Confessions of a She-Fan (11 page)

We listen to A-Rod's press conference in the car on the way back to my mother's. He sounds awed both by his feat and by the fans' support. “To wear this uniform and do it here, that is so special,” he says. “I've had some good
times and had some rough times, and a day like today brings it full circle, and maybe there's a happy ending for me somewhere.”

“What do you think?” I ask Michael as we pull into Mom's driveway. “Will he opt out of his contract and leave New York?”

“I could care less,” he says.“I wouldn't mind taking a night off from baseball.”

I pat his arm. “We'll have dinner and focus on other things.”

When we get inside the house, we see that my mother has set up tray tables in front of the TV in her bedroom. “I heard about A-Rod's homer on the news!” she says, her face flushed with excitement. “I missed the game this afternoon, so I was hoping we could eat dinner and watch the rerun of it tonight. You don't mind, do you?”

Sunday is getaway day. There is a 1:05 game in the Bronx, the finale against Kansas City, but we will not make our flight to Toronto if we go. So we watch it on TV with Mom. Mussina is sharp over six-plus innings, and Matsui and Melky homer. The Yankees win 8–5 and sweep the Royals.

We finish packing, load up the car, and say good-bye to my mother.

“Thanks for having us.” I hug her. She is so small, and I feel a lump in my throat the way I always do when I leave her. At 90, every visit with her is a gift. But I will be back in New York for the next home stands.

I hug her again. We endured the usual mother-daughter power struggles over the years, but now we are much more than mother and daughter; we are friends, too. In fact, she is probably my best friend other than Michael. I know with absolute certainty that she would do anything for me; that I could tell her anything; that she is always in my corner. There is only one lingering issue between us: She insists that Bernie Williams should still be on the Yankees. I try to explain that his numbers suggest otherwise, but she will not yield on this point.

When Michael and I arrive at the Air Canada terminal for our 6:30 flight to Toronto, I ask the agent about the flight's equipment, our seats, my usual routine. She says the equipment is an Embraer 175. I gasp, having only heard of Boeings and Airbuses.

“You don't like small planes?” she asks.

I tell Michael I will meet him at the gate and go in search of the bar.

I sit between two overweight guys downing scotches and order a glass of
Pinot Grigio. Facing me is a bank of TV screens, one of which is tuned to the YES Network. YES is showing one of their “classics,” and it happens to be the game the Yankees played right after Thurman Munson was
killed in a small plane
crash
. All I need now is a retrospective on the career of Cory Lidle, who was also
killed in a small plane crash
. I polish off my glass of wine, then race back through security to the gate. Michael is standing there, pissed. People have already begun to board. I am not getting on this piece of
equipment
. But then I see Michael Kay boarding the plane.

“Maybe I can interview him during the flight,” I whisper to Michael.

“I thought you were worried about dying.”

“It would be great to get his take on the Yankees before we all go down.”

Unfortunately, this dinky plane has an even dinkier first-class cabin, and Michael Kay sits in it; we are banished to coach.

After we land in Toronto we go through customs,then on to our baggage-claim carousel. There is Michael Kay waiting for his suitcase.

I put on some lipstick, fluff my hair, and hope to God I don't stink of Pinot Grigio.

“Michael?”

He turns to face me.

“Hi. I'm Jane Heller.” I stick out my hand to shake his. He is tall and has an extremely large head. “I'm writing a book about the Yankees and following them for the rest of the season.”

“Really?”

I notice another man approaching him. Oh, wow. It is Al Leiter.

“Hi, Al.”

He is quite handsome but seems less than thrilled to be accosted by me at the Toronto airport. I refocus on Michael Kay.

“Are you staying at the Park Hyatt?”

“Yes.”

“Me too! John Sterling says it's
the
place to stay in Toronto.” I must stop dragging poor John into every conversation.

“Yes, it's a great hotel.” He starts looking for his suitcase.

I follow him. “I was really touched by the way you took the time to sign autographs for the kids outside the Renaissance in Baltimore.”

“The ballplayers are so busy,” he says with an air of modesty. “Signing
autographs is the least I can do.” He laughs. “Maybe you'll write in your book

that I'm a nice guy.”

“Absolutely!”

I am about to suggest we get together, when Al points to their bags. They hurry over to retrieve them, and before I know it they are out of the terminal.

