It was my father, wise in so many ways about sports, who identified 18 years ago the malaise that seems to affect everyone with even a passing interest in the Yankees these days.
This was 1996, and Derek Jeter was just beginning to make his grand ascent, and my father noticed the many times he wound up working his way into his son’s column in the Middletown Times-Herald Record.
“He’s Phil Rizzuto,” Pop said. “In more ways than one.”
For my dad, Phil Rizzuto was the first of his baseball idols for whom he saw the whole arc: the morning, the afternoon, the midnight. He might have loved Joe DiMaggio more fiercely, but he had been too late for the Clipper’s early years. He was devoted to Whitey Ford and Mickey Mantle, but they were contemporaries, and came along after baseball had passed the mystical phase for him.
Rizzuto broke in with the Yankees in April 1941, when my father was 8 years old — the absolutely perfect time to pounce upon the sport, and whatever idols you assemble for the ride. It helped that, like Pop, Rizzuto was slight of stature and that he had a vowel at the end of his name, but neither were requirements.
Only this was: He came along at the right time. So in a manner of speaking, my father grew up with Rizzuto. He won the MVP award in 1950, which was Pop’s last year in high school. He was still on the job in 1955, when Dad got married. And when the Scooter played his final game, on Aug. 16, 1956, my father was 13 days shy of his 25th birthday. It was the perfect story arc for him, the perfect demographic, from 8 to 25.
He didn’t see every inning of Rizzuto’s career, because in those days nobody did, not unless you were a batboy or a baseball writer or Casey Stengel. But he saw enough. And though there was some anger among Yankees fans when the team coldly cut Rizzuto, my father felt something else.
“Sadness,” he said. “They get old as ballplayers. But we get older, too.”
And that’s what he was talking about when he watched Jeter in the summer and fall of ’96, and for the years after that when it was clear he belonged in the pantheon of Yankees. There was an entire generation of Yankees fans who would grow up with Jeter as Pop grew up with Rizzuto, and that meant when the end came, they would watch to the very end, too.
And feel the early stages of the melancholy so many of them feel and express — in emails to sports columnists, in valedictories to sports radio. And Jeter hasn’t even started the last season yet.
It allows an understanding why so many Mets fans have such a fierce devotion to David Wright. Somehow, the Mets have been in business since 1962 and have produced one wire-to-wire player of any renown: Ed Kranepool.
Everyone else of note either started somewhere else or ended somewhere else.
It may seem a small aspect of the life of a fan, but it’s impossible to ever truly define how much a game, a team or an athlete should matter. They just do, some more than others. For all Don Mattingly didn’t accomplish, for instance, the fact is that Yankees fans of a certain age had him all to themselves, from the first overture to the final encore. It’s hard to explain precisely why that matters, but it does.
Same as it’s hard to put a finger on why Yankees fans older than 25 feel the way they feel these days. They just do.
Whack Back at Vac
Bob Buscavage: The “Long” and the short of it? Robinson Cano won’t be trying out for a role in the sequel to “American Hustle.”
Vac: Unless Lloyd McClendon is a lot better manager now than he’s ever been before, he does have a shot at “All Is Lost 2.”
Mike Marcojohn: I can’t wait to never see Alex Rodriquez, Robbie Cano or Johnny Damon at a Yankees Old-Timers’ Day — obviously all for different reasons.
Vac: I suspect Damon will be back in the fold as early as this year. Cano probably will have to serve a Bouton-esque sentence. A-Rod … that may take a while.
@ajB_real: Is there a chance someone gets in Rysheed Jordan’s ear with this hot finish and he leaves?
@MikeVacc: Always a chance, but let us hope his ears are just as off-limits as his comments have been this year.
Bob Leise: If Frank Underwood of “House of Cards” ran the Knicks maybe he could “convince” some top free agents to sign here.
Vac: Agreed. Although (SPOILER ALERT!) the Mara family might disagree with some of the strategies.
Vac’s Whacks
Sandy Alderson is too smart to make a statement like this: “The story for 2014 is not Matt Harvey.” Especially when the crowd gathered round to watch Harvey throw Saturday looked larger than almost every September crowd in the history of Citi Field.
The way the Knicks have lost games this year makes the way Dillon and East Dillon High used to win games on “Friday Night Lights” look absolutely plausible.
Looks like the U.S. hockey team was the Olympics’ version of Penny Hardaway’s basketball career: spectacular start, unwatchable ending.
I don’t think I’ll ever grow weary of the Alicia Keys/John Legend version of “Let it Be.”