Farewell to the Captain, Hello to Tradition

Every once in a while the stars align. An opportunity arises. A chance to not only right a wrong, but to create a memory and to set things aright all in one. Every once in a while.

Remember your first major league baseball game? Yankees Orioles in the Bronx. 1987. I was 10. Eddie Murray went yard to right field to win it for the O's. I sat up in the upper deck of the old Yankee Stadium along the first baseline. I still smell the cigars along River Avenue.

I attended that game with a then distant friend of the family, not my dad or anyone else who could walk me through the game, the Stadium, the lore, the history. I just remember the sights, the smells. No audio.

This fall, though, I got a chance to set things right for the next generation. By a luck of the draw I had tickets to the second to last regular season home game in the Bronx this year. Derek Jeter's second to last home game at the Stadium before he retires. I chose to take my two year old nephew. It was his first game.

We took the subway up so he could get a feel for the fans, for the pre-game chatter, and the ritual and rhythm of mass transit. We listened to the Bleacher Creatures so he could hear the roll call. As each player responded to the crowd I filled him in on their position, their season, and their place in Yankee history. This introduced him to the second most important cheer he learned that day: DER-EK JE-TER.

Next to thunder, my nephew's never heard anything so sonorous as the Jeter chant. And next to his family, he's never heard anything so full of love, admiration, adulation, and gratitude.

It's times like these that I curse the new Stadium and it's solid structure. In Game 1 of the 2006 ALDS against Detroit I witnessed Jeter go five-for-five with a home run in a winning effort (remember that, Harris?). By his fifth at-bat the chant was so pervasive that the lower deck shook. I have never been so delightfully afraid. [The old Stadium, like Venice, used to open up to fans the way St Mark's Square unveils La Serenissima - the tunnels from the entrance down to the field giving way to what Bart Giamatti referred to as the Green Fields of the mind - that oasis of green amid the concrete jungle.]

Between at-bats we walked around the stadium so he could see the field from different angles. He heard the Voice of God, Bob Sheppard, before he too posthumously retired. I pointed out the area behind third base where Jeter dove into the stands against Boston (remember that, Batters?), the gap between first and second where he tied Gehrig (remember that, Javy?), the lower deck in right field where he became Mr November and the city of New York cried in catharsis after 9/11.

After a long day through three boroughs, the kid nodded off in the middle innings, but I like to think the sounds of the crowd, the smells of the park, and the ambiance of the moment have baptized him in baseball. I'm just glad I got to take him to his first game. May this tradition continue.