You may think there isn’t much in the way of a rooting interest for you this weekend in New Jersey — unless you happen to hail from Milwaukee, Columbus, Ohio, Lexington, Ky., or Chapel Hill, N.C.; or if you happen to have a sheepskin on your wall identifying your forever fealty to Marquette, Ohio State, Kentucky or North Carolina.
You may ask yourself: Why would I possibly care about universities whose campuses sit, respectively, 870, 535, 695 and 496 miles away from the Prudential Center, tucked away on the corner of Market and Mulberry streets in downtown Newark? At first glance? Sure, it seems random. Flip a coin. Root for your bracket. Watch “Shark Tank” instead.
But what if I told you that you, Yankees fan, very much have a stake in this East Regional, which begins tonight with Carolina and Marquette early, with Kentucky and Ohio State late? What if I told you, member of the pinstriped parliament, that you would be well-served to forget your pool and forget “20/20” and immediately take up the colors of the blue and the white, to immediately stand up for the Kentucky Wildcats?
Well, there is good reason to be that way. Across the past 62 years, Kentucky has won six national championships. Tell me if any of these years ring a bell:
1949? 1951? 1958? 1978? 1996? 1998?
Yes, you see the pattern, don’t you? Since 1949, as surely as summer follows spring, whenever Kentucky wins a national championship, the Yankees follow suit with a World Series title seven months later. You can set your watch (or order your championship ring) by it. It took the Yankees a mulligan to get this right, since the Indians got in their way back in 1948, the only time Kentucky has gone rogue in this partnership.
Since then?
When Ralph Beard and Alex Groza cashed in for the Wildcats in ‘49, the Yankees answered by chasing down the Red Sox on the final weekend. When Cliff Hagen and Frank Ramsey did likewise in ‘51, the Yankees ended the Giants’ miracle run half a calendar year later. When the Fiddlin’ Five reached the mountaintop in March of ‘58, the Yankees took their revenge over the Braves in October. When Jack Givens dropped 41 on Duke in ‘78, the Yankees chopped 14 games off a Boston lead not long after. When the Wildcats constructed a mini-dynasty by winning in 1996 and 1998, the Yankees liked the idea enough to copy them.
Now, the Yankees have proven that they don’t always need Kentucky’s gentle push, of course. But if you’re looking for positive early harbingers, this isn’t a bad one. This, in fact, is an entirely appropriate one, if you consider how similar the two phenomena are: Kentucky basketball and Yankees baseball, two secular religions, two pre-eminent forces, two unmatched machines.
Listen to John Calipari — born in Pennsylvania, raised on Eastern basketball — speak of the UK monolith, and ask yourself if it sounds familiar:
“I know there are programs that are connected to their state, but none like this. They breathe with every shot. Inhale, exhale. You make it, exhale. You miss …”
He gasped. Then continued:
“That’s how they are, and they’re everywhere. Everywhere we go they figure out how to get tickets. I don’t know how they do it. We play whoever, it doesn’t matter. There are 25,000 people in [our] building. And the upper deck is there an hour because they drove from eastern Kentucky. There is such a connection between the people in our state and the program.”
And this:
“There’s high expectations. It doesn’t matter if we lose these guys or this guy … you win. If you don’t win by 25 … why aren’t you winning by 25?”
The Wildcats will be underdogs tonight in a way they rarely are, same as the Yankees will enter the 2011 season hearing all about the Red Sox. Same as they did in 1949, come to think of it. Same as they did in 1978.
If that doesn’t get you humming a few bars of “My Old Kentucky Home,” Yankees fans … what will?
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com