Why I Root For The Yankees

I was born in Woonsocket, RI, in 1950, some 45 odd miles from Boston, MA. A reasonable person would assume that as a sports fan I would root for the Red Sox, Bruins, Celtics and Patriots. Well, no, no, yes and sort of. Let me explain myself!

My father was a proud New York Yankees fan. It was all Yankees all of the time in our house. As I recall, Dad’s allegiance to the Yankees stemmed from reading and hearing about Lou Gehrig and Bill Dickey as a youngster. Since Dad’s father was a Red Sox fan, I think that a lot to do with Dad’s love of the Yankees was his strong relationship to his Uncle Tom (Pothier) who was married to Dad’s mother’s (Elzia) sister (Aunt Ernestine – aka “Sitsit”). My siblings and I were brainwashed from birth to be Yankees fans. It stuck with my brother (Tim), nearest sister (Lynette) and me. The youngest sister (Jane) is a Red Sox fan, most likely just to piss off Dad. I have a photograph of me at 18-months-old dressed in a Yankees uniform!

When the Yankees were playing a night game Dad and I would often attempt to listen to the game on radio from a New York station. He would back the car part way out of the garage and angle the car just so in order to get acceptable reception on the car radio. On games from the west on a school night, we always ran the risk of it getting past my bedtime and incurring the wrath of Mom, not to mention running down the car battery. If the Yankees lost, especially if they blew a lead and some “crunchy” won it for the other team by blooping a cheap hit over a drawn-in infield or squibbling a “seeing-eye” grounder up the middle, Dad would get an awful headache that lasted until the next Bronx Bomber victory. Dad’s idea of a good game was when the Yankees would score 10 runs in the first inning and slowing pull away.

Needless to say, the Yankees were dominant in the Majors when I was a kid. I was there in body for Yankees World Series wins in ’51, ’52, ’53 and ’56, as well as a World Series loss in ’55. I do not remember these years at all. I remember the Yankees losing to the Braves in ’57, the Pirates in’60, the Dodgers in ’63 and the Cardinals in ‘64 and beating the Braves in ’58, the Reds in ’61 and the Giants in ’62. All in all, it was great being a Yankees fan then. As a consequence, however, I was hated for being a Yankees fan by all of the Red Sox fans in the neighborhood and at school.

I liked hockey a lot as a kid. We all rooted for the Bruins in the NHL as well as the minor-league Rhode Island Reds of the AHL. Most of the guys in the neighborhood had tabletop mechanical hockey games, akin to foosball table games of today. We had a league of sorts and drew straws to choose team names. Other guys got to be the Bruins and Reds, and I had to settle for the Chicago Black Hawks, who happened to be in first place that year. I began to follow the Black Hawks, becoming a fan and following the careers of Stan Mikita, Bobby Hull, Glenn Hall, Eric Nesterenko, Pat Stapleton, et al. While my interest in professional hockey has waxed and waned through the years, I still root for the forlorn Black Hawks.

Of course I root for the Celtics! I hate the Knicks, the Bulls, the Pistons and especially the Lakers!

In the 1950s the only professional football around was the old pre-AFC NFL. In Rhode Island, our choices were the New York Giants. Period. A few folks rooted for the Cleveland Browns – not the ersatz Cleveland Browns currently inhabiting the Mistake by the Lake, but the team that moved to Baltimore to become the Ravens. Some miscreants may have rooted for the Philadelphia Eagles but I do not remember them. The Colts were still in Baltimore, the Cardinals had only recently left Chicago for St. Louis and the Rams were in Los Angeles. In Woonsocket, you rooted for the Giants: Y. A. Tittle, Charley Conerly, Frank Gifford, Del Shofner, Rosey Brown, Dick Modzewleski, Sam Huff, Jim Katcavage, Dick Lynch, et al. They were pretty good, although they lost the NFL championship to the Colts in what may have been the greatest NFL game ever.

It was in the 1960s that things began to change with the advent of the American Football League (AFL) that morphed into the AFC after the merger. It was only in 1960 that the New England Patriots were born, originally called the Boston Patriots and actually playing some games at Fenway Park! In the AFL most of us rooted for the Patriots. Later, after the merger it became necessary to root for either the Giants or the Patriots. Old habits die-hard and I have remained loyal to the Giants, especially when the two teams played head-on in the Super Bowl. When the Giants suck, I root for the Pats!