There's always next year...

I was sad to see that the Edmonton Oilers lost the Stanley Cup to the Carolina Hurricanes last night. (And if you check out the story on FOXSports.com, you can see “Hurricanes” spelled “Hurrcianes.” The proofreader in me just can’t let that go…) I’ve never been much of a hockey fan, but I was really pulling for those guys. And I know how hard it is to watch your team lose the most important game of the year. I can still remember the last time I watched the Yankees lose a World Series, and that was a really lousy feeling.

Although to be honest, it wasn’t such a bad day overall – that was when my parents were still living in Jersey, and I flew up for a visit that week. I’d just had my wisdom teeth out a couple weeks before and still had a bruise on my left cheek (I don’t know what that has to do with anything… I’m just fascinated by the fact that removing teeth INSIDE your mouth can result in such an injury…). Faisal had just returned from a trip to Pakistan and Dubai, where he bought me a little glass replica of the Burj Al Arab hotel (which is now sitting on a table in my entryway, irresistibly compelling people to pick it up and leave their fingerprints on it… in fact, if you’ll excuse me for a moment, I need some paper towels and a bottle of Windex… must polish my hotel…). And that afternoon, Eric and Faisal and Dave and I went to see “School of Rock,” and then got some dinner at Porky’s (yes, there is a restaurant called Porky’s on 206 in New Jersey… it doesn’t SOUND like the kind of place you’d want to eat, but it’s not horrible. Not exactly good, either. But not horrible.). All in all, it was a really great day. But then we went back to my parents’ house to watch the World Series, and the Yankees lost, and another baseball season came crashing to a halt. And the Yankees haven’t made it back to the World Series yet. YET.

That was 2003 – and yes, it was sad to see the Yanks lose, but not nearly as sad as it had been a couple years before that. The 2001 World Series was overshadowed by 9/11 – in fact, the sporting world pretty much came to a halt for a while, and I think there was talk of cancelling the series altogether. Fortunately, the decision was made to continue with baseball as usual. I was lucky enough to make it to a playoff game that year – between the Yankees and the Seattle Mariners. I can say, without a doubt, it was the best, craziest, loudest, most energetic, totally insane game I’ve ever been to (Faisal – do you remember that?? AWESOME… :)). And because of 9/11, the World Series ended up stretching into November for the first time in history. Who can forget game 4 of that series? How, as the clock neared midnight on October 31, the Yankees managed to tie up the game. And then the clock struck midnight – baseball in November for the first time ever – and Derek Jeter hit the game-winning home run. It was seriously like some kind of weird baseball magic. And when the Yankees ended up losing that World Series, it almost didn’t make sense. So, as I often do when things don’t make sense to me, I wrote about it. And the more I wrote, the more I realized it DID make sense, in a way. Sometimes you have to search for the good in the bad, or the lesson in the loss, or the hope in the future. Sometimes you have to know what’s important and what’s not.

So here’s what I wrote after the 2001 World Series loss. Some of you may have read this before, so sorry if it looks familiar. :)


Last night, November 4, 2001, the unthinkable happened. Perhaps the planets were misaligned, or some other cosmic disturbance threw the earth’s axis slightly off kilter, or maybe someone was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Regardless, the outcome was the same.

The New York Yankees lost the World Series.

Now, I don’t know if I’d just gotten used to the Bronx Bombers pulling a win out of the most impossible situations, or if I actually bought into the whole “magic and mystique” hype or what, but my first reaction was something along the lines of “NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!” It couldn’t be happening. That couldn’t be a different team celebrating in front of home plate, could it? This was supposed to be the year the Yankees reached a milestone – four Series wins in a row. And more importantly, this was the year New York wanted – needed – a symbol; a giant, untarnished, mega-watt icon, capable of casting its light – even the tiniest bit – on a city thrown into crumbling darkness on September 11. So why did the Yanks let us down?

