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The New York Yankees just signed Andy Pettite for one year at $2.5 million.  (Read all about it here.)


I would like to get paid $2.5 million dollars for one year of work.  In my field of Jewish Education, that will never happen, and I will be lucky to ever even see a job that pays any Jewish Educator remotely what I believe we are worth, but that's not what this blog is about.


This is about one of the truly American things... BASEBALL.   
I love it.  Well, I love New York Yankee Baseball.


But, getting back to Andy Pettite, I'm sure that $2.5 is a lot less than he used to make, and he's gotta start in the minors, but still, I'm thrilled.  I like Andy a lot. In my mind he's a true Yankee and it will be good to see him in pinstripes again.


As I said, love Yankee Baseball.  I know that if you live somewhere else it's cool to put down New York teams, especially New York.  Okay.  "Dis" all you want.  There's something very exciting about this team and they're starting to rev up now.


I did not grow up a Yankee fan.  I've lived in lots of different cities through my life, and had a only mild interest in baseball.  I don't like other sports at all.  (Rumor has it that a New York team won the football thing this year.  Big deal.)  I only marginally follow other sports so that I don't seem like a complete idiot if and when I am ever invited to a party and the discussion comes around to something other than Jewish Education, parenting or music.


When I lived in Boston in 3rd grade, the kids were allowed to bring in their transistor radios to listen to the Red Sox games in school, so I remember pretending to like baseball then.  My Grandmother was a baseball fan and I think my Dad might have taken me to Shea Stadium to see the Mets in the 70's.

I just spent an hour trying to photo shop my own face where Susan Sarandon's  face is.
If someone knows how to do this and then get it to stick on the blog, I'd be forever grateful.
And able to be even more hilarious.

While living in Durham, NC, I started to really enjoy the game, going to the Durham Bull Stadium to watch the Durham Bulls play.  The draw, at first, I'll admit was the dozen or so local brews on tap that they had, and the low priced tickets.  But I understood the game, and it was a fun, inexpensive night out.  (A short time later, the movie Bull Durham was filmed there, and by a lucky coincidence, I was there for a cast party and met Kevin Costner. I'll bet he remembers me too.  I'm not in the film, but my friend Jean is in some of the crowd shots.)


When life took me to San Francisco, my appetite for live music surpassed by far my interest in baseball, but I still took in a few games at Candlestick park and saw the SF Giants play there.


But it wasn't until 1995 that I became a Yankees fan.  I had been living in New Jersey for several years.  Three children, two cats in the yard...the American dream!  My husband and I were both working hard at our jobs and enjoying domestic tranquility.  We'd take our kids to the park, and to little league, and the movies, drive the carpools and have family dinners on Shabbat, and on Sunday nights with my parents and my brother's family.


And when it was time for the Grateful Dead to go on tour, we would line up our babysitters, save up our money, make some sandwiches, throw some beer in the cooler and spend a few nights doing what we loved best.  Going to concerts.


Until August 8, 1995.  That was the sad day that Jerry Garcia died.

Jerry Garcia, Captain of our team.

That night we put the kids to bed and stood on our back porch and listened to tapes till the middle of the night.


Everything was gonna be different.


And that was the summer I started to watch Yankee baseball.  I had concert tickets to a show that would never happen, and fan energy that had no where to go.  But the Yankees were on top... they were a young team with great energy and they were winning too!  My husband got a pair of pretty good tickets from a client at work, and we went on a starry summer night.  It was not a Dead show, but there was an undeniable air of excitement.  Yankee Stadium was fun.


And the the players!


Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, Andy Pettite, and one year later, my favorite Yankee, Tino Martinez... young handsome guys just playing baseball, every single night (practically) all summer and right through October?  How come other women don't know about this!?


Going to more games turned out to be a challenge.  It was difficult to get tickets and EXPENSIVE.


I watched a lot of baseball on tv and listened to it on the radio.  Once in a while, we would get tickets.


By another lucky coincidence, an old high school classsmate met my parents at a diner and had a conversation that I can imagine went something like this:

"Hi Doctor and Mrs. Cantor."
"Hello, didn't you go to high school with our daughter, Juliet?  Didn't I fix your broken nose in 1983?  How are you? Do you live here?  How's your family?  Look at those pretty girls, your daughters?  Is this your wife? She's lovely.  Just look at these pictures of our grandchildren!  You know Juliet lives in New Jersey again now, these are her kids, aren't they gorgeous?"
"Um, yes... I..."
"So where are you all off to on this fine day?"
"We are going to a Yankee game."
"Juliet is a Yankee fan.  Here's her number.  You should call her, she doesn't really have any friends here in New Jersey anymore.  She and her husband would love to get together with you."
"Um, well..."
"Okay, well, here's our lunch, you should try the Reuben here, it's fantastic.  Enjoy the game, I think you should put on the radio and check the traffic at the bridge.  I'll tell Juliet we saw you."

And that is how it happened that I was the lucky recipient of fantastic Yankee tickets at least once or twice a season.


That gravy train ended when he gave up his tickets... when the new Yankee stadium opened in 2009 he opted out of the price gauging upgrade and we've been fending for ourselves.


March is a very long month.  Typically it's cold and there are no vacation days or days off, unless you are lucky enough to have Spring Break, which I have never had.  (Well, I have once, but I can't write about it because this is a family blog.)  But March brings spring training.  And that means you can count down til opening day!


But with the date of April 6 being opening day and the first Seder of Passover, my excitement for some Yankee baseball may have to wait for the first few home games of the following week.  In the meantime it's time to bring up the Passover dishes and the pinstripes too, both signs that winter is almost over (was it ever here at all?) and spring feels like its on it's way, with unseasonably warm temperatures in the Northeast.

(And for those of use who can't wait, there's spring training baseball which is also televised and on the radio!)


So welcome back to Andy Pettite, I hope you play a lot this season and do what we need you to do for our pitching on the Yankees.  And good-bye and thank you to Jorge Posada for your great tenure as a Yankee since I became a fan, and was a real mensch and role model for (almost) the entire time. 


Anyone for a hot dog and a beer?