by Riccardo Schiroli
I was there when Derek Jeter got the hit number 1270 of his career inside the “Yankee Stadium”. I was there, but I did not know Jeter was going to break a record set by Lou Gehrig. I wasn’t even watching: I was trying to take a picture of Jeter, because everybody else was trying to take a picture of Jeter.
Had I known, I wouldn’t have liked Derek to break the record in front of my eyes. After all, I have played a lot of games with number 4 on my uniform. And this is bad enough for Lou Gehrig’s memory. And I would have liked the record to survive the “Iron Horse” and “The House that Ruth Built”.
Babe Ruth was in that movie, “The pride of the Yankees”, in which Gary Cooper starred as the main character. The movie was on screen in the 1940ies, but I happened to see it on a black and white TV set in my house in Parma in the 1970ies. If I were to write the perfect story, I would say that I fell in love with baseball watching that movie. But this is not a perfect story. I had already fallen in love with baseball and the movie made me only switch from number 5 (Joe DiMaggio, who was Italian and had married Marilyn) to number 4.
Perfect stories, to say the whole truth, often prove wrong. Like the one in which Abner Doubleday invented baseball in a city called Cooperstown. According to the Surrey Historic Centre (England) a solicitor wrote a report about a baseball game played in Guilford (60 KMs from London) in 1755, way before the life of Mr. Doubleday was even an idea.
Isn’t the one of Jeter breaking Gehrig’s record just a few days before the stadium closes a perfect story? It definitely is. Because it makes the fans forget that their ballpark will be closed.
After all, somebody will say, “The House that Ruth built” was not up to date anymore. Monument Park and memories apart, visit one of the new ball parks and after that go to the “Yankee Stadium”: you will feel that it is aging that aisles are narrow, seats are not comfortable, and concessions are not that efficient. They put a cash dispenser in it, because anything can happen to a baseball fan, but he should never be inside a ball park without cash.
Maybe “Pulitzer Prize” winning author John Updike is right, when he writes that “Today’s game has not much to do with love”. Still, it has a lot to do with great performances.
The night that Jeter broke the record, I saw Jason Giambi rocket an inside fastball into earth orbit. Or so I suppose, since I lost sight of the ball after a while. We should admit it: today’s players perform better, even if they are not heroes. And even if the game has not much to do with love.
Before leaving the “Yankee Stadium” the night that Jeter broke Lou Gehrig’s record I remembered that there’s someone in Europe right now who has his own memories of the “House that Ruth Built”. Team Netherlands manager Rob Eenhoorn was playing second baseman on May 14th 1996, when Dwight Gooden pitched a no hitter. So we’ll take this little memory with us during next trip to New York, when we’ll see the Yankees play in “The House that the Boss built”.