I used to be a Yankee hater. I agreed with Bill Veeck that rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for U.S. Steel. I mellowed a bit after they descended to a spot just a couple of notches above mediocrity a couple of decades ago.
Another turning point was when I took my elderly dad on a sports trip to New York in 2000. We were going to a football game at West Point, but, as it happened, a Subway Series between the Mets and Yankees was about to start. After we got out of the city, we stopped at a roadside deli for a sandwich. Before I could place my order, the woman behind the counter confronted me: "You a Yankees fan or a Mets fan?"
"What do I need to be?" I replied cautiously.
In her gruff New York accent, she shot back: "You wanna get soyved in hih, yer a Yankees fan."
"Well, as luck would have it," I said, "I'm totally a Yankees fan."
"Good. Whaddya want?"
I had to respect that. Baseball is about fan loyalty, and I could not help but respect that level of loyalty. It changed my attitude a bit toward the Yankees. Their hatred of the Red Sox is so pure that it, too, must be respected. I'm not exactly a Yankee fan, unless I have to be in order to eat, but I got over being a hater.
I was born to a pair of New Englanders. Family lore has it that when my mother was a very young woman (around 1950 or so), a fellow cane by to pick her up for a date. This guy remarked to my grandfather that he was a Yanks fan. When Mom got back, Granddad told her he never wanted to see this guy again.
And I myself have been an A's fan all my life and seen more of our greats being sucked into the Pinstripe Borg than I care to remember.
So my Yankee loathing is a proper result of both nature and nurture.
I had the good fortune, as a young man, to see in person one of the last of the great Oakland A's dynasty teams, with Reggie Jackson, Vida Blue, Catfish Hunter, Sal Bando, Joe Rudi. Reggie hit a home run that game. I saw him in person with the Orioles and Yankees, too. He hit a home run every damn time.
I should mention that, along with the Yankees' hatred of the Red Sox, I also respect the white-hot hatred by Boston fans for the Yankees. Longstanding sports hatreds deserve respect because they are signs of passion. Sad are the fans who don't have any rivals to truly, madly, deeply hate.
The A's stretch of five straight division pennants and three WS wins happened when I was ages 7 to 11 - primed to fall in love with a team. Went to Game 6 of the '73 Series (Hunter outdueled Seaver for a 3-1 win, and Jackson hit 2 RBI doubles).
Right now, I feel a painful numbness when I think about baseball.
Off topic, but here’s an aptonym for you. The paragraph below is from a May 3 article in the New York Times. Note the name of the marine biologist in the article:
“The marine carnivores, whose scientific name is Velella velella, are not quite jellyfish but are closely related. They appear every spring and have been doing so for “millions of years,” said Steven Haddock, a marine biologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. But every few years (including this one), when especially strong winds blow in the right direction, millions of them can wash ashore in droves, “spanning from Baja California to Alaska,” he said.”
Thing is, the Sterlings of the broadcast booth were storytellers and we expected them to shape the emotional arc of a game, even when baseball took to the TV screen on a daily basis during the season. The broadcasts were still fundamentally stories told by people, not assembled by a production team. Today, along with the usual steady stream of pitch‑tracking graphics, stats on exit velocity and spray charts (to name a very few of the money ball metrics which have become de rigueur), today's games tend to be cut or directed like live news shows, with rapid camera changes, replay packages and graphic overlays (to name another very few examples of the broadcast truck supplanting the booth). When Sterling, Scully and Caray controlled the rhythm of the game, silence was allowed. SILENCE --- imagine that! A long at‑bat could feel like a chapter, not a data dump.
“Light” tapping was ok on the nice old chromed steel bumpers of yesteryear. Now it slightly damages the clear coat topping on the paint of today’s plastic bumper covers on BOTH cars, accelerating the planned obsolescence built into the cars we now have.
And why would "slightly damaging the clear coat topping on the paint" be any big deal to anyone?? It's a bumper, it's not a fender. Do you worry about scuffing up your tires ... or the soles of your shoes?
Ah Wise Man of the Bronx, not all --- in fact --- very few car owners think of them as merely a way to get from one place to another (assuming they remember to put oil and coolant in them every so often; you and Rachel are not completely agnostic when it comes to automotive fluids I presume). There's a body of research across a variety of disciplines that point directly to vehicles as providing emotional and psychological bonding, as behavior amplifiers, cognitive environments and, in fact, extensions of the "self," mirroring personal identity, aesthetic values, and cultural meaning. So, a ding in a bumper clear coat can easily become a small injury to an extended limb. Not metaphorically — neurologically.
