You are old, someone told me once, when it takes you all night to do what you used to do all night. I'm not sure he was talking about watching the World Series in November, but for sake of argument, let's pretend he was.
When I tuned in Wednesday night for Game Six from Yankee Stadium, the Bronx Bombers were only up 2-1. Andy Pettite was on the mound, with his face sunk into his glove so deeply that only his cap and his two sunken eyes peered out over its top. Still creeps me out evan after all these years. That I was even watching the game at all had a lot to do with a hard day that plain tuckered me out and I had dropped off to sleep in that no man's land after the afternoon talk shows and before the evening prime time broadcasts start. When I awakened from what I thought was a momentary nap, of closer to an hour and half, there it was, Game Six.
By the time the teams and Messrs Buck and McCarver and I all got to my bedtime, ten o'clock (hey! It's a school night, okay?!), it was barely the fifth inning but I had decided that if the Yankees were going to win a World Series for the first time in this Millennium (to me, the 2000 Series victory over the Mets capped the end of the last century), then the least I could do was stretch out on my comfy sofa in my living room and watch them do it. And sonuvagun if they didn't.
This has been a rough week at work-Pettite wasn't the only guy going on short rest, if you follow my drift. I kept flashing back to being twelve on Thursday nights when WABC radio unveiled its weekly Top Twenty music survey on Cousin Bruce Morrow show starting at ten o'clock at night. Struggling to not fall asleep as the transistor radio blasted through the lone white earpiece, you battled slumber as all the bands who crossed the bridge The Beatles built worked their way up the hit chart. How could you go to school on Friday morning and not know who was #1?
Andy Petitte took us as far as he could and trusty arms who've given us a season of anxious moments more often than we cared to remember took us the rest of the way. In my living room, I struggled with whiplash, catching myself just as my head was leaning forward, eyes closed (only for a moment, of course), and willing myself to remain awake. When Mariano took the mound I feared I'd never see the end of the eighth, but the Phillies were playing out the string and I knew millions of Yankees' fans across the country, and thanks to Hideki M, elsewhere, were braving bleary-eyed in the now growing larger hope we'd see #27 hoisted on the field of the new Yankee Stadium.
Of course, we did. And most of us spent all day yesterday taking walking catnaps as the price for ending a nine year drought. You could spot the Yankees fans-we were easily startled and lost in thought like 'do I know anyone I could ride with to The City for Friday's parade?' ignoring technical questions that encompassed 'what would my boss say if I just went?' Such are the perils of exhaustion when you don't actually get to play in the games. I suspect the players slept like babies, after all the tumult and the hubbub in the locker room and good on them-the rest of us couldn't join in. Some of us, Jeter, had to go work in the morning.
-bill kenny
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