Confessions of a She-Fan (13 page)

“Dear God. Thank you for sparing my house from the wildfire, for keeping all my flights from crashing, and for putting me back in touch with family and old friends. Please let Michael make it through the trip without an emergency-room visit. Please let the Yankees get into the play-offs in spite of their miserable start. Please let all those judgmental
New York Times
readers come to realize what a true fan I really am.”

I pause, trying to be sure I am not leaving anything out.

“And please grant me an interview with a Yankee, so my publisher won't stop payment on my advance. Amen.”

Michael and I spend the afternoon at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Even in the “Hall” there are Yankee fans. A twentysomething woman in a Jeter jersey tells me she is going to the game tonight. I am about to ask her what makes Jeter her favorite player when a fat guy in an Indians T-shirt puts his arm around her. She introduces him as her husband. As they walk away, I wonder if I could be married to a man who roots for a team other than the Yankees and decide that I could not. My ex-husband was a Mets fan, and, although I sat through a game at Shea and tried to look riveted, I was not meant for Shea or, I later realized, him.

Back at the Marriott, John Sterling returns my call about Suzyn Waldman. He tells me I should call her in her room at the Ritz-Carlton and gives me the number.

“Or you could just stop by the booth tonight and meet her,” he says. “We're right in the press box.”

“I'm not allowed in the press box.”

“I forgot. It's not fair, but I don't know what I can do about it.”

I call the Ritz and leave Suzyn a long message.

I lengthen my list of beat writers to contact. Tyler Kepner covers the Yankees for the
Times
, so I e-mail him.

At 6:30 Michael and I are off to the Jake. It is a breezy, brisk night—the heat and humidity having cleared out—and the 10-minute walk from the Marriott is a pleasant one.

Jacobs Field, which was built in the '90s, according to our program guide, is a pretty park. It has good sight lines and is well maintained—a contemporary stadium with an old-fashioned feel. And the vendors and ushers and security people are so polite that I think it must be true what they say about Midwest-erners: They
are
friendly.

Our seats in the bleachers are on benches and, remarkably, nobody invades your personal space by squeezing onto your lap. And although we are at least 350 feet away from home plate, we have a decent view of the field. What is odd is that the Indians have not been able to draw big numbers this season; even with the Yankees in town, the Jake is not filled to capacity.

Hughes is pitching against Fausto Carmona. Both teams are in the wild-card hunt,so there is excitement in the air—and noise. An Indians fan sits in the top row of the bleachers and bangs on a drum to rally his team. He is about my age—old enough to know better—and I keep turning around to glare at him. Also in the house is LeBron James, the star of the Cleveland Cavaliers. The Indians fans cheer wildly when he is shown on the scoreboard until they realize he is wearing a Yankees cap.

A-Rod goes deep in the top of the second to put us in front. Hughes pitches six very solid innings,and it is 4–1 when Joba Chamberlain takes over in the bottom of the seventh. The Tribe fans sitting behind me gasp when Joba's fastball hits 99 mph on the radar gun.

“Where did this guy come from?” says a college jock type.

I spin around. “Nebraska. He's Native American—from the Winnebago tribe. His father had polio but raised him to play baseball. He hardly spent any time in the minors; that's how good he is. And in case you're wondering about
his name, his niece called him Joba because she couldn't pronounce his real name, which is Justin.”

He stares at me for a second, then thanks me. He is impressed that I am such a fount of information.

Just when I am thinking how friendly Midwesterners are, the Yankees score another couple of runs and a “Yankees suck” chant breaks out.

Joba is back for the eighth and strikes out all three Indians he faces. Mo pitches the ninth and gets three up, three down. The Yankees win six of their last seven games and are tied with Seattle for the wild-card lead.

As we file out of the bleachers, I ask the drummer, “What's up with the drum?”

“I've been bringing it to the games for 34 years,” he says. “Win or lose, I never miss a chance to root for my team.”

“You have to admire his loyalty,” Michael says on our walk back to the hotel.

“If not his musical ability,” I say, rubbing my throbbing temples.

