Well, the Yankees often provide us thrills on the field, but this is about how they provided me and 80-ish other folks a thrill that was literally on the field. I was one of the flag handlers for the National Anthem on the field yesterday.
I don’t know when the “giant flag in the outfield” tradition started, but since 2000 most of the times I could remember it happening, it was uniformed cadets from West Point who performed it. This year, though, at ALDS game one, the folks marching out with the flag were season ticket holders. My friend David was with us that game. He pointed at the field and said “That! What do we have to do to do that?” I told him I didn’t know, but I assumed we didn’t have enough seniority yet to get that chance…?
I was wrong. Before the ALCS an email came asking if I’d be interested in taking part. I couldn’t make it early enough, though, so I told them no, but please if we make it to the World Series, could they…?
They could. The Yankees took care of Cleveland, and David and I took care of various pieces of paperwork (like an injury waiver…. in case the flag blew us away, I suppose), and we were all set to be flag carriers for the first World Series game at Yankee Stadium since 2009.
Our instructions were to be at the Stadium at 1:30 pm on game day. Yes, that is almost seven hours before the first pitch. We arrived at the Stadium earlier than the players and most media. Not earlier than much of the stadium staff, though. We were lined up to enter next to a large number of folks on the housekeeping staff.
I don’t know if you’ve thought about a stadium needing housekeeping like a hotel, but of course they do. There will be 50,000 people there a night, spilling their beer and popcorn and creating other forms of entropy. Someone has to refill the toilet paper. (As baseball owners under Bud Selig came to learn, if the women’s restrooms are not clean, moms won’t want to bring their families back. Selig commissioned a study that determined that, IIRC, although women make up slightly less than half of MLB fans (47%) they were responsible for between 60% and 85% of MLB’s consumer spending. Most teams responded by adding pink hats to their merch stores, but the savvy ones stepped up the cleanliness of the women’s restrooms. The old Yankee Stadiums (I and II) had “towel ladies” when I was a kid, just like in the theaters on Broadway. In YSIII there isn’t a woman actually handing you a towel, but they’re in there sweeping and refilling and flushing for the lazy all game long.)
If you assume the housekeepers at Yankee Stadium are “just employees” who clock in and out and treat it as just another piece of low wage drudgery… you might be surprised to see the lengths they’ve gone to decorate their employee check-in area for Halloween. And that’s on top of the handmade signs saying things like “Go Yankees” and “Let’s get 28!” That doesn’t look like the sort of thing that employees who “don’t care” would do. Of course they care! They are part of the team.
And for one day, we flag people were part of the team, too. During the course of the day, we were shepherded around by various members of the Season Ticket sales staff, and these folks are also extremely invested in the Yankees on-field success. It takes a group of about 80-85 people to do the flag at Yankee Stadium. (You need about 35 on top and bottom, and 10 or so on either side.) So there was a fair bit of shepherding to do.
Every member of the season ticket staff we met was also full of zeal for the Yankees. They are mostly young and fresh-faced, or they were when they started. Mike, the guy who was mostly in charge of us, told us he’d been with the Yankees 13 years, and he was SO PSYCHED for his first World Series. Mike’s voice was completely shot because he and a group of Yankees employees went to LA to see the games there and the screamed and shouted so much he could barely talk. He, and every other member of the staff who gave instructions, would pretty much end every instruction with “and then the Yankees win.” “We’re going to practice two or three times, then we’re going upstairs (etc, etc), and then the Yankees go out and win.” “As we’re exiting the field, Derek Jeter will be throwing out the first pitch, and then the Yankees will take the field and win.”
Doug, the guy who actually coordinated us on the field and taught us how to do the actual unfolding and everything, told us he has been doing the flag thing for decades for various teams and has been with the Yankees for 15 years (I think he said 15). He’s from Salt Lake City, Utah, where there is no MLB team, so the Yankees became his team.
Once we were all checked in and banded around the wrist like migratory birds in case we got lost, they gathered us all in the lower levels tunnel that leads to the outfield. Doug got up on a box or something and gave us a combination instructional and motivational speech. “We’re going to do our part to make this a really special day for all of you, and I hope you feel what an honor it is to take part in this, with everything that’s going on in this country, I hope you are proud.”
Let me just pause here for a moment to appreciate the non-partisan wording. If you have followed me at all on social media, you know I’m an overeducated left-wing northeast urban liberal. But I’ve always had a thing about the flag, and the National Anthem.
When I was in Girl Scouts, in fourth and fifth grade, my favorite day of the week was troop meeting day. I loved wearing my uniform to school, and the troop meetings had all kinds of different topics from life skills (how to write a check) to wife skills (how to set a table for a dinner party) to arts and crafts.
