A Yankee Fan in Red Sox Nation

I just completed my first baseball trip of the year.  I went to games at Dodger Stadium and AT&T Park.  I didn't really know how to feel about going to a Giants game.  I've always heard good things about the stadium, but they're my least favorite team in baseball.  I thought about my good friend John.  He's one of the biggest Yankee fans I know and he's been living in the Boston area for several years now.  Besides living there, he's been working at Fenway Park for the last few years.  John gave me the idea to start this blog two years ago and I asked him to write the first ever guest blog post here.  I wanted his perspective about what it's like spending time in the ballpark of his favorite team's biggest rival.  I'll let John take it away:

Opening Day 2014

When I told my mom that I got a part time job at the Red Sox she was not thrilled.  She actually carried on a bit like I joined up with the Taliban, I might as well have in her eyes.  I come from a family that has been rooting for the Yankees for four generations now and we have a strong connection to the team from the Bronx where my grandfather grew up.  So when I got the job as a Ticket Taker at Fenway in 2011, my mom got offended.

So why would a guy who cried in 2004 and who wanted to name his son Joseph DiMaggio Mullady work for the Sox? I like baseball. I know its a cheesy answer but its the truth.  I have an opportunity to work for a baseball team who wouldn't take it? I'm grateful to be able to sit down for a half hour and watch batting practice on a summer afternoon and be getting paid to be there. 

Don't get me wrong there are plenty of times when it is awkward for me or even straight up uncomfortable. When a fan comes up  to me and says, "Go Sox" and expects me to give a similar response instead they will get a blank stare. I hate hearing "Sweet Caroline" and at times I will tell the fans of other teams that I am from NY and rooting against the Sox.  When people hear that they sometimes laugh, Yankee fans will often give me a high five or a "you gotta be kidding me" look.  I hate the Sox.  But I do love working at Fenway and I try not to take the experience for granted. I've met people who have traveled from all over the U.S. and the world to watch a game at Fenway Park.  A lot of first timers will have a nervous/excited look on their face when they approach the gate. That enthusiasm is contagious.

I did not work Opening Day last year.  I felt funny taking a personal day from work and sometimes it's more work to make sub plans than its worth.  I was really shocked when my Assistant Principal encouraged me to take the day and to work the game.  With my son in day care and the encouragement from my AP I kind of felt that the decision was made for me.

Friday morning I dropped Jack off at daycare and headed into Boston for the game. I drove past the ballpark at 8:30 and there was already a line  of 15 people to get into Game On, one of the bars near Fenway.  The sign on the door indicated that they would be waiting until 11:00 before they could get in.

It was pretty clear that the Sox were going to pull at all the stops for this year's Opening Day.  One of the ticket takers said she saw rehearsal and that the 2004, 2007, and 2013 World Series Banners would be all placed over the Green Monster at some point. I saw members of the Boston Pops getting ready as I went into the locker room and I wondered what else would be in store.

At 10:00 one of the Red Sox executives for Event Operations helped pin a rose to my jacket.  All the Ushers, Ticket Takers, Security Guards were wearing a rose on their uniforms. As I was getting pinned I asked the exec if her two kids were going to the game.  She never allowed her kids to miss school for baseball games until today.  Her son was six and had been begging for weeks to be at Opening Day and letting him go was a surprise for him.

I was working Gate A on Yawkey Way, one of the busiest gates at Fenway. The line was already back up to Brookline Ave.  There is a new security measures at Fenway that required that every fan go through Security with a metal detector wand. When the gates opened up it quickly became clear that the new method would be frustrating and time consuming and not that efficient.  

Fans came in for the most part smiling and unfazed by the long security process.  Some came in dressed like they were skipping work early they looked like fans who would come in to watch a game from a different time with their suits and ties.  Some fans came as if they were coming from a costume party. I gave out Red Sox bracelets and baseball cards until I ran out.  You would never think that a J.D. Drew card could make a person so happy but the looks on some of their faces was so amazing.  I can't wait for Jack to be old enough to go to a baseball game and get excited for it. 

When it started to slow down a woman approached me and asked where the will call at Gate D was.  I told her that I would walk her down there myself and let her through my turnstile.  She told me that she needed to go to the Player's Will Call.  I asked her who she was here to see and she told me that Logan Schafer was her son.  He was an outfielder for the Brewers and that she hated Ryan Braun.  I told her I did too and she hugged me. I ended up seeing her the next day as well and we chatted for a few mins.  I showed her a picture of Jack and she said that Logan was not really pushed into baseball but he just always enjoyed it.  She encouraged me to support whatever Jack ends up enjoying and not to force him into sports.  I'll take the parenting advice from a MLB mom anytime. 

