Of Ping Pong Games and the Yankees

Growing up in the late 1950's, I lived in a house with a ping pong table in the basement. I would often descend the steps to this room with my dad, to battle it out for ping pong supremacy. 

Inevitably I came in second place in this contest. And with unfailing regularity I would emerge from this dungeon red eyed, not because I had lost, but because I had suffered some "injury" during this undertaking.  A bruised ego the culprit.

Defeat in sport, accepting this with equanimity and grace, is not something that comes easily at any age. Even as my days of participating in various athletic competitions peeled away through the decades, a continuum of injuries taking me away from baseball, soccer, basketball, tennis, I could still, through osmosis, stand on the hallowed ground of Yankee Stadium, basking in the glory of being a winner.

From my earliest memories, this team and I have been as one. Their heartbeat mine. Their losses sustained by me. And their victories, oh those victories, enduring forever, giving me a bounce in my step and an easy confidence as if I was the one who had accomplished something of great significance.

And throughout much of my existence, from the first days of Mickey to the last days of the House that Ruth built (I have amnesia regarding the harmonica years, Phil Linz and Horace Clarke as well as the fallow period that unfortunately attached the length and breadth of the career of Don Mattingly) expectation and reality often co-existed in wondrous harmony. Thirteen World Championship flags have been raised during the seven plus decades that I have bled Yankee pinstripes. While this may not seem a percentage that would sustain me, the number of rings placed on my fingers (and toes) during this period is more than any other franchise has gathered in their entire existence.

But I am growing older and more impatient with each passing year that I am stuck on twenty seven (the championships accumulated from the first one garnered by the kid acquired so No No Nanette could survive, until the present). My swagger having been lost in the fog of Houston Astros triumphs (election fraud for sure), or maybe, after the initial success in 2009 in the new House that Ruth didn't build, it has been the 21st century version of the Curse of the Bambino settling in.

This year however there is ample reason to believe again. There is a young shortstop who every day gives further reason for us to ask "Derek who", a right fielder who it would seem was stolen in the greatest pilfer since the Kansas City Royals gave us Roger Maris and were rightly considered a farm team for the Bombers, a center fielder who has his own well deserved designated cheering section in the stands, a starting pitching staff as stingy as Jack Benny (I apologize for a reference most of you don't understand -Google it) and, oh by the way, the Cy Young award winner and future Hall of Famer who has not yet thrown a pitch in anger this season.

I know, I know. Slow down boy. There is plenty of meat left on this bone, it is still but May, injuries can destroy dreams and maybe, just maybe, the young studs on the staff will be but as shooting stars, burned out well before the first autumn chill courses through the air.

Yet, today I am anxious to head back down to the basement of my home, ready to take on my dad in another contest to be the first to reach twenty one (or twenty eight if you are still following along with my thoughts). Emerging with a win in my pocket and a bounce in my step. My eyes not tinged with red but brimming with pride at what I have done. Winning, even at 72, would feel very good. Very good indeed.

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