I hadn't been even two weeks into college at UAlbany before I walked around the Campus Center and found a flier on one of the many bulletin boards outside near the fountains, promoting a bus trip to Yankee Stadium to see the Bronx Bombers take on the Boston Red Sox on a Sunday afternoon. At the time, I had only $40 cash on me and was still waiting for my ATM card to come in the mail at my house back in Wappingers Falls, two hours south.
For those who may not know, freshman undergraduates are not allowed to have their cars at UAlbany, really for no reason other (or so I was told by my R.A.) than to handcuff freshmen into living on campus and buying their meal plans. I planned to be on premium lockdown with my slim funds for almost a month, so I debated for about a minute in front of the flier as to whether or not I should roughly fifty percent (it was a $15 bleacher ticket, transportation included, which in hindshigt was an incredible deal) a of my available money on a baseball game, but ultimately decided to pass it up to save the dough for an emergency.
I walked back to my dorm room (I lived in a 22-story high-rise tower located smack-dab in the middle of the quad) on the sixth floor-- but as soon as I push the button for ther elevator, I see on the adjacent bulletin board on the wall the same flier, taunting me with a wide-angle shot of Yankee Stadium from the upper deck, behind home plate. My resolve held, though, and the elevator arrived.
A few hours later, I hear a knock on my door. Thinking it may be my 6'2, 300-pound Goth roommate, Jason, with the mohawk, fishnet shirt and nipple piercings (no reason to mention that other than that I think it remains incredibly an amusing and disturbing vision five years later) forgetting his keys again, I get up and answer the door. Outside are Matt and Chris, my suitemates, who want to know if I would like to go to dinner with them. I say that I would, and as we make our way to the elevator, the flier is still sitting smack dab in the middle of the bulletin board. Matt points to it and says: "We're gonna have some fun next Sunday, doncha think? Yanks-Sox? Chris and I got our tickets at the Campus Center today. I think Lisa and Melissa, and Tom and Dewey, are going too." As we get in the elevator, I listen to Matt and Chris continue to talk about the game, and I break. Feeling the two wrinkled twenties in my pocket the next day, I go to the office of the bus terminal on campus and grab one of the final five tickets available.
The day of the game arrives, and I realize that this is going to be a long day with no cash and only a warm bottle of water to bring with me for the enitre day. I don't remember exactly, but I think I grabbed a quick breakfast from the cafeteria (the food was quite noxious, and remains so to this day, so I'm sure it was something light) and boarded an 8:45 AM bus at Collins Circle bound for the "Boogie Down."
This was the day when I first realized that Red Sox Nation was a viable entity. Though it may be a product of my youth, I don't remember the Red Sox/Yankees rivalry being a huge deal until 2003 and the pennant chase between the two clubs. In fact, during the Yankees' dynasty years, the team that I remember being the main competition in the AL East was Baltimore, who played the Yanks in the 1996 ALCS and won the division in 1997, and still had Albert Belle, Mike Mussina, and Cal Ripken Jr. for the majority of that time. When the Yankees beat Boston in the 1999 ALCS, there wasn't nearly the buzz you'd expect if you've been exposed to Yankees vs. Red Sox only for the last five years or so. The only two players I remember playing for the Red Sox at the time were Pedro Martinez, their best player and the game's best pitcher at the time, and John Valentin, who hit a couple of home runs in the ALDS series against the heavily favored Cleveland Indians to help the Sox come back to win in five games. Now that I think about it, the Indians were REALLY the main rival of the Yankees, as they were the only other team in the American League whose recent resume could match that of the Bombers (two World Series appearances in 1995 and 1997, and division titles every year from 1995 through 2001). In 2003, however, the Red Sox became a scary team-- they would routinely bludgeon the Yankees with an offense that always seemed to put up crooked numbers in the early innings, and the rest of the game(s), the Yanks would be trying to catch up against a bad bullpen. Many times that year, they did-- probably more often than should have been expected.