We take our own cab to the Park Hyatt, which is a swanky establishment in Toronto's swanky Yorkville neighborhood. A battalion of foot soldiers rushes to greet us. I spot Cano, Melky, and Betemit in the lobby. They are all dressed up for a night on the town. I overhear Cano asking the concierge for dance club suggestions.

While I am at the front desk requesting a quiet room,Michael Kay is speaking to another front desk clerk. I catch his eye and wave. He does not wave back.

“We have a package for you, Ms. Heller,” the front desk person says and hands me a delivery from Mike, the broker. I open the package. Inside are all the tickets to the games at the Rogers Centre, along with a couple of Fila shirts and a box of chocolate candy. Who needs StubHub?

Our quiet room at the Park Hyatt is, in fact, a lavish suite that Marty's friend Lisa somehow managed to finagle at a reasonable rate. On the coffee table is a plate of scones with blueberries and cream along with a “Welcome” card from the hotel management. This is more like it.

I wake up on Monday
morning from an odd dream. I was trying to solve a mystery, and the person who was helping me was Eric Berson, my college boyfriend from the University of Rochester. Since I believe in signs and portents and omens, I took Eric's presence in the dream as my cue to track him down. Never mind that I have not seen or spoken to him in years. He once told me he had a part ownership in some pro sports team. Maybe he can get me access to the Yankees.

I Google him and find his Web site. I e-mail him and he calls me!

“Holy shit!” he says. “This is a surprise.”

“How are you?”

He reels off all his successful business ventures, including Greeniacs, an international organization that educates the public about environmental issues. In college he was the kid who never studied, never even bought the textbooks, and still ended up with a 4.0 average. It is not a shock that he has done well in his life.

I explain about the book and ask if he has any influence with the Yankees.

“I'm still semi-involved with the 49ers, but it gets me restaurant reservations and not much else.”

“Too bad. The Yankees won't give me press passes to the games.”

“Oh, kid,” he says as if he is my much smarter, older brother. “Don't torture yourself. Just buy the tickets.”

At noon, Michael and I take a cab to the Rogers Centre, where the first pitch is scheduled for 1:07 p.m. We gaze up at the mammoth domed stadium, which is directly behind one of the world's tallest structures, the CN Tower. We follow the crowd up the stairs and around and around in search of our gate. We pass a panhandler wearing a wool plaid kilt and playing the bagpipes. The temperature is in the 90s.

Inside the stadium, whose roof is open for the sunny day game, we find a food court and buy lunch. Our cashier charges us $120 for a couple of subs. We point out his mistake.

“I had a brain cramp, eh?” he says, changing our tab to $20.

We find our seats, which are excellent. We are right on the field, on the third base side, about 20 rows back. After being in the up-up-up there section for so many days, I am in heaven.

The Rogers Centre is hardly charming like Camden Yards. It is a functional dome with a retractable roof, not an old-timey-looking ballpark, and there is artificial turf where real grass is supposed to be. But it is comfortable and easy to navigate, and the scoreboard is a technological wonder, as sleek as a plasma TV monitor with perfect resolution. And there are glass-enclosed restaurants overlooking center field that I put on my list of places to try.

David Beckham and some of his Galaxy teammates throw out the first pitch, since they are in town to play the Toronto team. Becks gets booed. He is the A-Rod of soccer.

Next up: two national anthems are sung—ours and “O Canada.”

This is the first game in Toronto since A-Rod yelled something in May that made Howie Clark drop the ball, and the Jays waste no time in retaliating. Jesse Kitsch throws his first pitch behind A-Rod.

Toronto scores three runs off Pettitte, who gets lifted in the sixth for someone named Jim Brower. Apparently,Myers has been designated for assignment—his punishment for not getting lefties out—and Brower is his replacement. Mo comes on in the ninth and strikes out the side: Rios, Wells, and the Big Hurt. Impressive, even for Mo. The Yankees win 5–4 and are only a half game behind Detroit for the wild card.

Back at the Park Hyatt, I leave a message for John Sterling inviting him to join us for dinner at Spuntini, the Italian place the concierge recommended.

He calls right back. “The bad news is I'm busy for dinner tonight. The good news I'm going to Spuntini. It's one of Joe Torre's favorite restaurants, and he's having a team dinner in a private room. So I'll come out and say hello.”