Gene is completely indifferent to the state of is motor vehicle. All he cares is that the car runs and that it has a stick shift. Somewhere there is a picture of the shifter head on his old Mazda 3.
Indeed. I seem to recall mention that he and Rachel are prohibited from "buying the green," or "claiming the intersection" for a left turn in D.C. because of the very real risk of an alternator falling off or a timing chain snapping, thus blocking multiple lanes of traffic. Although, as I also recall, most regular drivers in D.C. wouldn't really notice the tie-up as unusual.
Yeah, I miss the days when my team stayed the same year after year, too, but I'm glad they aren't enslaved anymore. And if some stupid owner wants to pay my favorite player a half billion dollars to leave and sbe overpaid until he's 40, I'm not going to like it, but I'll be glad it wasn't my stupid owner who did it, and I have to be happy for the player.
In the football team member introduction clips on TV where the players give the schools they came from, more than one proudly announces that he came from THE Ohio State University - as if there were not also an Ohio University plus a dozen other public universities in the state.
In 1986, a new University logo was introduced in the hopes of moving away from the "OSU" symbol, which had been used since 1977. The change from simply "OSU" was said to "reflect the national stature of the institution." University officials wanted the institution to be known as "The Ohio State University," again, to avoid confusion over similarly abbreviated colleges (such as Oregon State University and Oklahoma State University).
However, the "The" was actually part of the state legislation when the university was renamed in 1878. The following excerpt is from the Board of Trustee minutes:
"...the educational institution heretofore known as the 'Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College,' shall be known and designated hereafter as 'The Ohio State University.'"
Those who wished to change from the original name considered "Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College" was too narrow in scope and inadequate for a beneficiary institution of the Morrill Land-Grant Acts. President Edward Orton, Sr. was insistent that a new name would separate the institution from other colleges in Ohio. In 2022, the United States Patent and Trademark Office granted The Ohio State University the ability to control the branded use of "The" on official products.
Late on Friday night, President Donald J. Trump took to social media. At 11:03 he posted an AI-generated image of himself, alongside Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, all shirtless, along with an unidentifiable woman in a bikini, appearing to be relaxing in a swimming pool. But the “swimming pool” was the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Then, at 11:04, Trump posted an image of First Lady Melania Trump grinning at the press conference Trump held after the incident at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, when he said that incident proved he needed his proposed ballroom for his security.
Then, at 11:13, Trump posted an image of House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), who is Black, holding a baseball bat. The caption calls Jeffries “low IQ,” “a THUG,” and “a danger to our Country.”
Then, at 11:15, he posted an image of himself smiling and holding six wild cards from the game Uno. The caption read, “I HAVE ALL THE CARDS.”
Then, at 11:22, he posted a profile image of himself in gold.
Then, at 11:26, he posted an image showing him standing near Mt. Rushmore, with the angle arranged to make his head the fifth sculpture on the mountain, so from left to right they were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, and Donald Trump.
Then, at 11:32, he posted an image of himself and the first lady.
Then, at 11:37, he posted an image of himself and King Charles III.
Then, at 11:40, he posted an image of what appeared to be the reflecting pool full of algae next to one that appeared to be the reflecting pool clean and with a bright blue color. Above the dirty image was the label “Hussein Obama,” and below it, the caption “Photo taken Sept[ember] 29, 2012”; the clean one was labeled with “Trump” and “Coming Soon.” Over the two together, the caption read: “This is what our Country was before, and after, “TRUMP!”
Then, at 11:41, he posted an AI image of the reflecting pool appearing bright blue, under the caption “American Flag Blue.”
Then, at 11:45, he posted another AI image of the reflecting pool appearing bright blue under the caption “American Flag Blue.”
What really caught my eye (and I generally try to avert them from anything to do with the Evil Empire), is that Sterling holds the record among his colleagues for most consecutive games called at 5,060 over 30 years. Not surprisingly, Vin Scully is the total games called record holder at 9,000+ during his astounding 67-year-career with the Dodgers. But, few matched Sterling in turning a home run into a theatrical event, although Mel Allen (Yankees), Harry Kalas (Phillies) and of course, Harry Caray (White Sox and Cubs) are certainly in the baseball-as-theater hall of fame with him.
