In my many moons as a Yankees fan, I've been at some very meaningful games: first wins at new stadiums; regular-season walk-offs; playoff walk-offs; milestone hits; must-win games; games where the Yankees could've won the pennant but didn't (MEH); elimination games (in which the result was more Wah than Rah!); I've even been to a World Series game. But until the other night, I'd never seen a clinching game of any kind in person.
And it wasn't even planned that way. Erica knew she was coming to town back in the spring and got Steph, Jen and I on-board to go to the last game of the season. Now, I know I don't take big leads for granted, but I don't think, "Wow, they could win the division that night" ever sprang into my mind back then.
It was a great, jolly atmosphere, which didn't really match the fog floating over the lights. There was the lone Red Sox fan in the next section, who cheered extra loud when the Sox went ahead, then very graciously invited everyone to boo him when the Yankees started trouncing them. We had a group of European women in front of us who seemed to all-out embrace the true Americanness that is a baseball game. I mean, I've never seen tourists so out-and-out delighted over foam We're No. 1 fingers and a home run (Granderson's, which, bless him for that, because I was grinding my teeth up until that point). We saw Marlboro Man dancing to Super Freak on the scoreboard (Steph and I have wondered how he's dealt with no Enter Sandman to rock out to this season). And then the scoreboard crew played You Dropped a Bomb on Me when posting the fact that the Yankees' 245 home runs was a franchise record, which I thought was a nice touch, and just kind of added to the party atmosphere.
Out of all the weather conditions I've sat through at games, I've never had to squint to see where a ball is going due to fog. But it ended up being pretty mythical if only because both of Sad Clown's homers (which, sidebar, Steph and I are so NOT enamored of his posing after hitting one out. Like, knock it off, dude, before someone takes your head off) seemed to disappear into the mist.
I'm not going to lie — we were scoreboard watching the whole time (and Erica's dad was updating her over the Rays and O's on Facebook): Rays up by 1. Rays up by 2. Rays up by 3. Rays up by 4. At that point, the Yankees had their game well in hand, but we were curious over what would happen should the other game end first. Well, the out-of-town scoreboard, which isn't huge, updated that the score was a final and I think nearly 75 percent of the stadium saw it all at the same time, because a cheer erupted, followed not seconds later by the giant scoreboard informing us of the score, and that the Yanks were indeed American League East champions. And then the place went nuts. A-Rod was at-bat and he stepped aside and just let it all rain down, which was awesome.
Still it's kind of cheap to win your division because the other team lost, so when the Yanks finally won a little while later, the fans who remained (sidebar: Yes, people left earlier. To that I give a big, fat MEH) and were pretty joyous. The players filed out and celebrated and the "American League Division Champions" graphic was twirling around on all the scoreboards and I may or may not have gotten misty. And then we all sang along to New York, New York and tried to take pictures with our crappy phones (seriously, the iPhone can do many things, but get a pic of a bright scoreboard is not one of them. See below) and just soaked it all in.
Because, for real, it was looking kind of precarious in early September. But my goodness, this team pulled itself up by its bootstraps, didn't get desperate and gritted it out. I'm not sure I've seen a final few weeks with so much flat-out determination in it. It was all just proof that no matter what the situation is, you are never out of it until you're actually out of it.
And if you threw your hands up in disgust a month ago because you lack the imagination to see that, well, that's your problem. You gave up.
The Yankees didn't.
