True Yankees fans know an up-and-coming player when they see one.
Whether or not anybody had invented the category in his lifetime, Babe Ruth was surely the Greatest Living Yankee almost immediately upon lofting home runs at the Polo Grounds, allowing the Yankees to build their own palace across the Harlem River.
The home run took a while to sink in because all I could think of was, ‘We beat the Yankees! We beat the Yankees.’
When I was with the Yankees in 1978, we were playing Baltimore at Yankee Stadium, and the score was 3 – 3 going into the bottom of the ninth inning. I led off against Tippy Martinez – a little left-hander who always gave me trouble – and the count went to three-and-oh.
I’m pretty crazy about the Yankees. When I can’t actually watch a game, I TiVo it. I am also a die-hard Dallas Cowboys fan. I don’t tell many people that because I will get made fun on because I’m from New Jersey!
Three of my childhood dreams went unfulfilled. I never saw a no-hitter, never saw a triple play, and never caught a ball that had been hit into the stands. But I did see the Yankees beat the Brooklyn Dodgers in a World Series game when I was 10.
Dad was a pure entrepreneur. The dinner conversations weren’t like, ‘Did the Yankees win today?’
I was a Yankee fan until 1981. That was the year the Yankees were two up on the Dodgers and lost four straight. And George Steinbrenner apologized to the city.
When I became the manager of the New York Yankees, it was an opportunity to realize my lifelong dream of winning the World Series. We were fortunate enough to succeed in our first season in 1996, and in the years that followed, we wrote some great new chapters in Yankee history.
My God… What are the headlines going to be like on Monday if the Yankees don’t make the playoffs?
I was born and raised in the Bronx and my grandfather and my brother Garry were huge Yankees fans. One of my first memories is of them listening to a game on the radio and screaming at the radio. My brother would cry when they lost, and when I was really little, I didn’t know why he was crying.
I wish there was a bar I could send opposing teams to and get them hammered or something – I could tell my buddies in New York to leave their places open or something. Playing for the Yankees, guys come at you extremely hard. I have to be ready or I’ll be embarrassed.
The Marlins were close to signing me, but in the end my wish was to come back to the Yankees.
For Mantle, the Yankees’ locker room was a sanctuary, a safe haven where he was understood, accepted and, when necessary, exonerated.
Pages: 1 2