Just dropping in to be the Pedant of the Day and inform you that the Lone Ranger‘s famous catchphrase was actually “Hi-yo Silver!” Many people think that it’s Hi-ho, but they are probably thinking of the Seven Dwarves.
For me, the options offered in the John Sterling poll were inadequate.
Yes, it was great.
And, yes, it sucked. It REALLY sucked.
But the suckage was also what made it great.
It was his signature, and signature calls and phrases are what made old-school baseball announcers great, especially those who primarily did radio. With no visuals to offer their listeners, they simultaneously had to make you feel you were there, while making you want to spend 3 hours with them on game nights. And one way they could do that was through signature styles and phrases.
The video clip captured both dimensions of this. On his call of the routine ground ball play, Sterling added the detail that after fielding the ball, the infielder "squared" himself to make the throw. He painted a picture of the play that was more vivid that the way a TV announcer would typically call it, noting only that he fielded it and threw to first in time for the out.
And then the call of the foul ball that hit him was pricelessly self-effacing and relatable. You realize you like being with this guy.
I'm neither a Yankee fan nor a Yankee hater, but RIP John Sterling. They don't make 'em like that anymore.
Then of course there is "meta" play-by-play, as done by Ronald Reagan, announcing a game he was only able to "see" via phone or telegraph. Apparently, creating images of a game for his audience served as good preparation for a life of spinning facts as a politician.
I'm sorry to hear of Mr. Sterling's passing. I would send condolences to Yankee fans if only they had souls.
I'm a Yankees fan. Thank you for your comment. It made me laugh out loud. So, maybe I don't have a soul, but I definitely have a sense of humor.
I used to be a Yankee hater. I agreed with Bill Veeck that rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for U.S. Steel. I mellowed a bit after they descended to a spot just a couple of notches above mediocrity a couple of decades ago.
Another turning point was when I took my elderly dad on a sports trip to New York in 2000. We were going to a football game at West Point, but, as it happened, a Subway Series between the Mets and Yankees was about to start. After we got out of the city, we stopped at a roadside deli for a sandwich. Before I could place my order, the woman behind the counter confronted me: "You a Yankees fan or a Mets fan?"
"What do I need to be?" I replied cautiously.
In her gruff New York accent, she shot back: "You wanna get soyved in hih, yer a Yankees fan."
"Well, as luck would have it," I said, "I'm totally a Yankees fan."
"Good. Whaddya want?"
I had to respect that. Baseball is about fan loyalty, and I could not help but respect that level of loyalty. It changed my attitude a bit toward the Yankees. Their hatred of the Red Sox is so pure that it, too, must be respected. I'm not exactly a Yankee fan, unless I have to be in order to eat, but I got over being a hater.
I was born to a pair of New Englanders. Family lore has it that when my mother was a very young woman (around 1950 or so), a fellow cane by to pick her up for a date. This guy remarked to my grandfather that he was a Yanks fan. When Mom got back, Granddad told her he never wanted to see this guy again.
And I myself have been an A's fan all my life and seen more of our greats being sucked into the Pinstripe Borg than I care to remember.
So my Yankee loathing is a proper result of both nature and nurture.
I had the good fortune, as a young man, to see in person one of the last of the great Oakland A's dynasty teams, with Reggie Jackson, Vida Blue, Catfish Hunter, Sal Bando, Joe Rudi. Reggie hit a home run that game. I saw him in person with the Orioles and Yankees, too. He hit a home run every damn time.
I should mention that, along with the Yankees' hatred of the Red Sox, I also respect the white-hot hatred by Boston fans for the Yankees. Longstanding sports hatreds deserve respect because they are signs of passion. Sad are the fans who don't have any rivals to truly, madly, deeply hate.
The A's stretch of five straight division pennants and three WS wins happened when I was ages 7 to 11 - primed to fall in love with a team. Went to Game 6 of the '73 Series (Hunter outdueled Seaver for a 3-1 win, and Jackson hit 2 RBI doubles).
Right now, I feel a painful numbness when I think about baseball.
Ah yes, the West Sacramento A's --- or have they decided to simply don River Cats uniforms for the duration and be done with it? My condolences.
The headline for the notification that popped up made me think it was someone else.
Same. I got very excited for a second.
Actually thought maybe it was Rudy.
Wishful thinking.
The Kennebunkport DeNunkyhavens?
