Confessions of a She-Fan (19 page)

“We all put ourselves in bad situations,” Diane agrees. “One time in spring training we were making out with the players and their wives showed up. We had to jump in the shower and hide.”

“Eventually you moved to New York and shared an apartment,” I say. “How did you meet players in your new town?”

“You get to know them, and they get traded to different teams,” says Patty. “They come into town and introduce you to their new teammates.”

“I remember one night in New York,” says Diane. “Jack Hamilton, who had been traded to the Mets, came over with Tug McGraw. We all went out for drinks. We lived right around the corner from Mr. Laffs.” Mr. Laffs was a hot spot on the Upper East Side owned by Yankee Phil Linz and frequented by ballplayers.

“When I met you three, you were hanging out with Red Sox players,” I say.

“The first one I met was Yastrzemski,” says Diane. “One night we were in Mr. Laffs, and I ended up talking to Carl for hours. He was very intelligent, which separated him from the herd. He came to the apartment a few times.”

“I was dating a Red Sox pitcher named Billy Landis,” says Barb.

“And Tony Conigliaro,” Diane reminds her.

Barb nods. “I was probably the only one who went out with both Jack Hamilton and Tony Conigliaro.”

“We didn't always have sex,”Diane wants me to know.

“It was more innocent in those days,” says Patty.

“I once spent the night with a player who just wanted to cuddle,” Barb says with a laugh. “He missed his fiancée.”

More laughs all around. I turn to Diane. “What was it about Sparky that appealed to you?”

“There was a certain love of life that I never found in another man.” She looks forlorn. “He was hard to forget. During the first year, we were more like friends—definitely not lovers. The relationship intensified the next year.”

“How?” I say.

“He gave me the diamond tie tack he got when the Red Sox won the pennant in 1967. I had it made into a charm with his name on the back and put it on my charm bracelet. And he used the ‘M' word.”

“What ‘M' word?” Barb asks.

“Marriage,” Diane says.

“But if you'd married him, you could have become the wife he'd cheat on next.” The minute I say the words, I wish I could take them back.

“It wouldn't matter,” Diane says. “I'm married to someone else, but if Sparky came up on the white horse to rescue me, I would go with him in a second. I'm only capable of loving one person. And it's him.”

There is a moment of silence.

“What made you all give up the life?” I ask.

“It was Joe Torre who banged our heads together and told us to stop,” says Barb. “I thought he was one of the nicest people I ever met in baseball.”

We all look at Diane, knowing she is stuck on Sparky.

I turn to Barb. “You have three daughters. Do they know about this part of your life?”

“I raised my kids in a very structured way with the right schools and the right this and that,” she says. “When my oldest daughter began having her first experiences with men, I thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown. Part of it was that I had buried my past so deep that I never wanted to see it again. I had reinvented myself. In therapy I realized that my experiences in the past were the fun aspect of me, the exciting aspect of me, and I shouldn't bury them. It helped to be open about all this and laugh with my daughter about it. I can look back and say, ‘God, that was fun.'”

Patty nods. “It was a whimsical, magical time.”

We finish lunch and say good-bye. I walk to the hotel feeling envious. I am
not wishing I had been a groupie. The longing I am experiencing now has more to do with that playfulness. When did I lose my playfulness when it comes to the Yankees?

By late afternoon I am sneezing and hacking along with Michael, and there is no way I can go to tonight's finale against Seattle. We watch on TV.

Hughes goes six innings in one of his best outings yet, and Joba retires the side in order in the top of the seventh. The Yankees are down 2–1 with only two hits—until A-Rod belts his 511th homer in the bottom of the inning, tying Mel Ott and the score. The Yankees score five more runs before A-Rod steps to the plate for the second time in the inning. And for the second time, he homers—this time tying Eddie Mathews and Ernie Banks. The Yanks are up 9–2, and Michael and I chant “MVP!” Abreu scores on a wild pitch in the bottom of the eighth, and Mo works a scoreless ninth.

The Yankees win 10–2. I down a little plastic cup full of NyQuil to celebrate.

The NyQuil makes me high. As I slip into sleep, I have this fuzzy vision of myself leaping into the air with joy that the Yankees beat the Red Sox at Fenway Park in their last matchup of the season.

Thursday is getaway day, and all I feel like doing is getting more sleep. My head is pounding and my body aches, and I am flushed and chilled at the same time. But my cold is merely a nuisance. Michael's is threatening to turn into something worse, given his compromised immune system. We take a cab to Newark airport for our 12:20 ExpressJet flight to Kansas City.

At the airport I ask the man at the ticket counter about our flight's equipment. He tells me it is a 50-seater—a “baby jet.”

The Embraer 125 baby jet lands in KC, where our hotel, the Inter-Continental at the Country Club Plaza, is where the Yankees will be staying.

I remember it is Suzyn Waldman's birthday. I call room service and order a dessert with a candle in it and a card from me and ask that it all be delivered to her room as soon as she checks in.

Michael and I are bundled up in bed slurping chicken soup when she calls to say thanks for the birthday dessert, which the hotel initially sent to the wrong room. We laugh about how lame the InterContinental is.

Our colds are a little better when we wake up on Friday. We head down to the lobby. Yankee fans have gathered to see the players board the team bus for Kauffman Stadium. I see Wilson Betemit standing near the entrance. Maybe he is my Yankee.

“Wilson?” I say.

“Hey,” he says with a big smile.

“Hey.” I am not sure how much English he understands. “It … is … great … to … meet … you.”

He laughs. “Have a nice day.” And off he goes.

We leave the hotel and walk to George Brett's restaurant. George Brett is the Cal Ripken of Kansas City. Everything here is named after him.

