Day Game

The Old Bat

Oprah is closing her show before inviting me as a guest. Elaine's is closing before I attained good-table status. And there is no bat where fans can meet at the New Stadium.

It seems like a good time for moving on to something big, something new. But, what exactly? Good question: when in doubt, take in a game. When is serious doubt, take in a day game.

I sat out by the left field foul pole in the shade of an overhang to watch a game in the New Stadium. A few other singletons sat nearby. Admittedly, they were some years ahead of me with little else to do and, judging by the quality of their clothing and their plastic lunch bags, perhaps not much in the bank to help them do it. I was hoping that I didn't fit in.

We saw a good home-team win and were forced to listen to some of the worst white rock & roll music ever recorded, at superhuman volume, just so we'd have something to do between batters, pitches, and just about anything else that might happen naturally during a beautiful May afternoon game.

Fortunately, even noxious music and a corporate lack of faith in the game itself cannot diminish some things:

• the newest old Yank, who no longer has the speed or the eye of his youth, on a given day, can hit two 400 ft. homers to center. Andruw Jones. 
• Jeter getting his 2,976th hit. A double.
• Mo, making his 1,000th appearance. Mo-ver! 
• Sinatra doing it His Way one more time after a win over the listless Jays.

There were people there, mostly young and mostly male who actually paid $9.50 for a single bottle of beer. These are the ones who moaned deeply about the $4.59 per gallon they had to pay somewhere in New Jersey in order to get across the GW. Yet, they will pay over $100 per gallon for a beer at the New Stadium. Go figure.

Mo & Tex

Some, no, many of these people were very poorly dressed:

• in "gym" shorts, although they had definitely not seen a gym since high school.
• in undershirts that should have been under something.
• in too many calories stuffed into too short-shorts and too skimpy-shirts.
• in remarkably bad suits and haircuts, nervously looking at their BlackBerrys for a command from their boss or client.

And the most attractive person there by far? Naturally, she was wearing a SF Giants cap, orange brim.
Cool, even in the hot sun.

As much as I loved baseball, and as much as I loved a day game above all others, I honestly wanted to be somewhere else, and it wasn't just because of the haberdashery. I couldn't envision exactly where I'd rather be, but could not help thinking: how could most of these people, who look so unhealthy, who dress so poorly, who will pay anything to drink watery beer have full-time paying jobs. 

Today's Lonely Bat

How these people found and retained good jobs and kept them with absolutely no sense of style is a mystery as great as the true location of the strike zone is to pitchers and batters. We may still be over-employed, and that's a scary thought.

I had no doubt that thousands of these people loved being mercifully away from their too-busy jobs. But, I had little compassion for them, wanting instead to steal their jobs, while they were not looking,  as Granderson surely should have stolen third in the second inning, while the Jays third-baseman was napping. 

When you're at a day game in May, in the shade, with the sun shining after days of rain, as the home team is walloping homers, and you wish you were somewhere else, it's time to make something happen. It didn't need to be a Saint Oprah grand slam, a sold single would do.

Most people believe that reaching the age of sixty to be a form of early death. They won't even walk past Frank Campbell's fine Funeral Emporium on Madison Avenue for fear that they will be magnetically attracted upstairs among the bouquets. Well, maybe they haven't heard the news: Sixty is The New Thirty! I know this is true, because I made it up.

I walk past Frank's any time I please on a lunch break from the Writers & Artist's Club Members' Reading Room after a brief waltz around Crawford Doyle, one of the last great independent book emporiums on the Isle of Manhatta. I may even do a little jig just to prove a point.

Forever Is A Long Long Time

They're all over Jeter and Posada for being near dead too. Who's next, Mo? In baseball, when you're forty, "they" think your sixty.Yet, Posada played a huge part in a walk-off win recently and Jete will soon get his 3,000th. And there is still much Mo to go.

And what about Andruw Jones! Two huge shots to center, one in the visiting bullpen, the other into the Memorial Park, over the 408 sign. Many say he's washed up. Once upon a time, I watched him play in center for Turner's Braves in '96, and face Mo in late innings, the first of the Torre-Yanks' string of Series wins. Now, he's an add-on cagey vet, who just might get that game winner in another October.

The Yanks always know where they want to be.

Dear Andruw, Jorge, Mo, and Jete, You're not washed up until you say you're washed up. And then some.

Walking to the train after the last out, seeing the ghost of Joe D in front of me, I almost believed it myself.