experienced such a crush of hot, sweaty bodies. The ramps are totally backed up, and once we inch down to the main level I see why. It is now pouring outside, with ferocious thunder and lightning. Nobody wants to go out in such a violent storm, including us. We are not worried about getting wet; we are afraid of getting electrocuted.

“Everybody out!” yell the security people in their yellow shirts and menacing voices as they literally try to herd us out the doors. “You have to leave
now
!”

We are not budging. The four of us huddle together with hundreds of others who refuse to be thrown out. We have rights. We are not living in a police state. We are united in our refusal to be bullied.

“
You people have to leave!
” one of the security guys screams, as another Yankee Stadium employee actually shoves a woman outside and does nothing when she slips and falls on the wet pavement.

Small children cry hysterically, which is enough to rouse the normally mild-mannered Michael. He gets in the security guy's face: “It'll be your ass if somebody is hurt!”

He is not alone in his anger. But as if to show who's boss, the security guy grabs the handles on a man's wheelchair and pushes him out the door.

Our collective rage explodes. We are on the verge of an actual riot, and the security people don't have a clue what to do. There is no crowd control, no one in charge—until a big, burly guy with a shaved head yells at us through a megaphone.

“Everybody quiet down!” He glares at his own employees. “No one's going anywhere until I say it's okay to leave!”

“I hate this place,” I say to Lizzie.

“Welcome to Yankee Stadium,” she replies.

After about 30 minutes, the guy with the megaphone announces that the storm is supposed to continue for the rest of the night, so we do have to leave. He instructs the security people to hand out large garbage bags to everyone in the crowd. The idea is for us to poke a hole in the bags for our heads and wear them as raincoats. I am amazed they don't make us pay for the bags.

Saturday is another day game after a night game. And since the night game was such a bummer, I am not in a rush to drive back to the Stadium. But we do. We take the escalators to Tier 27, row M. The section is not quite as high up as last night's, but it is farther away from the action—in right-field foul territory. I can't see the scoreboard, which really irritates me.

Phil Hughes is making his return to the team since coming off the DL. He is throwing strikes in the top of the first and sets the Royals down in order. When A-Rod comes up in the bottom half, 55,000 people stand and scream, “Let's go, A-Rod!”

“God, I hope he does it already,” I say to Michael, who is giving the hot dogs at Yankee Stadium another try.

Here is the first pitch from someone named Kyle Davies. A-Rod golfs the ball toward left field. It is not one of his towering bombs, but it could be long enough. The question is will it stay fair? Will it? Will it? YES!!!

The Stadium literally shakes as A-Rod rounds the bases. We are on our feet clapping, chanting, waving our arms in a kind of delirium. Now the entire Yankees team spills out onto the field waiting to congratulate A-Rod. On his way toward home plate, he looks up into the stands and blows a kiss to someone. His wife? The stripper? Scott Boras? After he is mobbed by his teammates, he joins them back in the dugout, then comes out for a curtain call. But it is not the usual doffing of the cap. His arms are outstretched in appreciation of the crowd—and probably with relief that the whole ordeal is over. He is the third player, after the Babe and the Mick, to hit 500 homers in pinstripes. What is more, the Yankees trounce Kansas City 16–8.