Ninety-Eight

Today is my great-grandfather's 98th birthday. 98! That's ridiculous. I can write so much about him that you'd be reading this blog for 3 straight weeks, but that might get boring. So I give you this not so long blog, about how he became a Yankees fan. (For those of you who read my myspace.com blog last summer, you'll remember the Yankee one I did about him).

Anyway, my entire life he has been a Yankee fanatic. No one ever questions it, or wonders about it, it's just who he is. He's Italian. He's Catholic. He's a family man. He's a carpenter. And he's a Yankee freak. Everything you need to know about the man is in those last 5 mini-sentences.

Then tonight, we're out to dinner at Angelina's, his favorite Italian ristorante. And we're talking about the World Baseball Classic, which naturally leads to a discussion about Derek Jeter & A-Rod, which naturally leads to a discussion about the New York Yankees. And then, for no reason, curiousity got the best of me. Probably something I've been wondering for 23 years, but never even knew I was wondering it, let alone thought to ask, but tonight, I did.

"Grandpa, how did you become such a big Yankees fan anyway?"

Flash back 86 years, to the fall of 1921. My grandfather is a 12 year old kid growing up in Corona, NY. (In Queens, right near Flushing, which would eventually house the NY Mets, coincidentally). The New York Yankees have finally ended a long stretch of suffering & futility, marked by too many losing seasons to count, and reach the 1921 World Series. Their opponent? The New York Giants, a team now playing in its 6th World Series (the 1921 World Series was the 18th World Series).

Yankee Stadium? Non-existent. The Yankees? Doesn't exactly mean what it means today. So there sits Pasquale Cioffi in Corona, NY, miles away from the Bronx, and even further away from West 159th Street, the home of the Polo Grounds. What's baseball to him? Something about as foreign as Mars. His two buddies and him are walking around Flushing Park one day talking, when they start goign on about the World Series.

"What?"

You know, the World Series, between the Yankees & Giants.

"Who?"

The New York Yankees and the New York Giants. Baseball teams.

"Oh, baseball. I don't follow it." Pasquale obviously just didn't have any interest.

"But you have to care," said his friend. "Babe Ruth is playing."

"Who's Babe Ruth?"

"He's the best player on the Yankees! He's great!"

"Oh, cool (or some other phrase that kids were using in 1921), I'll like the Yankees then."

Later that day he went home and told his Dad he was a Yankees fan. "The Yankees, but they're so bad. Are you sure son?" "Of course I am, they have Babe Ruth!" "OK, just remember though, if they're your favorite team this year, they always have to be your favorite team. You can't not like them when they're bad."

Clearly, the elder Cioffi had no idea what was in store for the New York Yankees, but regardless, young Pasquale swore he'd always be a Yankees fan.

And over the course of the next week, he followed the World Series. No one in his family, or that he knew, had a radio. They were too expensive, not something common people had, so he had no way of knowing who won until the next day. Until game 3. The Yankees were up 2 games to none. And the three boys discovered a barber shop a few blocks away that would put the score of the game on a chalkboard in the window, and update it every half-inning.

Unseasonably cold that fall was, the three boys stood in front of that window for the next 5 days, 5 games, eagerly awaiting every score change to see how their beloved Yankees were doing. Unfortunately, they lost all 5 games, and the World Series. The NY Giants were kings of the world.

"But it didn't matter, I was forever changed. I'd found my first love, the NY Yankees." Over the next few summers, he spent over half of each season in front of that barber shop, awaiting score updates. Then, in 1923, the NY Yankees won the World Series "and we savoured it, because even though we knew Babe Ruth was great, we didn't know if we'd ever win another one."

Over the next two seasons, the Yankees didn't make it back to the Fall Classic, but something even better happened in the 1924 season. Pasquale Cioffi first stepped foot in the outfield bleachers of Yankee Field. "And I knew immediately that the barber shop just wouldn't cut it anymore, that I'd have to be here as much as I could." So at 15, he got a job so he could afford to go to as many Yankee games as he could. And he went. And went. And they won. And won. World Series after World Series after World Series. "Has to be close to 1000 games I've seen there," he guesses.

Now he just watches them on TV, but the passion is still there. Only three weeks until the season starts, "and dammit they better win another World Series while I'm still young..."