The Boys of Summer

BROOKLYN—Most students would probably like to forget their entire college application process—the hours spent agonizing over the dreaded open-ended essay question on something “meaningful.” Most students place what they remember of the experience in that box of bad high school memories alongside taking the SATs, making science fair projects and finding a prom dress. However, for me, deciding what to write about in my college essay was a no-brainer: the New York Yankees.

I’ve always been a Yankees fan, but my real love affair with the Bronx Bombers began during the 1996 World Series. I remember watching Wade Boggs ride around Yankee stadium on the back of a horse to the cheers of 57,000 screaming fans after the Yankees beat Atlanta in Game 6 to win their first World Series since 1979. I was hooked.

During the next few years my love of the Yankees only grew. Every February I would get excited about the start of spring training. School did tend to detract from my ability to follow the team as thoroughly as I would have liked, but once summer came I could give the Yankees my full attention. And I did. I never missed a game—or at least I tried never to miss a game. If I couldn’t watch it on television, I would bring a radio along with me.

By the time fall rolled around most of the city would be swept up in playoff fever. If there was a playoff game the night before a test, most teachers could be counted on to reschedule.

The Yankees won the World Series each of my first three years of high school. And since I went to school in lower Manhattan it was natural to take the morning off to attend what was becoming an annual event—the ticker tape parade down the canyons of Broadway.

The relative consistency of the Yankees roster over those years also helped to foster a feeling of intimacy with the team. I could not only recite each player’s batting average, home runs, and RBI’s, but the more esoteric statistics. (For example, if a pitcher walks the first batter in an inning, that batter has a 60 percent chance of reaching home plate.)

I was proud that my knowledge went beyond mere stats. I liked that I knew Paul O’Neil was a relentless perfectionist who would practice his swing while exiled to the long lulls of right field play, or that Bernie Williams considered a career as a jazz guitarist before settling on baseball.

In 2001 when the Yankees lost to the Arizona Diamondbacks in Game 7 of the World Series, I actually cried. My only consolation was that I was not a Mets fan (or even worse, a Red Sox fan), who had to suffer that kind of disappointment on a much more regular basis.

When I began college I figured that going to school in the heart of the Red Sox nation would only cause my love of the Yankees to deepen. However, the opposite happened. The truth is over the past few years I’ve begun to care less and less about the Yankees, which is a hard thing to admit. And even worse, despite being home in New York and getting the chance to rekindle my old summer romance with the Yankees, I’m afraid we have grown too far apart.

These days the faces of the Yankees change so often it’s hard to keep track of who’s on the team. To go from hating a player like Jason Giambi to suddenly rooting for him is not an easy step considering all the curses I’ve yelled at him (through my television) over the years. The Yankees are no longer the team they were in the late ’90s, but rather a collection of overpaid, and often over-hyped stars.

I’ve changed too. My job this summer in investment banking doesn’t give me much time to follow the Yankees. Other interests compete for my limited time—making it hard to devote three hours to watching a ballgame. And I’ve become more jaded. The mysticism and magic baseball used to conjure have faded.

Every now and then the old spark I once felt will be rekindled like during the Yankees dramatic and victorious playoff series against the Red Sox last fall—although surely the opportunity to rub salt in the wounded egos of Sox fans had something to do with it.

Some things will never change. I will always hate the Red Sox—even if my love of the Yankees isn’t as strong as it once was. And that’s not to say that my love for the Yankees will ever disappear entirely. I’ll still feel a rush when I walk into Yankee Stadium to see a game. But this summer I’ve reconciled myself to the fact I will probably never worship the Yankees the way I once did. And I’ve almost put to rest my old dream job of one day becoming the first female general manager of the Yankees. Almost, but not quite.

Jessica E. Schumer ’06, a social studies concentrator in Mather House, is photography chair of The Crimson. She can be found in her cubicle in midtown.