Category: Baseball Fans and Fandom
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September 27, 2009: Long Distance Runaround
It’s always tricky trying to follow one’s team while traveling. In recent years I have found myself tempted to miss airplanes while watching in airport bars, watching broadcasts while ON planes (thank you, JetBlue), watching just the ESPN TICKER on planes when the local broadcast wasn’t on, carrying a portable XM radio with me, cartuning…
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April 25, 2009: Slug fest
We were really looking forward to a tight pitching duel at Fenway today, as AJ Burnett and Josh Beckett faced off. As I write this, Jonathan Papelbon just walked Derek Jeter in the top of the ninth, in which Boston has a 16-11 lead. There have been 28 hits in the game so far, and…
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April 15, 2009: Moving the Fences In
So today was the day that MLB honored Jackie Robinson, an annual event on April 15th that has been growing bigger every year since the retirement of Robinson’s #42 throughout all of baseball (except for those players who were still wearing it, like Mariano Rivera). Today every player in the majors (and even the umpires)…
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April 7, 2009: No Bailout Needed
Today’s post in our week of special piece Welcoming Back Baseball is a guest post by my good friend Patrick Hughes, who is a devoted Giants fan living in San Francisco. Today the Giants are having their own Opening Day and Patrick has been texting me updates from the ballpark. But here’s a piece he…
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On “Diamond Girls:” Female Baseball Fandom
(Originally posted February 16, 2000, reposted to new blog on December 9, 2008) So, I never really thought about the difference between female baseball fans and male baseball fans, until the whole Derek Jeter thing. Let me explain. Growing up as a kid, I was a tomboy, and was always doing this that the “guys”…
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Born Again in Baseball: Part Three: The Comeback
(Originally posted February 13, 2000, reposted to new site December 3, 2008) In 1999, corwin and I had been together eight years. Eight years! And now that we’re both in our thirties, we’ve gotten on to a kind of second-childhood kick. (We also took a vacation to Disney World this year.) I decided that, with…
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Born Again in Baseball: Rookie
(Originally posted February 13, 2000, reposted to new site November 1, 2008) So, how did a young fan of Reggie Jackson, the Year of the Comeback, Bucky Dent, Ron Guidry, and Thurman Munson, a woman who still counts among one of the best days of her life witnessing Dave Righetti’s Fourth of July No-Hitter live…
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September 21, 2008: The Curtain Comes Down
Here’s a trivia question you’ll be able to stump your friends with in 2013. Who hit the last home run in Yankee Stadium? Answer: Jose Molina. Jeter tried to do it, but his line drive was caught just short of the wall. Johnny Damon tried to do it, blasting a three-run shot to put the…
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August 31, 2008: When The World Is Running Down
Well, I have probably just seen my last game at Yankee Stadium, at least the stadium as I knew it. My very earliest trips to the stadium were before the mid-70s renovation. I even remember a doubleheader at Shea on a day it poured rain so hard that the decks looked like waterfalls. But the…
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June 1, 2008: For the Birds
I have now initiated my friend Brian (let’s call him Brian…) to the fun and wonder of Major League fandom. I took a trip to Baltimore to take him to his first major league game, a tilt of Orioles versus Yankees. The reason I went all the way to Baltimore for this is that the…