Year: 2008

October 27, 1999
Yankees 4, Braves 1 (World’s Series Game 4)

After graduating college, it took me nine months to find a job doing what I wanted to do.  I spent from May through December of ’99 sending out tapes and resumes to with TV stations around the country, snagging an occasional interview and little interest.  To keep myself busy, I worked a few meaningless jobs and helped coach my former speech team.  

I’d travel to Seton Hall at least once a week, mostly on Tuesday nights and coach for a few hours.  Tuesday October 26 was game 3, so I did my few hours of coaching then hung out with my friend Jon (the convert) to watch the game.  It was an exciting game with the Braves coming out to an early lead, followed by the Yankees coming back and finally winning it as Chad Curtis took center stage at the plate and on the mic.  

Jon and I were Chad fans from a game a few years earlier (I have yet to get to in this segment) where he started in left field and acknowledged our cheers.  Having the game end in extra innings on a walk-off home run was exciting.  As I left and headed for home, I said something to the effect that there’s little that can happen the next day in game four to top game three.

Had I known I’d be going to game four, I might have not said something so stupid.  Sometime early that Wednesday, a friend of my father’s gave him tickets to game four.  For some reason, King Classic couldn’t go.  So I called up Jon, who bowed out of a LCS game the year prior due to school newspaper commitments, and Setonian be damned, he was in.  

I picked Jon up at Seton Hall and we drove my old car (an ’87 Buick Century Limited I held on to until aught-three) to the stadium, encountering little traffic on the way in.  Our tickets weren’t that bad. We were field level on the first base side, but in the very last row.  The only drawback to the last row is there’s about three fewer inches of legroom in the row, but that wasn’t a problem, because we stood for most of the game anyway.  On our way into the stadium, some fans were passing out photocopied signs that read ‘Ban Jim Grey.’  I snagged one and actually think I still have the collector’s item somewhere in my possession.  

Roger Clemens, who never seemed to fit in during his first year as a Yankee started the game and held the Braves scoreless through seven, before allowing two runners in the eighth, one of whom eventually scored off Jeff Nelson.  The Yankees had scored three runs in the third off a pair of singles by Tino Martinez and [Hip-Hip] Jorge Posada.  So between the third and eighth, all we were doing was hoping the Yankees could hold the Braves to as little damage as possible.

Thankfully, the Braves only scored one in the eighth.  There was a big debate this point among some fans to the right of us whether the Braves should bring in controversial reliever and grade-A jackass john Rocker to keep the game close.  Braves manager Bobby Cox didn’t do that, instead throwing out lefthander Terry Mulholland who was utterly ineffective in one season as a Yankees starter in ’94.  Jim Leyritz was brought in to pinch hit for Darryl Strawberry and bolstered my confidence in the ineptitude of Mulholland with a home run off the lefthander.

The Yankees didn’t need any more offense, as Mariano Rivera threw a scoreless inning and a third to close out the game, with the World Series ending as Keith Lockhart’s pop fly landed in Chad Curtis’ glove.

Other than Roger Clemens dancing on the dugout, the team didn’t celebrate much as Right Fielder Paul O’Neill’s father died the night before.  The fans weren’t so subdued, as Jon and I hung around for a while, before heading back to Jersey.  

Of course, I realized early on that day that it would be much, much better than the day before.

October 13, 1998
Yankees 9, Indians 5 (ALCS Game 6) 

My senior year of college I roomed with a friend, who shall go by the name of Frank Liscapital.  Frank, because his first name was Frank.  Liscapital wasn’t his real last name, but he was memorialized in our college yearbook because the word “Liscapital” was added via hyphen to his last name because of his insistence that the ‘L’ in his last name was capitalized.

Frank Liscapital was a good guy, with one failing- he was a Mets fan, and just as much an obnixous Mets fan as I was an obnixous Yankees fan.  While the Mets didn’t have much to be excited about in the ’98 season, he was a huge Mike Piazza fan, and we had constant debates over who would have the better career from that point forward, Piazza, or Yankee flash-in-the-pan Shane Spencer.   I can admit it today, but Frank won that debate.  He repeatedly told me that summer and fall that it was “only a matter of time” before the Yankees’ historic season ended.  And in the ALCS, he was close to right.

The Yankees won game one against the Cleveland Indians, but lost games two (at home) and three (in Cleveland), and for a few days, Yankees fans were nervous.  It looked like for the second straight year, the Yankees would fall in the postseason to the Tribe, a team in the midst of a great run of its own.  The Yankees won games four and five in Cleveland, sending it back to the Bronx for the possible clincher on a Tuesday night.

My father called me at school that afternoon to tell me he had tickets (through the Sunday plan) and my stepmother wouldn’t let my brother go to a baseball game on a school night, playoffs or not.  I first called my friend Jon, but he had prior commitments.  I figured that Mets fan or not, Liscapital might enjoy the game, so I asked him and he said he would meet my father and I in the parking lot when his shift at the radio station was over.  

Liscapital and I hopped in the car, and we went with my father to the stadium.  My father and I were decked out in Yankees apparel.  But Liscapital presented a problem.  He was wearing a jacket over a t-shirt.  The jacket was buttoned up all the way, but one versed in such things could clearly tell that the t-shirt was a Mets t-shirt (a Piazza name-and-number shirt).  We didn’t expect it to be much of a problem.  Until we got to the stadium, and a few fans heckled Frank for the half-inch of Mets logo that peeked out from the top of his jacket.

Frank had never been to the stadium, so I showed him around.  We were on the field level, when he started waving to someone down on the field.  He told me that one of the walkie-talkie guys on the field was a coach of some sort at his high school and had talked of working for the Yankees in his free time.  I think I said something like “well, if you know him, you should have called so he could have gotten us on the field.”  Frank laughed it off and we quickly found our seats.

The crowd was crazy that night.  A few of the Cleveland players had made disparaging comments about the Yankees and the Bronx while the series was in Cleveland a few nights earlier, and the Yankees fans weren’t about to let them forget it.  Instead of hanging hand-drawn K’s after a strikeout, fans in the upper deck hung pictures of hand drawn UZIs.  As Indian (and future Yankee) David Justice stepped to the plate, the stadium erupted in chants of “Hal-le-Ber-ry,” his recent ex-wife.

And that pretty much set the tone for the whole night.  Despite giving up five runs in five innings, David Cone pitched a solid game, striking out eight and leaving the game with the Yankees holding a 6-5 lead.  While the crowd was nervous, the Yankees scored three in the bottom of the sixth to give them some insurance.  The Yankees held on until the ninth, when Mariano Rivera sealed up a 9-6 win that sent the Yankees to the World Series.  Dad, Frank and I hung around the stadium, me hoping that I’d get a chance to go to one of the World Series games (I would, but that’s another entry) and Frank probably hoping that his Mets shirt would go unnoticed.

As we left the stadium, we bumped into that guy Frank knew, who actually was some bigwig with stadium security.  The guy told us something to the effect of “Frank, it’s great to see you! You should have given me a call–I could have let you and your friends down on the field before the game.”

Thanks Frank.