There is a Ticket Taker named Ian that I have gotten pretty close with over the past few years.  During the playoffs we snuck up to the Green Monster and had some beers. On Game 6 we ended up sneaking into a luxery suite that was occupied by Dennis Leary.  Ian was headed to the bathroom when I bumped into him in the Main Concourse.  It did not take him much convincing to sneak down and try and get a good look at the festivities.  

I was not especially interested in seeing the players get their rings, there are guys on the roster that I openly root against when I am down there.  When some of the victims from the Boston Marathon bombings came out from behind the 2013 banner to give the players their rings while the Pops preformed classical music I will admit I got chills.  It was almost like something out of a Spielberg movie the way it was done.  After the bombings Red Sox players were visiting victims at the hospitals for weeks and the team did some great things behind the scenes.  Working the first game after the Marathon I felt like I was part of something big, part of the healing process. 

A few days before Opening Day there was a fire in the Back Bay that killed two fire fighters.  The men left behind wives and children and the funerals had brought firemen from all over the U.S. to the city.  To honor their sacrifice the Red Sox had their families and the members of the fire house come in and lower the American flag to half mast.  Each member of the Red Sox players lined up and shook the hands or embraced the firemen and the families before they left. 

The whole scene was surreal to me and moving and I feel really fortunate to have been there.

Finishing Up

We're coming up on my second blogiversary.  I'm overdue for a post since I haven't posted since baseball season began in the United States, but first I have a two-part rant about last night's Dodger game:

1.  I watched nine and a half innings of last night's twelve-inning game, which apparently ended after 3:00 in the morning east coast time.  I'm normally not one to complain about umpires (I don't like replay, I think we should live with some crappy calls like we did for well over 100 years), but I thought Mike Winters was terrible behind the plate last night.  It seemed like all of the borderline balls and strikes calls were going in favor of the Giants.  However, that's not the reason Kenley Jansen blew the save.  There were plenty of calls I didn't like, but I can't think of any in the bottom of the ninth.  Jansen didn't get the job done.

2.  Juan Uribe has gone from being easily my least favorite player on the Dodgers (perhaps second only to Andruw Jones as my least favorite player ever) to being probably one of my five favorite Dodgers currently on the team (Kershaw, Ethier, Kemp, and Ellis might be the only players I'd put ahead of him).  He was the best player on the field for the Dodgers last night (a triple short of the cycle, the only two runs of the game for the Dodgers, and excellent in the field).  So it totally wasn't his fault that the Dodgers lost, but his performance made me think of an issue I have with the stat head community.  They like to say that RBIs don't matter.  That's just silly.  You win games by scoring more runs than the other team.  As I said, Uribe played a very good game, but I would trade the home run and double he had for a double in another at bat.  Let's take out extra innings and go through his at bats.  During the first nine innings, Uribe hit a solo home run in the second, struck out with the bases loaded in the fourth, doubled and later scored in the seventh, and grounded out in the eighth.  If Uribe goes 1-4 and doubles with the bases loaded, all three runners probably score and if everything else stays the same, the Dodgers win the game.  Baseball is a situational game (probably more so than other sports).  The stat heads ignore context when they say RBIs don't matter.  Ordinarily, you'd take a home run and a double over just a double.  But if Uribe had just doubled with the bases loaded and not had the two hits that he actually had, that's probably the difference between a win and a loss.  Again, my complaint is with the stat heads and not with Uribe.

Anyway, it's just one game and you can't overreact to an April game in a 162-game season.  But I do hate losing to the Giants.  Which brings me to what I really wanted to blog about, continuing my quests to get to every Major League Baseball stadium and all 50 states.  A week from Friday, I'll be in San Francisco.  San Francisco is full of dirty, smelly hippies that like Barry Bonds.  I really don't know how to feel about this.  AT&T Park is one of the most well-liked stadiums in Major League Baseball.  And my least favorite team plays there.  Hopefully I'll get to see the Giants lose.  What I'm probably more excited about is going to Los Angeles again.  I was thinking about going to San Francisco and realized that it wouldn't cost that much more to add a stop to Los Angeles on the trip.  So I'm starting in Los Angeles on Thursday.  This is kind of like last year when I combined Opening Day in Los Angeles and Milwaukee into one trip.

It's going to be a productive spring and summer.  I don't have to worry about missing the Celtics in the playoffs, but I still would like to watch as much NBA Playoffs as possible and I'll get into the NHL Playoffs if the Rangers make a run.  In May, I'll get to Canada and SkyDome for the first time.  And I'll be pretty busy in the summer.