Yet as we college students made our way under the train tracks on the south side of the Stadium, a sea of red formed around us-- (Carl) Yastremski #8 shirts, Martinez #45, (Manny) Ramirez #24, and even one that said "Millar Time" with a beer bottle as the "1" next to the "5," making "15," Kevin Millar's number. I didn't know until that day who Kevin Millar even was-- before 2003, he was a journeyman player who primarily played first base for the woeful Florida Marlins in the National League. After this day, he would remain centered in my mind as the loudmouth, scrappy player who had a flair for playing above his head against the Yankees. Moreover, it was the first time I had ever had an encounter with Red Sox fans-- its weird, I just never remembered growing up with them around in Southern New York. There weren't any in my high school that I can remember... perhaps it was a sheltered existence, but I always suspected this Red Sox Nation thing was a bandwagon phenomenon. Anyhow, it was a bit of a surreal moment-- like how Adam and Eve must have felt after eating the forbidden fruit and suddenly realizing they were buck naked, I instantly became aware that this was a foreign, but very real experience. There existed a significant throng of fans cheering a visiting team at Yankee Stadium than there were fans rooting on the home club. With Boston winning the first two games of the series on Friday and Saturday, they were as close to the Yankees in the standings (1 and 1/2 games back) as they had been all season-- and, thankfully, as they would be for the rest of 2003.
We get to the center field bleachers and in another immediate revelation, I instantly regret not bringing sunscreen. If this didn't turn out to be such a great and memorable game, it may have been remembered as being quite the miserable experience-- almost four hours of no food, no drink, and a sun poisoning that actually cooked my face to the point where my nose bubbled and grease flowed from the expanded pores. Now that the disgusting part of this entry is out of the way...
David Wells, one of my favorite Yankees of all-time, took on Jeff Suppan, who came to Boston at the same trade deadline as Aaron Boone did to the Yankees-- when the Sox got Suppan, he was 10-7 with a 3.57 ERA, and was considered to be a #3 or #4 starter, a reinforcement to a rotation headed by Martinez, with Derek Lowe, Tim Wakefield, and John Burkett. At the time, I remember he had beeen pitching pretty well for Boston, too, and held the Yankees in check for six innings, matching Boomer Wells frame for scoreless frame. Then, in the bottom of the seventh, Jorge Posada walks and the Yankees finally get a baserunner aboard for Bernie Williams.
Bernie was the type of player that you didn't know how valuable, nor how talented, he was until a late and clutch situation. He's only been retired for two years, but it seems like twenty. 2002, the year before, was his last great year, and 2003 had been a struggle with injuries and the first rumblings for a replacement in center field due to Bernie's notoriously weak throwing arm and declining range. He took Suppan deep on this day, almost in the same spot as Darryl Strawberry did in the right-centerfield bleachers seven years before, the last time I was at Yankee Stadium. As 50,000-plus fans finally had reason to stop sitting on their hands, I noticed a fair amount of the students in our group remained seated-- again, a seminal moment, as I finally began to understand that the Albany area reprsented a more equal split of Yankee and Red Sox fans due to the geography of the area and the aforementioned rise in "Red Sox Nation."
The two runs would hold up as the Yanks would tack on one in the 8th inning, and Mariano Rivera closed it out in the ninth (but not before pesky Kevin Millar singled to lead off the inning and brought the tying run to the plate three times). The Yanks would go on to win the division, and the ALCS a month later thanks to that lovely, great, wonderful, and handsome Aaron Boone and his walk-off Game 7 homer in the 11th inning, and for one last season, all was right in the universe with Yankees #1, Red Sox#2. How I miss those days...
What I forgot about THIS game was the fact that Derek Jeter (1-for-3 with a walk) for the Yanks, and Bill Mueller (2-for-4) for the Sox, were in the midst of their battle for a batting title. At the end of the day, they were tied at .322. Mueller, like Millar, was another guy that before 2003 I had never heard of, who seemingly found the "S" on his chest once he signed with Boston. He would never be as good after his batting crown season in '03 (he finished at .326 to Jeter's .324), but he remained the type of clutch role player that was a constant thorn in the side of the Yanks until he left to play for the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2006.
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