On Saturday I wake up with a Yankee hangover from the dream I had last night—my first Yankee one of the trip. It is about A-Rod. He is living in the apartment next door. We are friends. He comes over to ask which set of dishes he should use when he entertains his girlfriend for dinner that night. (This Dream A-Rod is single.)I have a look at his dishes, and together we decide on a white pattern with a cobalt blue border. I ask if he will introduces special lady, and he says, “Stop by at 7:05.”

“His girlfriend in the dream looked like Jennifer Lopez,” I tell Michael. “Isn't that weird?”

“The fact that you're dreaming about A-Rod is weird,” he says.

George King calls this morning to cancel lunch again today. He says he has to talk to Harlan Chamberlain, Joba's father, plus he has to chase down the rumor that Igawa is being traded to the Padres.

“Ordinarily I could do it tomorrow after the day game,” he says, “but I'm flying out on the 6:45 into Newark.”

“Me, too,” I say.

We agree to meet at the Cleveland airport at the Continental gate and do the interview there.

I e-mail Mark Feinsand, who covers the Yankees for the
Daily News
, and
Sweeny Murti, WFAN's beat reporter, and ask if they would let me interview them for the book. And then I try Suzyn Waldman again at the Ritz-Carlton. This time she answers.

“Is this something we can just do over the phone now?” she says in a voice that is almost as familiar to me as John's. There is no mistaking the Boston in it, since she was born and raised there.

“I'd rather do it in person,” I say. “I would only need an hour or so.”

“John mentioned that you want to discuss the Yankees from a female perspective. Frankly, I'm sick of that subject. The words alone make me cringe. I've been covering the team for a long time and have gotten way past the gender thing.”

Yikes. “The book will be from the female perspective, but I'd ask you the same questions I'll ask Tyler Kepner and Peter Abraham.”

“Oh.” There is a thawing. “Why don't we get together in Detroit next weekend? We can have a drink after the Sunday-afternoon game. There's a nice bar at the Townsend.”

“Perfect.” The Townsend is where the Yankees are staying.

“Who else have you talked to for the book?”

I mention that I was supposed to talk to George King yesterday, but he was working the A-Rod steroids story.

“Alex has never done steroids,” she says firmly.

“Jose Canseco claims to have something on him,” I say.

“It's just about women, and so what? Wade Boggs had the whole Margo thing, and yet he had his best year on the field.”

“I can't imagine A-Rod talking to the
Post
after they printed those pictures of him and the stripper.”

“He doesn't talk to them anymore. He talks to me, though. Being a woman is a double-edged sword. It's hard sometimes, but it also works to my advantage. The players know I'm not confrontational.”

She laments that coverage of baseball has changed since she started in the business—how writers, especially bloggers, are not accountable the way reporters used to be.

“Anyone can write whatever they want, and it doesn't have to be true,” she says. “And once they write it, it takes on a life of its own.”

The conversation moves back to my book and the trip, and I explain that
I have been buying tickets to every game. I mention that my friend got us great seats for the Sunday night game at Fenway next month but told me not to wear Yankee clothes.

“Your friend's right,” Suzyn says. “When you're in another ballpark, never wear the Yankees hat or T-shirt and call attention to yourself. Root with your heart. In Boston you could get hurt if you say the wrong thing.”

As soon as I am off the phone, I go back on the computer. There are responses from Tyler Kepner, Mark Feinsand, and Sweeny Murti. They all suggest getting together in Detroit next week. I am suddenly very popular.

Michael and I take a stroll and have lunch. It is another sunny, breezy day, and the fresh air feels good. As we wait for the elevator to go back up to our room at the Marriott, a burly man with a weathered face gets off.

“Excuse me,” I say. “Aren't you Jim Fregosi?”

Michael is nonplussed, not only because Jim Fregosi has not played on a big league team or managed one in years, but also because he is not exactly a household name.

Fregosi himself can't believe someone recognized him. “Yeah, it's me,” he says in a gravelly voice.

“That was your most obscure call yet,” Michael commends me on our way up to the room.

For tonight's game we are at the very top of the bleachers, right near the drummer. He starts banging away to get loose.

