These are the best days of all, and only partly because they happen in the immediate afterglow of triumph, a championship in the bank and satisfaction sating every ounce of your sporting soul. That part of a parade day is nice, sure.
But this is the better part:
For the couple of hours that it takes the floats and the flatbeds and the bands to march from Battery Place to City Hall, for that piece of morning and chunk of afternoon when the players and the politicos mingle and chatter and exchange pleasantries and keys to the city, the most famous and most expensive baseball team in the world becomes a public trust, a penny stock.
The Yankees belong to the people then, and the people belong to the Yankees, 2 million shareholders lining the sidewalks, everyone wearing the same blue vestments, the same pinstriped cassocks, waving the same dark-blue flag, white inter-locked “NY” on the front.
Three days after Election Day, it is the most democratic day of all, whether you are a bartender from Bensonhurst, a dentist from Demarest or a landscaper from Larchmont. Rich and poor and everywhere in between; young and old and everyone in the middle; everyone is welcome. Everyone is equal. Everyone gets the same small square of pavement to call home.
And everyone is a Yankee.
“It’s been too long, hasn’t it?” Derek Jeter asked, knowing he would shake down a roar that rattled the heavens, starting with the select crowd at City Hall, extending beyond the gates to the masses who had lined the Canyon of Heroes, amplified by the folks who had work or school yesterday, who couldn’t make it to Lower Manhattan in person but were there in spirit.
“It feels good to be back,” Jeter said. “I forgot how great this is. I talked last year, when we closed the old stadium, about bringing new memories across the street, and you guys definitely did not disappoint.”
Added Hal Steinbrenner: “This one is for you.”
It wasn’t easy being a Yankees fan in this season, in this year, when so many people are hurting, when so many jobs have been lost, when so much money that might otherwise have gone to buy Yankees tickets had to be re-allocated to more pressing commitments like rent, tuition and paying down credit-card debt.
It wasn’t always easy to be a working-class fan, to look at the stratospheric costs of Yankees tickets, to know that it might be some time before you ever get a good look inside the beautiful new yard. That was a big story for so long, and remains that way to be truthful, because never has the gulf between have and have-not seemed greater and graver than the caste system inside modern ballparks. Yankee Stadium isn’t alone in that. Ask a Giants fan. Ask a Mets fan. Ask a Knicks fan.
But the Yankees fan yesterday received the sublime gift that Giants fans got 20 months and one day earlier: a chance to look their idols and their heroes in the eye, a chance to share a championship on equal terms and equal footing. A chance for 2 million anonymous Yankees and 25 famous ones to merge in magnificent and munificent wonder, to shake each other’s hands and to share each other’s triumph.
“No matter where you go,” Mayor Bloomberg said at City Hall, “the city will always welcome you back with open arms.”
Then he distributed keys to the players, to the coaches, to the owners and the announcers and the support people who made it all so, made it all happen. It was a nice gesture, but the mayor already had been beaten to the punch. For the Yankees already had been given the keys to the people’s collective heart, 2 million strong. And those arms contain a firm embrace that never fades.
“This team,” manager Joe Girardi said, “took on the pulse of the city of New York.”
The city, in turn, gave the team its heart. It’s a fair trade.
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com