I pump my fist.

“What's going on?” Michael asks.

“The Yankees are having dinner in a private room at Spuntini! This is my big chance to meet them!”

“Are you planning to pop out of a cake?”

I take a great deal of time with my clothes, hair, and makeup. Tonight is the night I will strike up a conversation with a Yankee.

We walk to the restaurant. As we step inside, I catch a glimpse of Jeter and Jorge. They are in the private room John mentioned. I crane my neck to see which other players I can spot until the maître d' comes over to show us to our table.

“I can't believe they're all here,” I whisper to Michael, who is sitting across from me. “If we stay long enough, they'll wander out and I can—”

Jorge emerges from the private room and stops to talk to the father and son who are sitting a few tables away from us. They all chat for a few minutes—the boy is adorable, managing to look both excited to be hanging out with an actual Yankee and sophisticated enough not to make Jorge sign his napkin—before Posada goes back to his party.

“I wonder who they are.” I nod at the father and son.

Michael is more interested in the menu. “Must be associated with the team somehow.”

“Let's order a lot of food so we don't have to give up the table anytime soon.”

We order as many courses as I pray my American Express card will allow, and the food keeps coming. But I don't want my Yankee to see me with spinach between my teeth, so I keep opening my compact to inspect myself in the mirror.

We are on our main course when John Sterling stops by. He slides in next to me.

“What do you guys talk about in there?” I say.

“This and that. Everybody in there is someone Joe trusts.”

After a few minutes, he excuses himself and goes back to Joe and the guys. I am sipping the last of my wine when I glance up at Michael. There is a large—
no, massive—figure moving behind him. It takes me a second before I realize that it is A-Rod who is walking directly in back of his chair en route to the men's room and that he is making eye contact with me. I actually choke on my saliva. It is one thing to see him in his uniform, on the field. It is another to see him in jeans and a polo shirt, inches away. He is an amazing specimen—not an ounce of flab, just a hard, sculpted, athlete's body—and his sheer physicality makes him a commanding presence.

“What's wrong?” Michael asks. “You look like you're having a stroke.”

“That was A-Rod,” I whisper. “He was right behind you. He went to take a leak.”

“So?”

“You have to follow him in there.”

The rest you know.

At the hotel after dinner, we take a ride up in the elevator to the 18th-floor lounge. One tidbit John dropped is that the players like to go up there for a drink. We walk into the dimly lit room, and there are Jeter and Jorge sitting at a little cocktail table.

“I'm going over,” I tell Michael.

“And say what?”

“That I'm writing a book and would like to interview them.”

“They'll tell you to call Jason Zillo.”

“Maybe,” I say. “And maybe not.”

I open my compact one last time to check for food between my teeth. I can't smile at Jeter and have green things showing. Jorge would be a great catch, too, don't get me wrong. But Jeter is the Captain.

I close the compact and glance up—only to find that both catches have vanished.

On Tuesday I meet Peter Abraham at 12:30 in the lobby of the Renaissance Hotel at the Rogers Centre. He is stocky with dark, close-cropped hair; a goatee; and a serious expression. He is not unfriendly, just businesslike. I am businesslike, too. I did not come to swap recipes or discuss my favorite chick flicks. I came to find out about the Yankees from someone who has the access I don't.

Peter and I ride up in the elevator to the concierge lounge where he says it will be quiet. We sit at a table and I turn on my tape recorder—only to have a maintenance person start vacuuming the carpet.

Peter has already told me he needs to be at the ballpark by 2:30. I begin by asking him about his background.

“I'm from New Bedford, Massachusetts,” he says. “I got my start in journalism at the hometown paper. After covering UConn men's basketball for the
Norwich Bulletin
, I went to work at the LoHud chain, which used to be called the Gannett Suburban Newspapers, and covered the Mets for a couple of years. I inherited the Yankees beat at the end of the '05 season.”

“So you're relatively new on the beat,” I say.

“Relatively. There's a lot of turnover with baseball writers because it's such a hard job. Guys get married and their wives don't want them to be away for a hundred and fifty days a year.”

He is obviously single.

“Was it difficult to get to know people in the Yankees organization?”