Mussina is on the hill against Paul Byrd. He gives up a run in the bottom of the first but quickly becomes the beneficiary of the Yankees offense. They send 10 batters to the plate in the top of the second, seven of them coming in to score. When A-Rod hits his 38th homer, Indians fans respond by chanting “Gay-Rod!” in one section and “A-Rod hires prostitutes!” in another. A drunken Yankee fan gives them all the finger and is escorted out of the stadium by two cops.

Matsui scores another run in the top of the seventh, and the friendly Midwestern bigots in the crowd chant “Go home, Chop Suey!” A-Rod hits his second homer of the night in the top of the eighth—a two-run shot.

The Yankees beat the Indians 11–2 and Mussina, who is doing his best imitation of the pitcher he used to be, gets his 100th win in pinstripes.

On Sunday, our last day in Cleveland, I regard myself in the mirror before
applying makeup. I want to look decent for my interview with George King at the airport later. Either it is the lighting in the room or I have aged 20 years in 17 days. My face is hollow, haunted. I have been passing up the food at the ballparks. My mother was right: I need to eat and sleep more. And I need to find someone to blow-dry my hair. I did it myself and used too much spray, and it is as stiff as the cotton candy at the ballparks.

For today's finale at the Jake, we are back in the bleachers but in row G, only six up. The pitching matchup is Pettitte versus Westbrook.

In the bottom of the seventh, with the Yankees ahead 4–0 and the Indians threatening, the two Andys—Pettitte and Phillips—make a spectacular pickoff play on Peralta at first that kills the rally. The Indians pull to 4–2 with Viz on the mound in the eighth, so Joe calls for Mo to get four quick outs—again.

With the 5–3 final, the Yankees sweep the Tribe for their eighth win in the last nine games to stay tied with Seattle for the wild card. The big news is they gain a game on the Red Sox and are now only four back. The image of Red Sox fans panicking thrills me.

Michael and I take a cab to the airport and hurry to the gate for our flight to Newark and my interview with George King. I e-mailed Larry Brooks earlier in the day to ask what George looks like.

“He's a good-looking guy in his early fifties with blondish-grayish hair and a blondish-grayish beard and mustache,” Larry wrote.

There is no such person at the gate.

The attendant announces we are starting to board. I hang back for a few minutes in case George shows up. He does not.

We walk down the gangplank. When we reach the open cabin door I do my crazy preflight ritual, which is to rap my knuckles on the side of the plane to make sure it is not falling apart. Once aboard the Boeing 737, we move toward the rear. Our row is three across. Michael takes the window. I take the middle seat. As I am strapping my seat belt on,a good-looking guy in his early fifties with blondish-grayish hair and a blondish-grayish beard and mustache throws his carry-on bag onto the empty aisle seat.

“Are you Jane, by any chance?”

“George!” I whip out my tape recorder.

Where Peter Abraham was serious and businesslike, George King has an entertaining, seen-it-all attitude. When there is turbulence after takeoff and I
squeeze the arms of my seat, he laughs and says, “You'd better get over that if you're traveling with the team.”

I ask George how he got started in the business, and he tells me he covered the Phillies in Trenton before getting hired by the Post in '97.

“This is my 11th season there,” he says. “It's long hours and a long year—February to November—but it's a blast.”

“February to November is a long year,” I say. “How does your wife feel about all your traveling?”

“She's gone a lot, too. She's a vice president of Bloomingdale's in charge of women's shoes.”

“Do the players ever invite you out with them?”

“When I was younger,with the Phillies, yeah. But I'm 51 now, and the players are 30. It's different. And let's face it. I work for the New York Post. Do the players really want me around at the Limelight club?”

We both laugh. “Is it true A-Rod won't talk to you since the Post printed the stuff about the stripper in Toronto?”

“He doesn't talk to me,” he says with regret. “We were very close, too. I had the best relationship with him of anybody. But after that story ran, he made it very clear that we were done. He doesn't freeze me out during group interviews, but if he's by himself, he'll ignore me.”

“Does that surprise you?”