Once upon a series

The New York Yankees are appearing in their fortieth World Series. No other major league baseball franchise even comes close. Back in February, while watching the Bucknell Bison struggle on the hardwood, I heard the talk for the first time about how no major league team has ever won a World Series title with a starting shortstop that is 35 or older. This particular reference was to Derek Jeter, the Yankee Captain.

Jeter has had a phenomenal year, and should be a strong candidate for the American League's MVP. Having followed Jeter's Yankee career, whether he ever gets that elusive MVP really doesn't matter; for him, it's about championships and getting his thumb that fifth series ring. Being the consummate team player that he is, such sentiments should come as no surprise to any baseball fan.

If the Yankees fail to win their 27th World Series title against the Phillies this week, the season will be one big Bronx cheer. There is a lot riding on this series for the Bronx Bombers: the game's biggest payroll; the inaugural season of their $1.6 billion stadium, and winning 103 regular season games. Such expectations seem almost unjust. In New York, however, it comes with the territory.

Once upon a time in America, there were daytime World Series games. As a second grader, I distinctly remember watching the Amazin' '69 Mets upset the heavily favored Baltimore Orioles on a black-and-white TV while in school. What we couldn't finish watching on TV, we listened to on Joey DiBello's transistor radio as we made our way home. At the time, I couldn't help but think that the fall classic was now part of our educational curriculum, and why didn't we watch it while in first grade?

It wasn't until years later that I finally realized that the only reason the Sisters of Charity even considered allowing us to watch a few innings of that celebrated series was they still mourned for their beloved Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants. The Mets were the orphans of those two baseball fathers who left town in the late '50s. Even their crisp blue-and-white uniforms, with that classic interlocking orange NY insignia, was borrowed from our former baseball vagabonds. But we didn't care; we were in second grade and watching baseball during school. Life was good.

Little did we realize that such a viewing occasion would be our last. Despite the Mets making a return to the fall classic four years later, you could already feel the emerging change. Even with the "Say Hey" kid himself, Willie Mays, then 42, back in the city that spawned his hall-of-fame career, the Mets failed to close the deal with the Oakland A's, and dropped the final two games in Oakland to lose the series in seven games.

By then, however, the playing of night games was becoming vogue, and now being in sixth grade, I had to find my own version of the squeeze play. Staying up was non-negotiable with Mom, but having already listened to my share of West Coast games earlier that summer, I didn't argue. By this time, I had my own transistor radio, and with its beige earpiece listened to the call of Lindsey Nelson and Bob Murphy while losing plenty of sack time. In particular, I recall the Mets losing a weekday night game in 11 innings at Shea, 3-2.

This great game and its epic series that was once proudly referred to as the nation's pastime is no longer. For the first time ever, the World Series is slated to conclude in November. In 2001, Game 7 wasn't until Nov. 4, but that was because the 9/11 attacks delayed the entire postseason for one week beyond the original schedule.

There's little doubt that starting games so late and littering them with endless commercials is much to blame for its TV ratings that seem to shrink yearly. A country that once used to pause for the World Series is now too preoccupied. Children who once brought transistor radios to school are texting rather than listening. Baseball has lost a generation of fans, and either hasn't noticed, or worse, doesn't care.

In retrospect, I have come full-circle, like the Sisters of Charity from 1969, and pine not for any particular team, but for the game itself; how it once was played in the lingering shadows of a receding sun on a mild October afternoon in the world's greatest metropolis.

(Maresca, a local freelance writer, composes "Talking Points" for each Sunday edition.)

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