We sit at a table by the window and survey all the baseball memorabilia on the walls. Two women in Yankees shirts are at the next table.

“Have you flown in from New York for the series?” I ask them.

“We drove in from Nebraska,” one of them says. “It's only 3 hours away.”

“We came to see Joba, our local hero,” says the other. “His father, Harlan, and a whole gang of family and friends have come, too.”

I look in the other direction and spot a father and his freckle-faced son sitting at a table in the back of the restaurant.

“They're the same father and son we saw at Spuntini in Toronto,” I tell Michael.

“They are
not
.”

“Jorge came over to talk to them and we were trying to figure out how they were associated with the Yankees, remember?”

He is still not convinced, so I get up and go over to their table.

“Excuse me,” I say. “Were you two eating dinner at Spuntini when the Yankees were in Toronto?”

“We were there,” the father says. He smiles but is a little stunned.

“My husband and I were at the restaurant that night.” I point at Michael, who is hiding his face, pretending not to know me. “You were talking to Posada, and we were wondering how you knew him.”

“I'm Tom Goodman,” he introduces himself. “My company, Goodman Media International, handles the PR for Joe Torre's Safe at Home Foundation.”

“Tom Goodman? Did you by any chance grow up on Oak Lane in Scarsdale?”

“I did!”

“We were practically next-door neighbors!”

Tom invites me to sit down with him and his son Matthew. I wave Michael over to join us. Yankeeville is a small world.

While the four of us eat lunch together, I give Tom a little background on the book and my unsuccessful dealings with Jason Zillo.

“Why don't you try Rick Cerrone, who ran the Yankees' media relations department until the end of last season,” he suggests. “He might be an interesting person to talk to. I'll e-mail you his contact info.”

There is a city bus called the Royals Express that stops at the different hotels in the Country Club Plaza and takes everybody straight to Kauffman Stadium for each home game. About 40 of us pile onto the 5:25 pm. bus to tonight's series opener, and most are dressed in Yankees gear. I stand in the aisle, sandwiched between strangers, just like on the subway. I find myself body to body with a barrel-chested man with bleached platinum hair. He is wearing a Yankees T-shirt, a Yankees cap with a blue interlocking “N” and “Y” that light up when he flicks a switch, Yankees sneakers, a Yankees wristwatch, a Yankees necklace, and a Yankees earring.

“What's up with all the Yankees stuff?” I say.

“I'm from Bayonne, New Jersey,” he says.

“And you traveled to Kansas City to see them play?”

“Been a Yankee fan my whole life.”

“I can see that.” He is a vision of Yankee-ness.

“You haven't seen this.” He lifts the sleeve of his T-shirt to show me the Yankees tattoo on his bicep. “It's permanent.”

“What if they keep losing and you realize they aren't the team you thought they were?”

He gives me a look. “It's permanent. I go down with the ship.”

A fiftysomething woman next to us chimes in. “I hate tattoos. But if I were ever going to get one, it would be a Yankees tattoo. And it would be a permanent one, because the way I feel about them will never change.”

I am struck by the unconditional love they feel, by their
loyalty
—the word Michael keeps using. It would not occur to them not to be Yankee fans. Their devotion has nothing to do with winning. They are faithful to their team, year in and year out.

Kauffman Stadium is bad '70s architecture—something between a flying saucer and a concrete donut. The centerfield scoreboard wears the Royals'
crown. And fireworks erupt from the fountains out there after the last note of the national anthem is sung. And there are billboards advertising a George Brett MasterCard.

We ride the escalator up to section 316, row F—way up behind home plate on the first base side. Ian Kennedy is making his second start.

The Yankees jump on top 2–0, and the Royals tie it up in the bottom of the second. Kennedy goes five innings, and Farnsworth retires the side in order in the sixth.

With the Yankees up 3–2 in the seventh, Joba takes the mound. You would think we were in Nebraska with all the cheering. The woman behind us says she is from Lincoln.

“Do you know Joba personally?” I ask.

She beams. “We all came to see him. He's a fine boy.”

He throws a scoreless seventh and eighth.

Mo shuts the Royals down in the ninth for his 24th save. The Yankees win their third straight game and now have a three-game lead in the wild-card race over Detroit, who has knocked Seattle out of it.

On Saturday, I meet Larry Brooks for an early lunch in the hotel's Oak Room. His once sandy brown hair has flecks of gray in it now, but that is the only sign that he has aged. He is fit with broad shoulders and a boyish smile. We laugh as we try to remember how long it has been since we have seen each other. Ten years? Fifteen? Too long, we decide.

We exchange updates on our lives and discuss hockey, Larry's primary beat at the
Post
. Eventually, we get around to the Yankees. His column about last night's game focused on Joba and his special relationship with his father.

John Sterling walks in. Years ago he was an usher at Larry's wedding, so they spend a few minutes catching up. Yankeeville is a small world.

“How do you think the Yankees will do if they get into the play-offs?” I ask Larry.

“They don't have much chance to win the World Series,” he says. “And that would mean failure for them.”

“Yankee fans have to appreciate how hard it is to win,” I say.

Larry looks at me like I have had a brain transplant. “Where did that come from?”

Since tonight's game has a 6:05 start, Michael and I head to the bus stop at
4:45. There is a large group waiting for the Royals Express, most of them Yankee fans. But I also notice a man wearing a Royals cap and T-shirt, and I am delighted. I have been eager to ask KC fans how they root for a team with a perennially losing record.

The man is standing off by himself. I walk over to him and nearly faint; his face is covered with tumors. His features are so distorted and disfigured that I think he must be wearing a Halloween mask. If you have seen
The Elephant
Man
, you get the idea. His arms and neck are similarly lumpy. He wears his cap very low on his head. I cannot imagine what it is like to live inside his skin.