Part Two from Inside the Death Star....

Part One of this tale is sitting on a dead tablet, written on the train last night. Yes, I let my devices all die again. No, they didn't have a charger in the room; I asked for one this morning when I was more sentient.  I think we left off where I'd just entered Camp Georgetuanamo and somebody had stolen my beer.  Still almost an hour to game time, so I had one more errand of history: Monument Park.

The Yankees have a lot of heroes and a WAY lot of championships. Just ask any of their fans, particularly if they've been drinking. (We'll get to the star of THAT show in due time.)  Far as I could see, they didn't even bother to put up banners or huge placards for their 27 World Series championships, much less a Wild Card post-season win like the Mets do. They couldn't; it would block out the sun.  But they do like their players. We just retired our second player number in 55 seasons, shown among three other numbers from team or baseball history.  The Yankees have an entire section for theirs-



-and that doesn't count Jeter's (I sense a ticket-selling weekend coming up) or the as-big-as-them-all monumental wall to "The Boss," convicted felon George Steinbrenner.

Plus there's a whole Monument Park behind center field. Here, not only do the number-retirees get a plaque and a place, but Hall of Very Good former players like Jorge Pasada get metal.  Plus, you know, Ruth and Gehrig and Mantle- and two I did want to see, from our teams' shared heritage.  Signs point the way- to a door reading



Oh well. I approached the Premium Seat Entry in the adjoining section; the Mets guard their equivalents of these with nuclear weapons, and and no amount of pleading or cajoling will usually get you in even to say hello to a friend. But their security lady waved me right through- and through a chain link fence, I managed this:



Hell, I probably could've sat there the whole night and waved to Marlins Guy across the diamond, but I don't repay kindness that way. Instead, I went back out to the hall, where anyone can pose with the retired crooked numbers.  I chose Casey Stengel, our original manager from when he was funny (and retired by these guys from when he was actually good)-



-and Yogi Berra, their longtime catcher (ours for maybe two days in his final year) and manager of our famed Ya Gotta Believe comeback team of 1973-



Much as I hate the Steinbrenners, I can't question their class. George feuded with Yogi for years after firing him as manager for the umpteenth time, but finally let him back into the fold for his final years. We'd fired him, too, but only once, and we always stayed on good terms with him. But after he died over last winter, the Mets did nothing- 8 remains unretired, and no acknowledgement on the walls or unis.  Every Yankee had an 8 on their sleeve last night. Well played.

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Then it was time for the nosebleed pills.



Granted, New Yankee Stadium is not nearly as high or cavernous as its predecessor (neither is ours), but section 328 is still a haul. I did not order in time to join the official 7 Line section-




-a group of fen who root together at home and (eventually) every road ballpark, plus invading the Bronx every year on the two or four available opportunities. But they were nearby, and I was in the company of majority Met fans up there.  Also plenty of mixed-marriage families. I told one such mom that the place reminded me of my first year of high school; we'd come in from separate junior highs, and spent the first half of the first year on opposite sides of every classroom, because we'd heard that the McCleary kids were a bunch of shiv-carrying, short-tempered punks. Oddly, they'd heard the same things about us.

Whatev. The weather was perfect, the game a close one for the first half, and we even had overhead coverage:



Unfortunately, this was about the time the Drunken Bros showed up. Maybe they fell out of the blimp. Their leader was wearing a McCann 34 jersey; his number is not retired, nor will it ever be. But I bet he knows how many World Series rings the Yankees have; Head Bro sure does. For most of the game, he was good natured if a little anal (Bartolo Colon threw maybe 30 pitches for balls all night; Head DB cried out "GOOD EYE!" to the Yankee batter 3 miles away at least 60.)

No matter. Then something happened that shut even HIM up.

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For the record, I hate KissCams and staged marriage proposals at ballgames. Too contrived, and the risk of her saying "no" is always so great that you always know she already did say "yes,"  kindasorta. But Ima sucker for the spontaneous, and it was during the inning when the Mets scored all four of their runs that the Yankee Fan Guy right behind me popped one question and one rock on Yankee Fan Gal next to him.

She cried. She melted. She waved rockage. And just as on the best and worst of occasions, we were all New York.



That even shut up Head Drunk Bro (DB).  For the most part before that moment, it was mostly banter. A typical exchange:

The Head DB's chant to Bartolo: "You're fat!"
Me, to the DB: "He knows!"
Bartolo: Retires the side leaving two men on.

But after the third or fourth overserved beer (I'd had two all night, plus a sip of the stolen one), he started counting off the 27 Championships as if they were on the evening's scoreboard; then, once he began getting abusive about 7 Line members in section 330 and their mothers' sex lives and was threatening throwdown with them, we "saw something and said something," and New York's finest escorted him out. Too bad for him- the Yankees mounted an almost-comeback bottom nine before Familia Put It In the Books as a 4-1 Met win.  I followed the crowd out to a multicultural row of buskers on the way to the train (no violins, though), and eventually made it to sleepage.

