RIP Bob Sheppard

One of the more remarkable aspects of legendary Yankees & Giants PA announcer Bob Sheppard's life was his anonymity. Reggie Jackson once said he possessed the 'voice of God' and he's got a plaque in Monument Park, but for the bulk of his 50+ year career would have gone unnoticed in a mob of the most rabid NY sports fans.

I can picture him at one of the sports bars on 161st Street beside the old Stadium, bravely wading through a crowd of burly fans, most of them wondering what a stick-thin and tweed-jacketed older gentleman is doing in a packed tavern. Finally catching the eye of a barman, the dapper man with a book tucked under his arm opens his mouth.

Thank you. If you will. Please bring me. An ice. Cold. Budweiser. With a glass. Budweiser.

All but a TV above the bar is silent. Men freeze, beers in mid-swallow, fingers in mid-point. He's here. The voice of Yankee Stadium. Here. Right here. The men watch his face like construction workers ogling a woman in hotpants. The barmen hands him a longneck. The men brace themselves as Bob Sheppard's mouth opens again.

Thank you.

Bob Sheppard drinks his beer while around him men use hard hands to rub away tears. No one approaches him. Who would dare? Firemen, cops, Wall Street bigboys, all overwhelmed to share space with the holy spirit of their cathedral. None feel worthy to address this ordinary man with a seminal voice.

Bob Sheppard finishes his beer. Men want to reach for their wallets to pay for his drink -- these same men want to pick the small man up and carry him through the streets -- but it's too late. Their bodies are numb from shock, happiness, awe. All they can do is watch as Bob Sheppard lays a $5 bill on the bar, adjusts his jacket and walks out into October twilight. He crosses 161st Street and disappears into a navy blue ocean of fathers with children, vendors, young men with wives and girlfriends, all buzzing with pre-game hope. Bob Sheppard casts a thin shadow as he strides to the press gate, going to work, just as he's done in the Bronx since 1951.

The lights are on. The field is bright green. Bob Sheppard is at the microphone. Yankee Stadium is ready for baseball.

BER-nie WILL-iams!

No one was more responsible for the Yankees' return to greatness in the mid-1990s like #51, center fielder Bernie Williams. He made a triumphant return before the final game ever played at Yankee Stadium Sunday night. Most players receive a homecoming welcome wearing an opposing team's uniform. That Bernie received the loudest & longest ovation of the evening wearing Yankees pinstripes is a perfect tribute for a man who brought class and karma to the only uniform he ever wore during his stellar 16-year career.

The sun sets on an old friend.

Packed away in the attic above my mom's garage in Tennessee is a photo of me sitting in a front row box seat of original Yankee Stadium. It's 1972, the Yankees are terrible, but a silly smile occupies the bit of face visible beneath my ill-fitting Yankees cap. I'm in baseball's cathedral, beside soil consecrated by Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle. I was raised Catholic, but this is my Holy Land.

Following the Stadium's restoration during the 1974 & 75 seasons (when my dad took Kevin and I to see them play in Queens at Shea Stadium) and a simultaneous return to glory, I became friends with a fellow Bombers fan named Jeff Stefanick. He and I set out on many a Bronx-based adventure from our North Jersey homes over the years. With the current Stadium set to close at the season's conclusion on Sunday -- a new Yankee Stadium is being built and will be the team's home beginning next season -- Jeff attended one of the final games this week. He took the photo above, and sent me a lovely email. Here's an excerpt:

You were there, at least in my mind, as I scanned the sections, remembered bus rides via the Port Authority, subway rides cramped and smelly, 'Big John' Mayberry buying some ribs, Eddie Layton 'entertaining' us during a rain delay in the Summer of ’82, Reggie Jax going deep on the guy nicknamed Gator on 4/26/82 as a conquering hero, laughing at the dearth of talent as we sat close to the field in Sept 1990, watching guys named Leytiz and Velarde -- wondering why they were in the major leagues, a special night called the 2001 World Series Game 5 when a fellow named Scott Brosious decided NYC was not done for that night, and finally, sprinting up the steps of an escalator in the Port Authority in '82, just in time to make the 1am bus, sparing us the ignomity of having to call your father to come get us!

I would add: Feeling the stadium shake from our perch way, way up in the upper deck when Don Mattingly was introduced in his long overdue playoff debut in 1995. And the time we went bowling in between games of a doubleheader at a classic South Bronx establishment behind a bar on 161st Street.