I'm confident that I'll be able to finish the Major League Baseball stadiums in 2015.  Actually, I'll have two left.  I'm not going to Oakland or Tampa until those teams have new stadiums (they both play in dumps).  And in a few years the Braves will have a new stadium.  If Dennis is still living in Atlanta whenever that stadium opens, maybe I'll make another trip down there.  But I'd like to finish with a bang.  If I could get a bunch of people involved in my last trip, that would be pretty cool.  I'll have three stadiums left and I could make each one into a big trip:

1.  Target Field.  It's the second newest stadium in the league.  I definitely won't be going to Minnesota for outdoor baseball during my Easter vacation next year so I'm thinking this will be during the summer.  I have an ambitious plan for this trip.  Fly to and from Minneapolis.  Rent a car and cross off a few states.  The Field of Dreams in Iowa is something I'd definitely want to see.  And I could also go to Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota.  Omaha and Fargo both have minor league baseball teams (if I can't think of any other things to do in Nebraska and North Dakota).  Going to Mt. Rushmore would be awesome, but it's in western South Dakota, which wouldn't really be feasible on this trip.  South Dakota might just have to be a drive through state.

2.  Globe Life Park.  I know, you have no idea what Globe Life Park is, but that's the new name of the stadium where the Rangers play.  If Jon and Kyle want to make up for not going to the Shamrock Series at Jerry World and hanging out with Wilhelm in his native habitat, they're welcome to come.  I'll just have to hope that our government is running so that this time I can get to the George W. Bush Presidential Library (although the museum at Dealey Plaza was really good, I'm glad I got there).  I'm sure there are other cool things to do in Dallas as well.

3.  Angel Stadium.  It's now the fourth oldest stadium in baseball (Fenway Park, Wrigley Field, Dodger Stadium, tied with whatever that horrendous stadium in Oakland is called).  I love southern California.  I wish I had friends that lived there.  There are so many things I'd want to do there to mark the conclusion of my quest to get to all these stadiums.  Obviously, if I'm in Anaheim, I'd want to schedule it so that I could get to a Dodger game as well.  Disneyland would be a thing I'd want to do also (I've been to Disney World a handful of times, but never Disneyland).  It would be fun to take a trip down to San Diego and get to Petco Park again (one of my favorites).  And I'd really like to get to the Reagan Presidential Library (with that and the Bush library, I'd balance the political parties of the presidential libraries I would have been to).  The Reagan Library is 74.3 miles northwest of Angel Stadium, so that's doable.

So if you like the United States, baseball, and Jim (or at least two of those three things), you're welcome to join on any of those trips.  I'm fairly confident that they will happen in 2015.

So I'm going to finish the baseball stadiums.  How will I finish the states?  Here's the map of states I've been to.  I really need to get to the three closest states I haven't been to:  Vermont, Maine, and West Virginia (I've been to all five states that border West Virginia, but not West Virginia).  Vermont has Little Fenway and Little Wrigley.  It would be really really cool to play wiffle ball at either of those places.  Portland, Maine has a minor league stadium with the Maine Monster (they're affiliated with the Red Sox).  That would be cool to see, and it's not that far from my friend John in Massachusetts.  I've got nothing for West Virginia.  I still want to get to Gettysburg.  That's not too far from West Virginia.

But how about the other states I haven't been to?  I'll just go through some of the ones I have a hard time picturing myself going to in the not too distant future.  Ideally, Notre Dame will make it to the Sugar Bowl for a playoff game on January 1, 2015.  If I was ever in New Orleans, I'd have to take a drive through Mississippi and into Alabama and knock off those two in addition to Louisiana (New Orleans and Mobile, Alabama are like two hours apart).

Hawaii and Alaska would both be really cool to go to.  I like to think that Hawaii will happen someday, but I have a hard time picturing myself actually booking a trip to Alaska.

Five states out west will be tough.  If Notre Dame does indeed play BYU in Provo, that could easily be my trip to Utah.  If I did that, I might just have to take a drive to Idaho (although I my former roommate Nick lives in Boise and has offered to host me if I ever go there).  Montana is named after Joe Montana so that's cool (relax, I'm not being serious, but I would name a place after Joe Montana).  If I ever got to Mt. Rushmore, I might have to take a drive to Montana.  Oregon has a college football team that wears horrendous uniforms.  If Major League Baseball ever takes my expansion plan, maybe there will be a stadium for me to visit there.  If not, I guess I could just go to see a Trail Blazers game or something.  And New Mexico?  I've got nothing.  It might win the award for state I have the most trouble envisioning myself going to.  Congratulations, New Mexico.

So I definitely won't be finishing off all 50 states any time soon, but I'll try to keep making progress.  Notre Dame could really help me out by making the Sugar Bowl this season.  Go Irish!