Accidental Yankee Fan
by Norman Reisman
Being originally from Brooklyn and just having watched the Yankee/Dodger World Series, it conjured up memories of how I became a Yankee fan in the first place, even though I think I’m really a closeted Dodger fan.
My childhood coincided with the early days of TV. Back on Avenue K, we had this old (well, new actually) Dumont TV set. It sat on the living room floor and was a piece of furniture unto itself. Even though I was only 4 or 5, I still remember watching Perry Como and Liberace perform on it. Each had 15 minute shows.
TV had a profound impact on my father. He was a hairdresser on Avenue P. (Maybe you knew him. Mr. Charles?) He looked a little like Perry Como, and I recall he went through this period where he bought all of these pastel colored cardigans and would walk around singing “I Love Paris.” One of my fondest memories of him was when I woke from a nap to find him with his arm around my older sister. They were sitting on the living room floor watching Milton Berle. The Texaco Star Theater commercial was on. “We are the men from Texaco, we go from Maine to Mexico……” I was behind them and I think I caught him at his sweetest moment.
He loved baseball, and even though he was married to my mom, a Brooklyn girl, and we lived in Brooklyn amidst her very large family, he rooted for the Giants. He’d watch that snowy TV screen with the black and white picture jumping around, adjusting rabbit ear antennas, for as long as he could. My mom would be at the door saying, “Come on. Let’s go already.” He’d respond, “Just one more out.”
When I was 6 we moved to Miami Beach. Later on we spent a summer in the Catskills. (In fairly quick succession, dad became Mr. Charles of the Hotel Algiers and Mr. Charles of Grossingers.). Our next stop was Long Beach.
On my first day of third grade, it was recess. We all went out to the Central School playground. I didn’t know one other kid. I was just standing there alone when this group of boys approached. The lead kid said to me in a voice that all of the other kids could hear, “Are you a Yankee or a Dodger?” I wasn’t really sure what he even meant. But since we recently lived in Florida, I responded “Yankee” because I didn’t want to make sure he knew I was a northerner. Half the boys moaned and groaned and walked away and the other half cheered and embraced another Yankee fan. I’ve been a Yankee fan ever since, but I must admit that when I see “Dodgers” written in blue script on those uniforms I think of what might have been.
One interesting side note is that my first game (with Mr. Charles, of course) was at Ebbets Field. I still remember the surprise I had coming out of the tunnel and seeing the green of the actual field. The game was in living color. Unlike on our Dumont, the picture was sharp and clear. To this day I still get that feeling every time I go to a game.
Well, having been born in Brooklyn, I was naturally a Dodger fan. When Dr. Diane Perlman came to interview Israeli peace activists about their childhood heroes who served as inspirations, mine was of course Jackie Robinson, my first childhood hero. Patrice Lumumba would come much later. I never understood why my father, who was born and grew up in Brooklyn, was a Yankee fan. It may have had something to do with being a teenager during the Depression and the heroics of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. To this day, when I see the ubiquitous Yankee cap, it looks to me like a swastika. I heard the traumatic Bobby Thomson "shot heard round the world" home run in 1951 on the radio, because a TV was not yet allowed into the house. Kids should read books. And when the Dodgers were hijacked to LA, it was my first lesson in the evils of capitalism. My son in Tel Aviv can't understand how a team can be transferred by its owner away from it's fan base to another city. Only in America.
I was born a democrat and a Yankee fan!