On October 31st, 2001 there were many feelings going through my body as I boarded the D train at 175th St and the Grand Concourse. My legs were stiff from standing for hours the night before on the uneven floor of the Continental Airlines Arena. Slipknot and System of a Down played to a packed house which caused not only the pain in my legs but the continuous ringing in my ears. Even though the train was relatively empty, I found myself standing in front of the doors. I was excited as two hours earlier I discovered I would be enjoying game 4 of the World Series from behind home plate instead of in my small apartment on Clay Ave. Several years earlier, an aquaintance of mine, was caught spraypainting profanity on the side of Yankees Stadium. When he was questioned about his intentions, he stated it was because he had nothing else to do. Two weeks later, he was contacted by Yankees Stadium and given a job as an usher in the Diamond Level seats. Normally I would watch a game through the first inning before getting a call that a seat was open. Then I would hop down to the stadium, a mere 10 minutes from where I lived, and see the game in seats that would have normally cost several hundred dollars.
Unfortnately we were in a post 9/11 world. Businesses had disappeared freeing up several seats in prime real estate behind home plate. I never wondered whose seat I actually sat in until recently. I figured it was just a comped ticketee that was busy elsewhere. Many of them had been given to police officers and firefighters still on duty. But whether or not someone had purchased that seat before 9/11 never struck my mind. It could very well have been someone lost in the tragedy. Or as I found out recently, when businesses close, their comp tickets open up with them. I hope that this was the case.
Either way, I recieved a call from my friend at 7:30pm on Halloween night. I quickly threw on my World Series Yankees hat, but forgot how cold it would be at the Stadium. I wore only a thin hoodie, paying the price the following week. I was stuck in bed and out of school for three days. I used various excuses as to how I got sick, knowing that admitting I just went to a baseball game in October without a jacket would not have flown over well with anyone.
After arriving at the Stadium, two things were obvious. People wanted something to believe in and people wanted to forget. The Yankees were all that was left to avoid what many of us saw day after day during those months. On this night, both requests would be fulfilled. However, at first, like any great opera, there was nothing to cheer for. The Yankees couldn’t score and the Diamondbacks looks like they were toying with baseball’s legendary franchise. After 8 innings, Arizona manager Bob Brenly must have thought things were going pretty smoothly. Everyone else in the building thought it was going their way as well. The crowd was silent for most of those 8 innings, with no real reason to get excited. However, in the bottom of the 9th inning, as if by some miracle, everything changed. Yankees first baseman, Tino Martinez, blasted a two run game tying home run off of closer Byun Yun Kim. While most of this is to me is a fuzzy memory of being cold and excited, I can remember with great clarity almost losing my voice after seeing the ball leave the park. That excitement lifted my voice from a dull murmor at the start of the day, another effect of the previous night’s concert, to an epic roar.
While normally I hate to admit to being a fanboy of a particular player, that night established one of my all time favorite players with one of my all time favorite baseball memories. Watching Derek Jeter hit the game winning home run at midnight on November 1st was a moment that I sometimes look to immortalize on film. There are moments that even film cannot capture and this is one of them. I’ve seen the game replayed dozens of times, however it doesn’t capture the feeling of being at the stadium on that night. I remember being at the bottom of a dogpile of fans after the ball left the yard, I remember hugging people I didn’t even know, and I remember that no one left the ballpark after the game. My ten minute trip home turned into 4 hours. I didn’t walk through my door until 4 in the morning. It had nothing to do with traffic. I could have walked home if I felt like it. But the feeling around the stadium and of the fans was intoxicating and nearly impossible to separate from.
It may seem cheesy at this point in time considering how many documentaries and commentaries have been done on that night. Throwing one more on a large pile may be overkill. However, I figured it would be best if I wrote a few words on not just the final game at Yankees Stadium but of the moment that stuck out the most in my mind.