Not since my message of 16 May 2006 have I mentioned America's pastime, rapidly becoming The Referee's second favo(u)rite sport, and its most famous exponents, who also happen to be my local team, the New York Yankees.
So, in response to what, in my fevered imagination, is mounting demand from you, dear reader, for an update, I proudly present the second in a series which might be subtitled "Why everything that one needs to know about life can be learnt from baseball".
After a deadly dull and frigid winter, when the only sport(s) to watch are football (not assocceration) and basketball (college or otherwise), the baseball season arrives here like the spring - bringing with it the promise of something better just around the corner.
And, so far, one has not been disappointed. Let me explain why.
My kids were keen to see the Yankees again, and this time my wife said that she wanted to come along as well. So, off I went to procure the earliest tickets I could get - at home at Yankee stadium against the Baltimore Orioles (or Oreos, as The Referee likes to refer to them, to the amusement of no one but himself). (You might at this point like to note something I have recently been forced to face up to personally - that, if you can't get your 8 year old child to laugh at a joke, it's probably best not to pursue it a great deal further.)
Anyway, the big day came and we scaled up the steep sides of the stadium in a chill wind threatening flurries of snow. Not all that springlike after all. Sure enough, the early stages of the game did not deliver much seasonal warmth. The debut of new Japanese pitcher Kei Igawa, who promised more than he delivered, was such that we were 7-2 down by the 4th inning.
After that, precisely nothing happened for three innings, except that everyone got colder and I was forced to scale down from the heights to forage for chips - by which I mean chips, not chips - just to keep everyone warm. Despite the fact that I was gone for what felt like several weeks, I missed only a single run for the Yanks, making it 7-3 to Baltimore.
At that point, something odd began to happen. People began to leave. Not just in their ones and twos, but in their droves, whatever they might be.
The senior offspring turned to me in some bemusement about why people were leaving in the 7th inning. "Do they think we're going to lose?", he asked. I explained that they might, but that you should never give up until the end, and perhaps not even then. That response seemed to go down well, mainly because it left open the possibility that something interesting might happen.
By the 8th inning, the stadium was perhaps a little over half full. And then, with just the dedicated faithful left, something interesting did indeed begin to happen. The Yankees found 3 runs out of nowhere, and suddenly it was 7-6 - only one down and an inning to go. What was left of the crowd suddenly realised that we had a role to play and started to make a noise.
The great Mariano Rivera came out to close for the Yankees and finished off the last of the Baltimore hitters without much ado. The crowd was by now feverishly screaming for some action.
The chance of that happening seemed to dissipate as quickly as it had arisen after the next two Yankee hitters were out almost immediately. Surely, with only one out to go, we were expecting too much?
Then someone got to first base. Then someone else did the same. The crowd started to sizzle again. Then Bobby Abreu came out, got hit on the leg by a pitch, and hobbled, rather than walked, to first base.
Bases loaded. Only one out left. And the crowd went wild when they realised that Alex Rodriguez was up next. For those who have not followed his story, Rodriguez is one of the most precociously talented players in baseball, who hasn't always delivered, despite being one of the most highly-paid sportsmen in the world (including players of assocceration football). The result has been a love-hate relationship with the immensely demanding Yankee fans. And the buzz around the stadium said, more or less, "OK, show us what you can do".
You couldn't make up what happened next. He fumbled at the first couple of pitches - two strikes - one more and the game was lost.
As the next pitch came in, he swung at it with everything he had, and the whole stadium followed as it sailed way over the hapless pitcher's head and carried on soaring for a beautiful home run right over the middle of the park.
For those unfamiliar with the game, that's what is known as a "grand slam" - a bases-loaded home run, worth one run for the hitter and one each for the three runners. The Yankees had won 10-7. And this was not just any old grand slam - rare enough - but a walk-off grand slam, ie a grand slam which ends the game.
Everyone in the stadium leapt in the air. Rodriguez skipped around the bases, clapping his hands and beaming as he went, only to be mobbed by his entire team on arrival at the plate. The second that he did so, the stadium speakers belted out the familiar opening strains of Frank Sinatra's "New York, New York". It was a pretty good moment to be a New Yorker, even an adopted one.
The next day, the NY Times reported that, in the 105 year history of the Yankees, they had at that point played a total of 16,116 games, of which this had been only the eighth to end in a walk-off grand slam. If my math(s) is correct, that means that the chances of my wife witnessing such in her first Yankees game were 1 in 2,014, and a half.
I was tempted to conclude that I should immediately send my wife out to buy a lottery ticket. But, instead, I reminded the senior boy about our agreement that one should never give up, nor should one ever leave a baseball game in the seventh inning, even if one is worried about how long it might take to get out of the car park.
As we say in our house, "Let's go A-Rod!". Whatever that means.
