Bat Boy Coming of Age With the New York Yankees

Chapter 1 The Best Seat in the House The game of baseball frames many of my sweetest childhood memories. I made my first friendships playing Little League, and these friendships were shaped by countless hours of team batting and fielding practice on our neighborhood diamond. I consider our coach, a burly police officer named Mr. Ferguson, to have been my first great teacher. He drilled us in baseball fundamentals until they became second nature, but also allowed us time to practice acrobatic catches and double plays, feats we dreamt ourselves capable of but had little chance of ever actually executing in a game. Practices were focused but fun, a solid foundation for a lifelong love of baseball. As a fan, I grew up rooting for the New York Yankees, and the team's players became my earliest heroes. I looked forward to visiting Yankee Stadium at least as eagerly as I anticipated the first day of summer vacation, Halloween night, or Christmas morning. I was still too young to realize that I might lack major league talent, and the handful of games I'd seen in person just fueled the dream that I too might play someday at the Stadium. As momentous as any trip to see the Yankees seemed at the time, there was one particular game that made an impression so vivid and powerful that I can hardly imagine my childhood without it. In fact, it's hard not to wonder how my adolescence might have unfolded had I been anywhere else but Yankee Stadium that day. The game, against the Kansas City Royals, was played on a sweltering Sunday afternoon in late July 1983. I had just turned eight. Personally speaking, it had been a banner summer for baseball. I was halfway through my second season of Little League, starting at shortstop and leading off for my team, the legendary, perennially pennant-contending Brunt & Brooks Pharmacy. Being sponsored by a pharmacy didn't yield the tangible rewards enjoyed by some of our rival teams--namely, Tony's Pizzeria or the Ice Cream Villa--but one through nine, B&B had the best third-grade ballplayers in town. My team won many games that summer. After the school year ended that June, my bedtime had been pushed back late enough that, if the pitchers worked fast and kept the score down, I could watch Yankees night games on television right up to the last out. Summer days peaked with Little League practice, then dinner in front of the TV listening to Phil Rizzuto call that night's Yankees game until Mom or Dad sent me to my room. That Fourth of July, I sat on the living room floor and watched every pitch of Dave Righetti's no-hitter against the Boston Red Sox. It was one of the most exciting things I'd ever seen; the fireworks show broadcast later that night from over the East River seemed dim in comparison. A few nights later, tuning in to another game, I saw Dave Winfield reach up and over the outfield wall to pull a game-winning home run back into play. I was awestruck by his catch. For weeks afterward, I imitated it so tirelessly against the four-foot-tall chain-link fence surrounding our Little League field that I came home from baseball practice every night with scrapes and bruises up and down my left arm. Then came the game against the Royals. Since the night my dad brought home the tickets--one each for him, my little brother Damien, and me--I'd been able to think and speak of little else. We arrived at Yankee Stadium in time for the national anthem, and our seats in the upper deck had an expansive view of the field and the Bronx beyond it. Once the game started, though, I had trouble keeping my eye on the ball. A friend had recently taught me how to keep score, the system of shorthand by which the details of any baseball game can be recorded for posterity. In my eagerness to correctly make note of each at bat on the scorecard, I spent a good share of the afternoon with my head in the program, half a step behind what was happening in thMcGough, Matthew is the author of 'Bat Boy Coming of Age With the New York Yankees', published 2007 under ISBN 9780307278647 and ISBN 0307278646.