You're right, my brother. I was sitting up there with you, smelling the fragrant Bronx air, sipping overpriced beer, listening to Bob Sheppard's multi-generational baritone, absorbing the majesty of a place that's brought us both tears of joy and sorrow across the decades. I've been blessed to have had a Yankees compadre like you since we met in Mr Andico's class at Brooklawn junior high school in 1979. It's sad to think I won't see the Stadium as we've known it all these years again, but feel better knowing we'll walk into the new Yankee Stadium together someday.
Looking towards left field in a shot taken by Jeff earlier this season.
Jeff in front of the new stadium's facade, a replica of the 1923 original.
New and old, side by side for now, until the old one is demolished.
Derek Jeter acknowledges the crowd after passing Lou Gehrig for most career hits at Yankee Stadium with number 1,270.

Bronx Cheer

The election of Rich 'Goose' Gossage to baseball's Hall of Fame means my two favorite players from the 'Bronx Zoo'-era Yankees have been given the ultimate reward for nearly killing me between the years 1977 and 1981.

I was 11 years old the night Reggie Jackson hit 3 home runs on 3 pitches from 3 different pitchers in the 1977 World Series. New York was suffering then, making the Yankees first championship in 15 years more than a sports story: It was sweet relief for a city on the brink of self-immolation. Between spurts of hysteria I sat on a green couch beside a wood cabinet TV the size of a washing machine, drinking RC Cola from a tall plastic cup. My dad sat quietly on a yellow fabric chair across the room. He was quiet, maybe shocked, maybe saving his voice for the football Giants (who were muddling through the Joe Pisarcik era). He'd taken my mother, brother and me to my first Yankees game at 'old' Yankee Stadium in 1972, a loss to the Chicago White Sox. Gossage was a clean-cut rookie on that White Sox team. I don't remember if he pitched that night, but I'll never forget absorbing the sad majesty of the Stadium from our box seats along the first base line. It, like the team and the city, was in steep decline.

And then came George. Steinbrenner, that is, who became principal owner in 1973 and who quickly became a pariah to baseball 'purists' with his bottomless check book and blustery media pronouncements. A renovated Yankee Stadium opened in 1976. The American League All-Star game was played in the Bronx in the summer of that season, a game I clearly remember watching on a black & white TV in the bedroom my brother and I shared. Fiery manager Billy Martin led the Yanks to the World Series later that year, where they were swept by Cincinnati's Big Red Machine despite the heroics of beloved captain and AL MVP Thurman Munson. Reggie's history-making performance the following year cemented his moniker of 'Mr October' and led to my first 'must-have' candy -- the Reggie Bar.

By spring training of 1978 I was certifiable. A 'Reggie Wall' dominated one side of my bedroom, Yankees posters covered every inch of wood paneling and I collected every sports mag featuring a Bronx Bomber on the cover. Relief ace Sparky Lyle won a Cy Young award as the American League's best pitcher in 1977, but that didn't stop Steinbrenner from signing Gossage before the '78 season. It was a wise investment, as the fu-manchu-sporting Goose induced pop-outs from Yaz in the Yanks victory over the Red Sox in their do-or-die playoff game and Ron Cey for their second consecutive championship over the LA Dodgers.

This should, of course, been a time of bliss for a 12-year-old die-hard. No no no no no no ... When Munson squeezed Cey's pop-up in his catcher's glove and the Yankees celebrated atop a jubilant Gossage on the mound, I felt not joy, but relief. What is now diagnosed as obsessive-compulsive disorder doesn't begin to describe my behavior when Reggie was taking dramatic, corkscrew cuts during that season, or when Gossage came in to hurl heat like a Wild West gunslinger in the late innings. If a certain routine 'worked' -- say, taking a sip of cola and putting both hands on the arms of the yellow cloth chair in between each pitch but making no other movements -- then it was continued. Without fail. Regardless of discomfort, pain, the doorbell, phone calls, a passing ice cream truck, a small housefire or Soviet missile attack. Like a believer seeking eternal salvation, my mind tabulated the ratio of gametime rituals to home runs, strikeouts and other favorable-for-NY results. That's a lot of strain for a budding brain over the course of a 162-game regular season -- 163 in 1978 -- plus playoffs and a World Series. Sitting at my grandmother's kitchen table in October 1977 reading a NY Daily News with its famous back page headline of "Reggie ... Reggie ... Reggie", I was more than a happy, 11-year-old Yankees fan: I was an exhausted, pinstripe-bleeding basket case.

Still, I'm glad milestones like the Goose's entry into the Hall of Fame stir these embers of childhood. I don't know Reggie or the Goose, the Yankees are a billion-dollar business entity and baseball is just a game, but they all contributed towards an unforgettable period of my life. They live on as memories of the heart. The best kind of all.