Which my still-charging tablet is still doing, so Part I of this series will be later than Part II. Cope.  I'm slightly detouring to the Hall of Fame on the way home, to see a real plaque for a catcher who was better than Posada was and McCann and his fan ever will be:

Keeping the Change for Harry and Cheering the Bronx

ETA before posting: This is part one of a post for which I posted part two close to 12 hours ago. It was frozen in time on a dead tablet that didn't come alive again until lunch at the Roscoe Diner. I'm now home and can link in the pics. It will show up in your feed long before part two, which will make it chronological if you're reading top down.  Also: I never made it to the HOF; between bad road-signing and miles of NO SERVICE in the 845 and 607, neither Siri or I could find our way to Cooperstown until I was almost back onto 81.  Some other time.

Quite a day. Quite a game. Tons of good experiences.

I decided before leaving to cut the trip in half. Had I not, by now I'd be winging over a bridge and crashing for the first of two Long Island nights. I just couldn't: Eleanor came down with a bug yesterday and called in sick today. Plus, I'd already had two longer than usual workdays and a Rochester overnight with a ballgame in between, so adding an extra night away from home and a longer travel day Saturday just wasn't making sense.  My only real reason for the second night was to see Harry Chapin's daughter Jen in concert out in Suffolk Friday night, but she's played nearer to us before and likely will again.  Plus, I'll have more of a chance to tell her the whole story of why I wanted to see her perform.

So it was out the door yesterday at about my usual worktime, a quick stop in the Buffalo office, no stop in Rochester, and making Syracuse around noon: I had an obituary to look up: her father's.

The central library there is in a newer-looking building on the onetime main department-store drag; it may have even been Sibley's ages ago. Reference is on the third floor, ladies lingerie, and I rode up with an old-school security guard. If you remember Curtis, the Blues Brothers' mentor played by Cab Calloway in the film? Yeah, pretty much him. He was just flabbergasted by the dude he had to shoo out of the computer room: Man! He was so-o-o-o hi-gh-h-h-h!

Once on three, they showed me how to access the newspaper archive. Took a few narrowings- I did know Harry's date of death, but not how long thereafter before it got published- but there it was, in the pages of the Oswego edition, two days after he passed.

( Why do I care? Because I wrote it... )

I'd forgotten how many quotes I'd been able to get on such short notice; Harry hadn't lived there a full four years of college, and the years he'd been there were over a decade before. But I got things in from people who did remember him, including WVBR people who'd booked his final Ithaca show barely a year before, and I hope Jen appreciates the memories in this the 35th summer since.

Going to and coming back from the library, I passed a busker on a corner- playing Beatles on violin. I wanted a sense-of-place picture, and resolved that if I didn't get ticketed (I'd gone a few minutes over, a crime punishable in Buffalo, even during blizzards, by death;), I'd go back, take her picture, and feed her tip jar.

They didn't, so I did. Here she is:



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From there, it was a nonstop shot to the train north of the Bronx. For 30 bucks train fare and station parking, I saved about that much in tolls, parking and Deegan delays, and got to read rather than curse on the trip south and, now, north.  I pulled into Yankees-153rd Street not quite two hours before first pitch.  I'd been by the Death Star via car and train many times, and almost walked in once around maybe 2010, but this was my first time with a ticket and a commitment.

It was time to explore- and take pictures.

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Unlike Shea Stadium, which was paved over for needed parking and is remembered only by embedded plaques for the four bases, the original House Ruth Built (and Steinbrenner cookiecuttered) is now a park with a city-run baseball diamond on it.  The only in-place signs of its long history are this sign, not from the original ballpark but the script of Bull Durham, based on the experiences of former Rochester Red Wing Ron Shelton:



Next to the field is this piece of the distinct latticework from around the old roof:



And nearby, you see this homage to the most famous speech ever given on the grounds:



I did this trip in full-on enemy gang colors, but I was hardly alone, and almost everyone in home blue-gray pinstripes was kind to me and my brethren/sistren. I'd been told that one bar across River Avenue- Billy's- was a neutral ground for both tribes, and this proved true. It had a welcoming, if loud, vibe- with plenty of dancing, largely Latino, and mixings of all persuasions. I thought sadly of Orlando's Pulse club as I saw such acceptance all around:



All it lacked was food, so I decided to head in a little after 6. The phone-only ticket worked fine, I found a wing bar and ordered a beer, found a stand to eat at, went back for more napkins, and came back to find my almost-full 12-dollar pale ale had been swiped.  Did I mention Eleanor came down with something that I could have picked up as well? I hope you get it, whoever you are:P

No matter, though. Everything from there went just fine, and since we're not far from my station stop, I think I'll save the rest of this for a Part Deux: Yankee Boogaloo.