One day in Girl Scouts we learned all the rules, regulations, and laws concerning the American flag. Things like there is a proper way to fold the flag (when it isn’t the size of the entire outfield, that is), and when you carry the flag in a parade there are certain ways to do it (it has to be held higher than the other flags, for one thing). I learned that it’s illegal to fly the flag in the rain or in the dark, which explained why a janitor always went out and took it down outside our elementary school if it started to sprinkle. I found this FASCINATING. The thing was, it wasn’t like FBI agents were going to show up to arrest the principal if the flag got rained on. It was the opposite. I was drawn to the principle that for an entire society to have shared respect for this symbol, everyone was on their own to follow the rules.
To this day I still get mad if I see someone flying the flag in the rain. (I don’t, however, get mad if I see someone burning the flag in protest. Civil disobedience is a necessary tactic for protest, and someone bothering to burn a flag in protest shows that they also understand the reverence for the symbol. Toldja I’m a leftie.)
And let’s talk about the National Anthem. As I wrote back when I took my baseball road trip through the South looking for landmarks shortly after (W) Bush had sent us to war, the Anthem started making me cry. I went to nursery school in Florida while my dad was serving in the Viet Nam War. Every day we started class by reciting the pledge of allegiance and then singing either God Bless America or The Star Spangled Banner. I freakin LOVED singing the Star Spangled Banner. I was a shy kid but I really really wanted to be brave enough one day to get up there and be the one who led the class in singing it. (Each day one child did so.)
I’ll be honest, I don’t remember if I ever actually got up there to lead it. I was kind of afraid of other children (but not adults). But I loved singing it. My dad being in the military probably had something to do with that, too. My dad loved the United States of America so much that after getting his citizenship, he refused to buy anything but American cars.
Anyway. Suffice to say that this flag and anthem stuff is very deep in my blood. As are the New York Yankees.
Doug split the flag crew into three groups: holders, pullers, and side people. Holders are the people along the bottom edge. Pullers are the people on the top edge, who have to march backwards at a fast clip to unfurl it. And the side people fill in and grab the sides and pull the flag tight as it unfurls.
“Pullers, I just want you to know, if you aren’t confident you can go backwards without falling down, just understand, millions of people are going to be watching this, and you’ll be viral on social media for months if you fall,” Doug told us. “That speech right there usually weeds out anyone who can’t do it. If something happens and you do fall, tuck and roll, and then lie there looking at the beautiful flag going by over the top of your head.”
(No suspense: no one fell.)
We practiced the march out once, the unfurl and re-furl twice, the march back in, and then it was time to give the field over to the baseball teams.
They led us up to a conference room overlooking the elevated train tracks, where a ballpark buffet awaited us (the cobb salad and the brownies were really pretty good, and the sliders, hotdogs, fries, and wings are the same ones they serve in the bar at the Audi Club). They had MLB Network on the bigscreen TV, and at one point someone pointed and said, “hey look, it’s us!” Apparently the Ballpark Cam had filmed our rehearsal and they were showing it!
That was very unexpected, but it intensified the feeling that we were part of the game, we were part of the show. Or should that be… The Show. We had to wait around there for several hours, but as Mike had described it: “today will be kind of like Disneyland. There are some long waits and standing around, but when you do it, it’s awesome.”
It was really kind of fun to sit around chatting with people about the Yankees, especially all people who were clearly of a similar devotional level. I also, finally, got to meet my season ticket sales rep in person. We had gotten a new guy in 2020 and then didn’t come to the stadium for a couple of years, and then we just kept missing each other. I gave him a copy of the most recent Baseball Research Journal.
They then gave us all three things. 1) a scarf that said “World Series” and Capital One on it, which was that day’s giveaway to all fans, 2) a blue World Series NY sweatshirt that would be our uniform during the flag ceremony, and 3) a large tote bag with the Yankee Stadium logo on the side to each put our belongings into for safekeeping while we were on the field.
At 6:30 pm, Mike and Doug gave us some last instructions and reminders, and then we got suited up to go back down into the tunnel to get ready to go on the field. Nothing like getting into uniform to feel really like a part of things, eh? Well, that and experiencing the old showbiz adage, “hurry up and wait.” Getting somewhere extremely early specifically to wait around until your moment is basically the essence of being in any kind of show, broadcast, play, or performing art.
At 6:45 pm, still nearly an hour before introductions were due to start, we headed down, since the flag had to be unpacked again from its giant cube-shaped box and readied, and we would need to get lined up and so on. We took elevators down to the “000” level, and the walk took us past the Yankees clubhouse, past the players’ friends and family waiting area, and then past the bullpen. Through the open door into the bullpen we could see that the sky was dark and the stadium lights were bright.
We got lined up along an entrance ramp that runs down from the alley between the back wall of the stadium and the player parking garage all the way to the field. One wall is lined with pallets of 50-pound bags of field dirt, diamond dry, warning track gravel and other groundskeeping materials. The other wall has miscellaneous batting practice screens and the like along it. In the middle, where we had practiced the lineup before, now two red ambulances were parked. That meant our line was a bit snakier than before, but that seemed okay.