I have an answer, but let me first explain that there are two kinds of people in this world – Yankee Lovers, and Yankee Haters. Yankee Lovers tend to be loud, obnoxious, arrogant and jealous of any team that beats the Yankees. Yankee Haters, on the other hand, tend to be loud, obnoxious, arrogant and jealous of the Yankees, especially if they happen to be playing a Yankee Hater’s favorite team. This particular World Series brought both groups out in full force – the Yankee Lovers showing up for every home game, filling Yankee Stadium to the brim and working themselves into such a frenzy that the walls shook; and the Yankee Haters, scattered throughout the country, glued to their television sets in the hopes that Jeter would have a freak dugout accident involving Gatorade, a wad of bubble gum, and Paul O’Neill’s batting helmet. The Yankee Lovers waited for their prized Bombers to provide them with a small moment of joy in the midst of on-going, city-wide mourning; the Yankee Haters thought that September 11 was too traumatic and significant to be affected by something as minute as a baseball game. The Yankee Lovers searched for hope; the Yankee Haters hoped for defeat.

It began, as all World Series do, with the playoffs – the Yankees were pitted against the Oakland A’s, and cries of “Sweep! Sweep!” could be heard from the Yankee Haters. The sweep seemed almost inevitable when Oakland won the first two games in the five-game series – no team in history had ever come back to win the last three games. But the Yankees apparently thought, "why not?" and decided to change history. They won three in a row and moved on to the Seattle Mariners, who’d had an amazing, storybook year and possessed the best record in baseball. And the Yankee Haters cried, “Sweep! Sweep!” The Yanks knocked the Mariners out in five games, and apparently against all odds, they were once again on their way to the World Series to face the Arizona Diamondbacks.

The “sweep” cries were so loud by this time you’d think every Yankee Hater had a broom and dustbin in both hands. With their two star pitchers – Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling – the D-backs were obviously poised to chew up and spit out the unsuspecting Yankees, right into “Yankee Hater” emblazoned trash cans.

But the supposedly simple four-game win never materialized. Four games turned into five… five turned into six… six turned into seven; with the Yankees and Diamondbacks scratching and clawing their way through every inning.

And something amazing started to happen – in the midst of a nail-biting, suspense-filled nine days, in the middle of what was destined to be a losing series, this group of ballplayers – whose collective batting average never broke .200 – became the epitome of the word “team.” And the city of New York, so desperate for that glimmer of hope and a glimpse of light, saw their Yankees emerging as heroes. Derek Jeter’s game-winning homer; Paul O’Neill’s hat tip after his final game in Yankee Stadium; Roger Clemens’s pitching; incredible outfielding by Alfonso Soriano; an always calm, stoic and proud Joe Torre in the dugout; a base hit here, a strikeout there, Scott Brosius, Tino Martinez, Shane Spenser, David Justice, El Duque… Challenger the Eagle (okay, so he’s not actually part of the team, but he's pretty cool).

In the end, when game seven was over and the Diamondbacks were finished celebrating in front of home plate and the least-classy D-backs fans in Phoenix had rioted and overturned police cars, the Yankees began to look, in my eyes, like that flag the firefighters discovered in the rubble of the World Trade Center. Tattered and torn, perhaps, but still able to invoke immense pride and respect. Even the Yankee Haters are unable to dismiss the fact that this was one of the best World Series ever, and games 4 and 5 will be remembered as two of the most amazing Series games in history.

So back to the original question – why did the Yanks let us down? The simple answer is, they didn’t. They played their hearts out – for the fans, for New York, for the fallen Trade Center, for the fallen victims. By most “experts’” accounts, the New York Yankees never should have made it past the playoffs. But game by game, inning by inning, pitch by pitch, they held on. And even though they return to the city without a World Series win, perhaps we Yankee Lovers are just a little more convinced that some kind of mystique does exist in the House that Ruth Built.

And we can’t wait until the magic begins again next season.