The beers rained from the Yankee Stadium heavens, soaking me and my Red Sox jacket, making the gloomy rain gloomier. I was the token target of two upper-deck drunken dudes in pinstriped jerseys, pissed off that their Yankees had just lost a doubleheader to my Sox, their evil empire. They expressed their dismay by thrusting middle fingers in my general direction, slapping high-fives, and screaming Bronx Zoo insults — anything to forget the home team’s latest failure in what promised to be a season of catastrophe.
That night — Aug. 3, 1978 — those beers baptized me as a Yankees hater. Hatred escalated as the Yanks beat the Red Sox in three straight postseason series, two of them excruciatingly painful. Hatred diminished as the Sox eliminated the Yanks in three straight playoffs, one of them deliriously joyful. Four World Series titles by my favorite team have converted me into a good-will ambassador for the best rivalry in sports, inspired by my favorite Yankees fan and my favorite Yankee.
I mean, how can I hate the Yankees when Mariano Rivera, their Hall of Fame closer and a hall of fame Christian, saved my old church building, the sanctuary where Jackie Robinson changed my world, forever and for good?
My entire life has been stitched with Yankees pinstripes. I was born on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, eight miles from Yankee Stadium, which is 16 miles from my hometown of New Rochelle, the Bronx suburb that remains a haven for Yankees fans who emigrated from the Bronx. My first best friend, Mike Raffel, remains the most avid Yankees fan I know. We met in 1967 on a rectangular baseball field in Wainscott, three miles from the Bridgehampton childhood home of my baseball hero, Carl Yastrzemski, the Red Sox Hall of Famer who grew up dreaming of playing for the Yankees.
Yaz’s dream pretty much died when his father evicted from their School Street house a Yankees scout who hit the ceiling with a pencil, exasperated by Carl Sr.’s demanding demands to sign his son. Carl Sr. told me this story, with a hearty laugh and grizzled pride, during a 1968 dinner he and his wife attended at our Wainscott home — a gift from my dad for following his advice to make Yaz my baseball role model.
Yaz keyed the first games that made me hate the Yankees. He helped the Red Sox win the curfew-extended, rain-shortened, beer-baptized 1978 doubleheader that turned Yankee Stadium into the Bronx Zoo. Two months later, in the fabled Sox-Yanks playoff tiebreaker, he drove in two runs, made the last out, and watched Bucky Bleepin’ Dent’s wind-aided pop fly sail over his head and Fenway Park’s 37-foot-high left-field wall, becoming a game-breaking, backbreaking three-run homer. Many remember Yaz slumping to the ground in shock. Far fewer remember him with his head down, pressing an arm against the Green Monster scoreboard, kicking the warning track like a disgusted horse.
A year later jeers became cheers. There I was at Yankee Stadium on Aug. 6, 1979, rooting for the Yankees to win hours after they had buried their beloved catcher and captain, Thurman Munson, killed four days earlier in the crash of a plane he piloted. The Baltimore Orioles led 4-0 until the seventh inning, when Bobby Murcer, Munson’s best friend on the Yanks, rocketed a three-run homer into the right-field stands, five rows from where I sat with my father. I jumped up and screamed until I was nearly hoarse, surfing the wavelengths of 30,000-plus ecstatic companions. Ecstasy elevated to rapture when Murcer, who had tearfully eulogized Munson that morning, cue-balled a two-run, walk-off single into left field. I hugged a Yankees fan for the first time, then hugged a Yankees fan for the second time. A stadium became a church, and we all became worshippers.
The next day I returned to wishing the Yankees unwell. Over the decades my feelings fluctuated with their fortunes. I was annoyed by the scandal-plagued misfits of the ‘80s to early ‘90s; pissed off by the late ‘90s juggernaut that won four World Series titles; royally pissed off by Aaron Bleepin’ Boone’s extra-inning homer that ended the Red Sox’s 2003 season after being six outs from heading to the World Series. It was way too easy to curse the Curse of the Bambino, the 1919 trade that sent Babe Ruth from the Sox to the Yankees, triggering the Yanks’ 26-0 advantage in championships.