To get the flag into our hands, Doug would start pulling it from one end, and then haul it by walking between the row of holders and pullers while we would help it along. The part that comes out first is just red and white but when you see the blue part start to emerge from the box, you know it’s almost done. Then Doug came back down the line, working out one twist that had gotten into the fabric and would have turned it into a giant bow-tie instead of a rectangle when unfurled.
Once the flag was all straightened and everyone had found a handle, and Doug adjusted our spacing a little, then it was time again to wait. There were two consequences of waiting on that ramp. One was that we had to keep scooching out of the way as various camera operators of pregame shows left the field with their expensive equipment on rolling gantries and tripods and booms. I’ve never seen such an assortment of different cameras and things to hold them steady before.
The other was that various VIPs would enter the Stadium through that ramp. We had heard that the ALCS flag crew had gotten to see Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. The first person we saw was Paul O’Neill who was scheduled to throw out the ceremonial first pitch. He waved but didn’t come to a stop. Longtime broadcaster Michael Kay, however, not only stopped, he went all the way up and down the line of flag folks, shaking hands and high-fiving. (A Yankees employee preceded him, reminding us that we were not allowed to take photos on the 000 level, which is why I have no photo of either Michael Kay nor the mysterious fake replica pigeons that are perched atop some of the equipment.)
I and many others on the crew got a high five from actor Adam Sandler. Shortly after he came down the ramp, Shooter McGavin also came in. (I had to look up the actor’s actual name—Christopher McDonald—because none of us could remember it, just that he’d been in Happy Gilmore with Sandler.) I think there were one or two others I didn’t recognize.
Then we heard the Dodgers introductions start, and it was “go time.” The “march” is pretty slow, more of a stately amble. At the snake’s head was Doug leading the side people, followed by us carrying the flag itself. Jose Trevino was in his shin guards on the grass right where we entered, playing catch on the field. Some Dodgers were playing catch on the other side. The Dodgers were receiving lusty boos.
Unlike the West Point cadets, we were free to look around and take it all in, as long as we stayed in line and held onto the flag. The stadium looks absolutely huge from center field. And if I take one searing memory with me from the whole day it was that when a Yankee player gets announced and the whole crowd roars? It sounds like a jet engine it’s so loud. It doesn’t sound that way from the stands, but when you’re at the center of it, it all hits you at once.
No wonder the scoreboard exhorts us to “Get Loud” whenever an opposing relief pitcher comes in. If that guy has any nerves at all, their adrenaline must just shoot through the roof. It was surreal to stand there through all the introductions, right there on the same field where it was actually happening, with the camera drone swooping over us.
My mom was so excited about the flag thing that she took video with her phone of the ceremony on her TV and texted it to me. According to my brother, they could easily pick me out on the broadcast! (I think the bun in my hair makes the shape of my head distinctive.)
Leslie Odom Jr. (the original Burr in Hamilton and many other roles in film and TV) sang the anthem.
There are five big cues in the flag ceremony once you’re all lined up from foul pol to foul pole. The unfurl comes on the first note of “Oh say can you see…” The pullers went backward and we holders dealt the flag out from the bundle in our arms (so that it flows nicely and doesn’t plop on the ground). In the video corwin took you can see the pullers did an outstanding job of keeping their line straight and doing it perfectly!
Once the pullers reach their limit, everyone gets two handles and pull it taut. It’s so large that you can get it as tight as a bedsheet, but at least we didn’t have to deal with the massive wind that the folks who did the ALCS did.
The next cue is on the word “wave” in “the baaaaaaner yet waaaaave” and that’s when we made the flag wave. Huge cheer from the crowd on that?! Like people were actually paying attention to us. Wow. Doug’s instructions were “a nice, slow, respectful wave, not like churning butter” but a couple of folks were so excited the wave was perhaps a bit faster than that.
And then the waving stops on “home of the brave,” we held for five seconds, and then came the final tricky part: furling the flag back up without dropping it on the ground or tripping ourselves. A gust of wind billowed the stripes making it a bit more of a challenge than it had been at 2pm, but we got it all together. As we were heading off the field, Derek Jeter was announced, coming out to throw the ceremonial first pitch. (My mom, who didn’t want me to “miss it,” also filmed that part on her phone for me. Love you, Mom.)
Each pair of holder-pullers would feed their section of the flag into the giant box where it was kept and then step aside. There were hugs and high fives. And then we headed back up to the main level where the season ticket staff had all our belongings in the bags labeled with our names. We grabbed our bags and everyone scattered to their seats to try to make it in time for first pitch. If I had not stopped at the women’s room, we would have made it, too! My seats are the absolute furthest from that area behind center field — I sit in the upper deck behind home plate — so it was quite a hike to get up there in time, but it was just doable.
Overall an incredibly well-planned and well-executed day. My thanks to the Yankees for letting us be part of it.
And then the Yankees won, right? Well, apparently the players had not gotten that memo. They in fact went down three games to none to the Dodgers. But as David and I said to each other: at least we did our part!
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