Off topic, but here’s an aptonym for you. The paragraph below is from a May 3 article in the New York Times. Note the name of the marine biologist in the article:
“The marine carnivores, whose scientific name is Velella velella, are not quite jellyfish but are closely related. They appear every spring and have been doing so for “millions of years,” said Steven Haddock, a marine biologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. But every few years (including this one), when especially strong winds blow in the right direction, millions of them can wash ashore in droves, “spanning from Baja California to Alaska,” he said.”
Thing is, the Sterlings of the broadcast booth were storytellers and we expected them to shape the emotional arc of a game, even when baseball took to the TV screen on a daily basis during the season. The broadcasts were still fundamentally stories told by people, not assembled by a production team. Today, along with the usual steady stream of pitch‑tracking graphics, stats on exit velocity and spray charts (to name a very few of the money ball metrics which have become de rigueur), today's games tend to be cut or directed like live news shows, with rapid camera changes, replay packages and graphic overlays (to name another very few examples of the broadcast truck supplanting the booth). When Sterling, Scully and Caray controlled the rhythm of the game, silence was allowed. SILENCE --- imagine that! A long at‑bat could feel like a chapter, not a data dump.
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. I have long said, “that’s why they call them bumpers” when passengers have been shocked at my light tapping.
“Light” tapping was ok on the nice old chromed steel bumpers of yesteryear. Now it slightly damages the clear coat topping on the paint of today’s plastic bumper covers on BOTH cars, accelerating the planned obsolescence built into the cars we now have.
And why would "slightly damaging the clear coat topping on the paint" be any big deal to anyone?? It's a bumper, it's not a fender. Do you worry about scuffing up your tires ... or the soles of your shoes?
Ah Wise Man of the Bronx, not all --- in fact --- very few car owners think of them as merely a way to get from one place to another (assuming they remember to put oil and coolant in them every so often; you and Rachel are not completely agnostic when it comes to automotive fluids I presume). There's a body of research across a variety of disciplines that point directly to vehicles as providing emotional and psychological bonding, as behavior amplifiers, cognitive environments and, in fact, extensions of the "self," mirroring personal identity, aesthetic values, and cultural meaning. So, a ding in a bumper clear coat can easily become a small injury to an extended limb. Not metaphorically — neurologically.
Gene is completely indifferent to the state of is motor vehicle. All he cares is that the car runs and that it has a stick shift. Somewhere there is a picture of the shifter head on his old Mazda 3.
Indeed. I seem to recall mention that he and Rachel are prohibited from "buying the green," or "claiming the intersection" for a left turn in D.C. because of the very real risk of an alternator falling off or a timing chain snapping, thus blocking multiple lanes of traffic. Although, as I also recall, most regular drivers in D.C. wouldn't really notice the tie-up as unusual.
I consider myself an expert parallel parker as well, and to my husband’s chagrin I have proclaimed for years ‘bumpers are for bumping.’
I miss the old days when players stayed with the same team and weren't traded around
Trading is OK. Its the “highest bidder thing” that I can’t stand.
Yeah, I miss the days when my team stayed the same year after year, too, but I'm glad they aren't enslaved anymore. And if some stupid owner wants to pay my favorite player a half billion dollars to leave and sbe overpaid until he's 40, I'm not going to like it, but I'll be glad it wasn't my stupid owner who did it, and I have to be happy for the player.
In the football team member introduction clips on TV where the players give the schools they came from, more than one proudly announces that he came from THE Ohio State University - as if there were not also an Ohio University plus a dozen other public universities in the state.
One player did a nice piece of trolling during one of those this past season when he said that he was from The Michigan State University.
http://library.osu.edu/archives/faq
Why are we called The Ohio State University?
In 1986, a new University logo was introduced in the hopes of moving away from the "OSU" symbol, which had been used since 1977. The change from simply "OSU" was said to "reflect the national stature of the institution." University officials wanted the institution to be known as "The Ohio State University," again, to avoid confusion over similarly abbreviated colleges (such as Oregon State University and Oklahoma State University).
However, the "The" was actually part of the state legislation when the university was renamed in 1878. The following excerpt is from the Board of Trustee minutes:
"...the educational institution heretofore known as the 'Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College,' shall be known and designated hereafter as 'The Ohio State University.'"
Those who wished to change from the original name considered "Ohio Agricultural and Mechanical College" was too narrow in scope and inadequate for a beneficiary institution of the Morrill Land-Grant Acts. President Edward Orton, Sr. was insistent that a new name would separate the institution from other colleges in Ohio. In 2022, the United States Patent and Trademark Office granted The Ohio State University the ability to control the branded use of "The" on official products.
