The conclusion of MLB’s regular season leaves me in sour mood, since winter’s on the horizon and if the New York Yankees make it to the World Series I’ll have a stress-induced toothache from vociferously rooting against them. If My Gal Friday is beneficent the Bombers will be eliminated early on in the over-extended playoffs. As it happens, the Red Sox, the team I follow year-round, as frustrating as that can be, might squeak into the baseball tourney; as of this Thursday morning it’s up in the air.
Nevertheless, I had a smashing time last Saturday night, watching the fizzled Orioles play the Yanks at Camden Yards (still my favorite venue for a game). It was a first-class affair, and not because of the action on the field—Giancarlo Stanton squashed all hopes of an O’s upset in the first inning with a three-run homer—but the accommodations and banter with a group of people, evenly divided on team loyalties. A longtime family friend, Evan, invited my son Booker and me to join him in a club-level suite (a Wall Street vet, his network of connections would fill a late-1980s Rolodex) and it’s a swell way to watch a game. Kind of like flying private: Booker and I entered at a preferred customer’s gate, with no security scan, and were escorted to an elevator which brought us upstairs, with eight different attendants smiling and wishing us a good evening. Arriving at the suite, where about 30 people were noshing on crabcakes and sausages—including my buddy Jim Burger, with whom I’d had coffee two days earlier, and I have no idea how he wormed his way in there, but as one of 22 unofficial Mayors of Baltimore, it made sense—we sat down just before the first pitch.
After introductions to other guests (mostly in the financial industry), Evan and I talked baseball for most of the contest. He’s not only a skilled and successful trader, but knows more about the history of baseball than anyone else I’m acquainted with. Just a few rows behind us, Orioles greats Boog Powell and Eddie Murray were chatting, and without even a hint of an internet search, Evan rattled off their prodigious statistics, and quickly moved on to what the Yankees ought to do in the off-season. Just a few years younger than me, Evan’s as committed to the Yanks as I am to the Sox, and he follows every game during the season, whether he’s at home in Los Angeles or on the road. He’s for a long-term deal for Cody Bellinger, letting Trent Grisham move on in free agency, and not touching the highly-touted Kyle Tucker. I told him that I don’t care who the Yanks sign as long as they get injured in spring training, and he laughed and expressed the same sentiment about next year’s Sox team. (Which reminds me: NESN’s TV analyst Lou Merloni had it just right last week when he said the Sox didn’t have a powerful offense; their strength, when on a roll, was playing “small ball.” He couldn’t say it out loud, but probably agreed with me: “Mister, we could use a man like Raffy Devers again.”)
The only time the conversation lulled was when Aaron Judge was at the plate, and he delivered with his 49th homer in the third inning, letting Evan relax, while I nervously charted the Sox-Rays game on my iPhone. (Camden Yards was jammed—over 37,000 spectators, half of them rooting on the visiting team.) I can’t stand Judge, because he’s a Yankee, and have hoped against hope that he’d be caught in a PED scandal (or a Wander Franco situation), but doubt that’s in the cards. Could be wrong, but I’m buying the accepted opinion that Judge is a stand-up guy, not a show-off, and like Shohei Ohtani, a generational talent. I hate it when he’s in the batter’s box against the Sox.
Evan was a buddy of my late brother Jeff, also a Yanks partisan, and he and Booker (with whom he has common business interests) yak on the horn several time a week about baseball. While keeping an eye on the game, we indulged in nostalgia: subscribing to The Sporting News, combing The New York Times’ Sunday sports section, counting the ballparks we’ve been to, and re-living the 1975 World Series. My memory’s sharp, but I can’t zip through the game’s greats as fast, and accurately, as Evan. In one 20-minute span, he evoked Lou Boudreau, Richie (later Dick) Allen, Graig Nettles, Sudden Sam McDowell, Ryne Duren, Luis Tiant, Roy White, Reggie Jackson (now a buddy of his), Pedro Martinez (he put Pedro on equal footing with Sandy Koufax), Aaron Boone (“a moronic manager”), the Alou Brothers, Frank Malzone, Bruce Hurst, the Marichal-Roseboro contretemps, Bernie Williams, Moe Berg, Clete Boyer, Tony Oliva, Steve Sax, Catfish Hunter, Herb Score and Frankie Frisch. Among others.
This repartee was an engaging reminder of why I’m a baseball fan.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023