“One advantage I had was that the previous beat writer from my paper wasn't the most popular guy. The Yankees were happy I was replacing him.”

“Tell me about some Yankees.”

“Andy Phillips is one I root for. I hope he hits 1,000 home runs. His poor wife almost died and his mom almost died, and he never once wouldn't talk to us.”

“Is that why you like some players? Because they talk to you?”

“How helpful they are to me is a factor. When I was covering the Mets, they were a bad team, and bad teams want to get out of the clubhouse after the game and go home. But Cliff Floyd never once said, ‘Sorry, fellas. Gotta go.' Glavine was the same way. David Wright, too. Totally professional. The Red Sox aren't like that at all.”

“Really?”

“Manny won't talk to anybody. And Beckett swears at the writers all the time. He's just a really mean guy.”

“Did you ever have a run-in with a player?”

“Al Leiter—when I was on one of my first road trips with the Mets. He hadn't pitched well. I asked, ‘Do you think it was something with your stuff today?' He said, ‘What do you mean by
stuff
?' I said, ‘Your pitches, Al.' He said, ‘What pitches?' I said, ‘Al, you pitched the game. You tell me.' He started giving it back to me, trying to intimidate me because I was a new writer. But I wasn't afraid of Al Leiter. So I said, ‘You know what? I'll go ask somebody else,' and walked away. We had this contentious relationship for a while but ended up friendly. We both like Springsteen.”

“I'm guessing Mussina isn't fun to interview.”

“No, I love Mussina. He's really quite funny and smart.”

Smart, okay. But funny? “What about Jeter? He always gives the same pat answers. He must be tough to interview.”

“In a group session it's impossible. He won't say much more than ‘Bottom line: We want to win' and all that clichéd stuff. You have to be around awhile to build up credibility.”

“What about A-Rod?”

“Alex tries too hard,” he says. “Someone must have told him that swearing would make him seem cool. So he went through this period where he couldn't talk to us without swearing. It was weird. But then someone else must have told him to stop swearing because we wouldn't print what he was saying.”

“That is weird.”

“Here's the difference between Derek and Alex,” Peter goes on. “When I show up at the clubhouse, A-Rod is always there. He works out before every game. He works out after games, too. He's the hardest-working guy on the team. Jeter is the next-to-last guy to show up in the clubhouse. He and Jorge come in together with their Starbucks coffees. They put on their basketball shorts and are ready to go.”

“Do you think A-Rod will opt out of his contract?”

“In spring training I was convinced he would leave. But now I think the finances are such that he'll stay. The Yankees can offer him more than anybody else.”

“What about that remark he made after hitting his 500th homer? He said he was hoping for a ‘happy ending somewhere.'”

Peter rolls his eyes. “Alex likes to play the put-upon guy, like ‘Everything's so hard for me.' He tries to make himself a sympathetic figure. He wants everybody to like him.”

“Tell me about some of the other players.”

“Andy Pettitte is the sweetest, nicest guy. Wang is great but really shy. Roger is professional.”

“What about Mo?”

“He doesn't realize how good he is. He'll strike out the side and say, ‘No big deal. That's what I do.' He has the perfect closer mentality, never letting what happens carry over to the next day. He just turns the page.”

“Doesn't sound like there are any really bad apples in this group.”

“Randy Johnson was a bad guy—just mean and nasty all the time. Now that he and Sheffield are gone, everybody gets along with everybody pretty much.”

“On your blog you wrote about how Edwar Ramirez cried after a bad outing. Do you really believe there's no crying in baseball?”

“No crying on the Yankees. Look, Ramirez pitches 1 day in the majors and he has health insurance for the rest of his life. The players union is strong, with great pensions. Nothing to cry about. With the Yankees, it's either you help us win or you get out. No sentimentality.”

“You actually like covering this team?”

He gets this beatific look on his face. “When they play at Yankee Stadium, I have a great seat—in the front row of the pressbox,two seats over from the middle of home plate. Every time I sit down I say, ‘How great is this? A baseball game at Yankee Stadium. A big crowd with a lot of people who really care.' I love that.”

Back at the Park Hyatt I call Mike, the ticket broker, and ask if he can get us seats for the series in Cleveland this weekend.

“Sure,” he says, “but they won't be good seats like the ones you have here in Toronto, eh?”