Ain't you THE shit.
Trademark that now, before someone else takes it.
Bless John Sterling's memory. Love announcers who aren't full of themselves
there is in fact a blog entitled 'it is high, it is far, it is caught' and was pleasantly surprised to find that it's still active.
https://johnsterling.blogspot.com/
From today's post by Heather Cox Richardson:
Late on Friday night, President Donald J. Trump took to social media. At 11:03 he posted an AI-generated image of himself, alongside Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, all shirtless, along with an unidentifiable woman in a bikini, appearing to be relaxing in a swimming pool. But the “swimming pool” was the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Then, at 11:04, Trump posted an image of First Lady Melania Trump grinning at the press conference Trump held after the incident at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, when he said that incident proved he needed his proposed ballroom for his security.
Then, at 11:13, Trump posted an image of House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), who is Black, holding a baseball bat. The caption calls Jeffries “low IQ,” “a THUG,” and “a danger to our Country.”
Then, at 11:15, he posted an image of himself smiling and holding six wild cards from the game Uno. The caption read, “I HAVE ALL THE CARDS.”
Then, at 11:22, he posted a profile image of himself in gold.
Then, at 11:26, he posted an image showing him standing near Mt. Rushmore, with the angle arranged to make his head the fifth sculpture on the mountain, so from left to right they were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, and Donald Trump.
Then, at 11:32, he posted an image of himself and the first lady.
Then, at 11:37, he posted an image of himself and King Charles III.
Then, at 11:40, he posted an image of what appeared to be the reflecting pool full of algae next to one that appeared to be the reflecting pool clean and with a bright blue color. Above the dirty image was the label “Hussein Obama,” and below it, the caption “Photo taken Sept[ember] 29, 2012”; the clean one was labeled with “Trump” and “Coming Soon.” Over the two together, the caption read: “This is what our Country was before, and after, “TRUMP!”
Then, at 11:41, he posted an AI image of the reflecting pool appearing bright blue, under the caption “American Flag Blue.”
Then, at 11:45, he posted another AI image of the reflecting pool appearing bright blue under the caption “American Flag Blue.”
It was some 43 minutes.
I answered "It Sucks" because I hate when thuuuuuh Yankees win. Eff them!
What really caught my eye (and I generally try to avert them from anything to do with the Evil Empire), is that Sterling holds the record among his colleagues for most consecutive games called at 5,060 over 30 years. Not surprisingly, Vin Scully is the total games called record holder at 9,000+ during his astounding 67-year-career with the Dodgers. But, few matched Sterling in turning a home run into a theatrical event, although Mel Allen (Yankees), Harry Kalas (Phillies) and of course, Harry Caray (White Sox and Cubs) are certainly in the baseball-as-theater hall of fame with him.
Just dropping in to be the Pedant of the Day and inform you that the Lone Ranger‘s famous catchphrase was actually “Hi-yo Silver!” Many people think that it’s Hi-ho, but they are probably thinking of the Seven Dwarves.
I knew this, and remember hearing it that way, but over the years it has been "corrected" to Hi-ho. But you are right.
Speaking of pedantry, when you say that "Sterling was not not self-important," are we to understand that he actually was?
I have a fondness for my fellow pedants, though I prefer to think of us as punctilious (a word I learned from the Frazz comic).
For me, the options offered in the John Sterling poll were inadequate.
Yes, it was great.
And, yes, it sucked. It REALLY sucked.
But the suckage was also what made it great.
It was his signature, and signature calls and phrases are what made old-school baseball announcers great, especially those who primarily did radio. With no visuals to offer their listeners, they simultaneously had to make you feel you were there, while making you want to spend 3 hours with them on game nights. And one way they could do that was through signature styles and phrases.
The video clip captured both dimensions of this. On his call of the routine ground ball play, Sterling added the detail that after fielding the ball, the infielder "squared" himself to make the throw. He painted a picture of the play that was more vivid that the way a TV announcer would typically call it, noting only that he fielded it and threw to first in time for the out.
And then the call of the foul ball that hit him was pricelessly self-effacing and relatable. You realize you like being with this guy.
I'm neither a Yankee fan nor a Yankee hater, but RIP John Sterling. They don't make 'em like that anymore.
Then of course there is "meta" play-by-play, as done by Ronald Reagan, announcing a game he was only able to "see" via phone or telegraph. Apparently, creating images of a game for his audience served as good preparation for a life of spinning facts as a politician.