by Daniel Thomas Moran
In 1957, my Father experienced two earth-shaking events. He became a father for the first time, as a result of my arrival in March, but more importantly he suffered a loss from which he has yet to recover. That was the year The Dodgers left Brooklyn. And he is not the only one who has never gotten over that fact. Since then, my Father refuses to watch baseball at all. There are still a lot of people in Brooklyn just like him. To those familiar with New York City, it is very much a city of neighborhoods. It is less so now, but for many, many years people defined themselves by their ethnicity and by the neighborhood they came from. There were Irish in The Bronx, The Italians in Bensonhurst, Blacks in Harlem, Jews in Williamsburg. Often people could tell what your ethnicity was by knowing where you lived. My Italian Great-grandmother lived in Red Hook for 35 years and never learned to speak a word of English. It is more complicated today, with many more groups, but it is essentially the same. With these identities came rivalries which ran deeper than the subways and thicker than the water in The East River. Some of these rivalries were practiced with dirty looks and the occasional fist-fight, but mainly they were fought on baseball diamonds. When I was born, there were 16 major league ball teams and three of them played their home games in New York, ie., The Yankees, The Giants and Dem Bums, The Brooklyn Dodgers. 
Everyone knew baseball. If you could not get to Ebbets Field or The Polo Grounds or The Stadium up in The Bronx, if you had one, you listened to the game on the radio. Everyone had their favorite team. Beyond that, and almost as important, it was mandatory to absolutely hate the other two. By the time I was old enough to root, I had little choice. Remember, my Father was a Dodger fan and no one hated The Yankees like a Dodger fan, and I liked the idea of eating regularly and sleeping indoors, so I made the default move and went for The Mets. The Mets were a pathetic bunch of clowns sent out to Queens (of all places) to somehow replace both The Dodgers and The Giants, who had both fled New York for California. New York baseball fans suffered the loss of guys with names like Willie Mays and Bobby Thomson, Jackie Robinson and Pee Wee Reese and what we got instead were guys with names like Hobie Landreth, Choo Choo Coleman and Vinegar Bend Mizell. Somehow they managed to keep Gil Hodges in New York even if he was a doddering 39 years of age. He didn’t last long. Managed by the great Casey Stengle they were admonished to “go out there and play your heinys off”. In 1962, in their first season they had 40 wins against 120 losses. Even if I was a young kid, by the time I began rooting I knew I loved an underdog. So this was my team. By 1969 they managed to win The World Series and I still can’t believe it. Most people in New York still can’t believe it either.
So part of my loving the Mets as a kid was really hating The Yankees and moreover, to be willing to take the abuse from Yankee fans who believed that baseball had been invented for The Yankees. Unlike the supporters of other baseball teams, they did not hope for the Yankees to win the World Series, they expected it. No, they demanded it. Some things never change. I hated the Yankees for most of my adult life for all the reasons everyone else hates them. So let’s just agree on that and not go into it. But then one year I decided to take my young son to Yankee Stadium. I had been there once when I was only five and saw the likes of Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris play that day. I wanted my son to see the place with his old man, recapture some of the magic from my childhood, and maybe create some in his. I also knew in my heart, that despite my pathetic enthusiasm for The Mets, they would never be The Yankees. I don’t care who you root for, when you walk around in Monument Park out in center field and see those names, Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Mantle, Berra and the rest, you are enchanted by the inescapable enormity of it. So, not long after that day about ten years ago, I threw in the towel and started rooting for The Yankees. I was a New Yorker afterall, raised with a strong sense of entitlement and superiority. I was no longer going to be ashamed to root for the guys in pinstripes. It felt pretty good, I must say, to assume dominance. The World Series was in the bag in Spring Training. It was not about whether we would win, but which team would be kind enough to supply the drama and allow themselves to be throttled and humiliated as we, once again, assumed the mantle of glory. In New York, we always counted on the fact that one of those teams would be The Boston Red Sox.
Then something incredible happened. No, I don’t mean The Red Sox winning The World Series twice in four years. Or even A-Rod falling in love with Madonna. In the winter of 2008, my wife and I bought a home in The South End of Boston about a mile and a half from Fenway Park. In April, on a freezing afternoon, with layers of clothing and clutching our beer in gloved hands we saw our first Red Sox game at Fenway. We got there pretty early so we could wander around and take it all in. We watched the game and, then we looked at one another, and agreed that, quite frankly, we were smitten. We might have even sang, “Sweet Caroline” along with the crowd, a song I really dislike. Well, used to dislike. An awful lot of baseball things suddenly began to make sense, even my father’s insanity and unrelenting grief over the Dodgers exodus from Brooklyn 51 years ago. There is something about this baseball team which is actually more about this city. Everyone in Boston is a Red Sox fan. Everyone loves an underdog. And no matter what happens each game or each year, people live for Red Sox baseball. It did not take long before we got caught up in the whole thing. One night we even went over to Cask n’ Flagon to belly up and watch an away game with the crowd. We were really
deflated when the season ended and not so much because The Sox did not prevail this year, but because we would have no Red Sox baseball to watch until April. Next year we hope to find a better way to score some tickets and see a bunch of games. We have to come to love Boston and to love passing an afternoon or evening at Fenway. But I really have to confess two things. I cannot see myself eating chowdah at a ballgame and, I really liked Manny Ramirez. It took me a while to catch up to the rest of you on The Ramirez thing but I want you to know I get it. I always thought the problem was that his britches were too big for him. I was happy when he inflicted himself on The Dodgers last year. I hope The Yankees get him next year. They deserve one another. Sweet Caroline, Good times never seemed so good.faculty at Boston University's School of Dental Medicine. When not writing or teaching, you can find him standing in line and searching the internet for Sox tickets! You can read more about Dan at http://www.danielthomasmoran.net/.
