MLB: A Week Without the New York Yankees for a Die-Hard Yankee Fan
August 18, 2011 · Doug Rush · Jump to comments
Article Source: Bleacher Report - New York Yankees
It’s been a little while since I’ve been able to write anything on this website, so it does feel good to be back on here again.
For those who don’t know or weren’t a part of this website late last year, in December I got married. Because my wife is a teacher with limited time for vacation, we had to put off going on our honeymoon until August.
So we finally got to travel away for almost a week on a cruise to Bermuda.
First, if you have never been to Bermuda, go. The beaches are clean, it’s 85 and sunny everyday and the people are very friendly. Also, if you have never been on a cruise like I had up until this week, definitely go. The drinks are good, the food is always being served, the pool is always open and the experience is worth the price.
So, while going on this cruise, I had extremely limited reception and Internet coverage on my iPhone, which meant trying to keep up with the Yankees and baseball scores was virtually impossible.
The Internet on the ship’s Internet cafe is almost a dollar a minute and it’s pretty much like dial-up, so that’s not even worth it.
The one sports bar that was on the ship had their version of ESPN via satellite, which played mostly tennis and didn’t show many highlights or scores except at like 1 a.m.
Even the international calling, texting and Internet plan I had on my phone (just in case my family needed to reach me) didn’t give me great cell phone reception on the ship or island, so me being a die-hard fan who watches almost every game, would have no means to any baseball.
Have any of you ever gone almost an entire week without watching the Yankees? Or any of your favorite teams?
You invest a lot of time, energy, money and your life into your team.
You spend the money on the jerseys, hats and t-shirts; you watch the games and live and breathe through every pitch or play; and some of you spend the extra money to get certain sports packages through your cable companies so you can watch the games every night.
And for me, who also writes stories on here all the time and wouldn’t have new material for a story.
But when you take a week off from your team, it’s basically taking a vacation from being a fan—kind of like when you go on vacation, you take a break from normal life.
I wasn’t checking my phone every second to see a score. I wasn’t wondering what time the Yankees were playing. I wasn’t checking ESPN for any of the highlights. And the cruise ship didn’t have any newspapers on board, so there were no box-scores to even check from the night before.
It’s a nice break. The stress of being a fan doesn’t exist.
But coming back home to New Jersey today, I had full reception when I reached port in Bayonne, so I was curious to check and see how the Yankees did. Even my wife Kim, who is a more casual fan than most, asked me, “Hey, what place are the Yankees in now after this week?”
Now I had to check the past week’s games.
When I left the country, the Yankees were trailing the Red Sox by one game in the A.L. East.
Coming back, I now find the Yankees are in first place by a half-game over the Red Sox in the A.L. East.
That was a nice, lovely surprise to come home to.
I saw that the Yankees and Tampa Bay Rays split the series over the weekend and then got rained out for the series finale. Apparently, there was rain back home, but in Bermuda, all I noticed was 85-degree sunny weather.
I also saw that the Yankees took two out of three against the Kansas City Royals, and I read up on last night’s game with the whole home run/ground rule double controversy and the Yankees’ attempted comeback in the ninth inning against Joakim Soria.
Normally, a game like last night’s would have had me worked up and would’ve been hard to get over. But since I didn’t see the game and only read the abridged version on my phone, I just shrugged my shoulders and said oh well.
Now I’m back home to regular life and back to watching games every night again.
But for almost an entire week, I didn’t need to be a fan.
And I was actually okay with it.
But don’t get me wrong, at 7 a.m. on Thursday morning, the Yankees fan cap went back on.
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