The next year all my bile was exiled. Demon after demon was pitchforked as the Red Sox humiliated the Yankees, making them the first major-league baseball team to lose a playoff series after winning the first three games. It was much more than the biggest collapse and biggest comeback in major-league history. It was the best bleepin’ exorcism ever.
True confession: I helped Reverse the Curse. The spell was broken at the Baseball Hall of Fame, a demilitarized zone for Red Sox and Yankees fans. First I rubbed Yaz’s bronze plaque for good luck. Then I went to the plaques of the greatest New York greats — Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra, Mickey Mantle — and gave each one the middle finger. And then I whispered “Bleep the Curse” as loud as I could without getting evicted.
It took me confessing these confessions to realize that the Yankees have made me a better loser. Thanks to the Red Sox’s postseason wins in 2018 and 2021, my hatred for the Yanks has been replaced by my love for their every loss. Like every true-blue member of Red Sox Nation, I measure a successful season by the Yankees being bounced from the playoffs or, even better, not making the playoffs.
Even better than that, the Yankees have made me a good-will ambassador. Walking my dog, Jake, becomes a Huckleberry mission whenever I meet a stranger in a Yankees hat. I’ll point to my Red Sox cap and say, in my best imitation Bronx accent: “Hey, man, can we get along, or what?” The prod produces a smile, a laugh, and, more often than not, a fine story about a really fine character. A pup named Munson. A Yankees fan who lost a bet with a Red Sox friend and had to wear a David (Big Papi) Ortiz mask for Halloween. A Yanks fan who became a Sox fan to honor her father, who died shortly after his Sox finally won a World Series in his lifetime.
The gods must have ordained me to unhate the Yankees. Why else would they have guided Mariano Rivera and his minister wife, Clara, to save the long-shuttered sanctuary of North Avenue Presbyterian Church, my former house of worship in New Rochelle, my hometown? The couple’s Refugio de Esperanza (Refuge of Hope) opened in 2014, the year the Jackie Robinson Foundation presented a humanitarian award to Mariano, the last major leaguer to regularly wear Robinson’s retired uniform number.
It was at North Avenue Presbyterian that I heard Jackie Robinson deliver an epistle to a country racked by racism. On that Sunday morning he introduced 9-year-old me to ideas, and ideals, that have enhanced my life. Equality is a human right. Equality is a financial, political, and spiritual power. The best way to start an equality revolution is by upgrading churches from segregated fortresses to integrated harbors.
Robinson baptized me in citizenship in 1967, the year I became a Little Leaguer, a Yaz fan, and a friend of Mike Raffel, an eternal Yankees kid. Our Huck & Tom act ended up in a chapter in my 2013 memoir, “The Kingdom of the Kid: Growing Up in the Long-Lost Hamptons” (SUNY Press). That October we sampled the act in a bookstore across the street from Mike’s house in Cambridge, N.Y., near the Vermont border and a Red Sox-Yankees battleground like the South Fork. Back at Mike’s home we watched the Sox win the World Series, with Mike going to bed early to let me whoop it up in peace. A night of trick-or-treating ended with the best treat a lifelong Yanks fan could give a lifelong Sox friend.
I wish I could be Christian enough to watch the Yankees win a World Series with Mike by my side. Alas, I don’t think I can break my streak of never watching the Yanks win a Series, or a pennant, or a Red Sox playoff. Maybe I’ll repay Mike by taking him to the Hall of Fame, where our favorite players play on a level field. Maybe I’ll trick-or-treat in a Yogi Berra mask. Maybe I’ll give him my Mickey Mantle watch, which might make up for all those Mickey cards he insists I won from him, a string of victories I don’t remember, just like I don’t remember how I acquired my only wearable timepiece, which maybe means it’s a sign — or maybe a joke — from the pinstriped angels in red sox.
Geoff Gehman is a former Wainscott resident, a journalist, and an ex-pitcher. He lives in Bethlehem, Pa., and can be reached at [email protected].