Mourning the Passing of an Old Friend

By Bill Campione

Your regularly scheduled Channeling Harry Doyle column will be back next Thursday. This week we instead print an obituary to a deceased friend.

Last night the Yankee family lost a treasured friend. In the past, we’ve suffered the loss of great players and personalities, long time supporters and consistent winners but this time it’s different. Moving on is difficult, and there is no easy way to bid farewell to someone you have come to know and love as if it was your best friend.  It is with a heavy heart and great sadness that I report this news that it is time to say goodbye to something that I have cherished since my 18^th year. But on August 27, 2008, for the first time in what seems like generations, the Yankees have lost hope.

Some have declared hope dead in the Bronx long ago. Those reports were premature, because as anyone who has witnessed late year heroics knows, it can come at times when you least expect it. Hope has been there every October for 14 years, and even when it failed us before the ultimate goal was reached, it always seemed as there was a chance even in the darkest of hours.

What killed hope? Was it a lack of clutch hitting? Was it the inability to score runs? Was it injuries to key members of the team? All of these factors played a role, but the answer lies in the roster as a whole. No one person, no matter how many times they may disappoint, can turn hope on its ear. It is a group effort that takes months to build up enough strength to make hope go away. It’s not about payroll and it’s not about talent. Hope thrives when a team is built around, or at least including, those who inspire. You see, inspiration can lead to hope, and inspiration can be built with simple acts of intelligence and effort. Those players are nowhere to be found on this Yankee team, and so hope has abandoned it.

Many will be overjoyed at the passing of hope. You’ll hear it everywhere; Yankee fans are arrogant. Yankee fans feel entitled. Yankee fans are spoiled.

These thoughts are shared by many, and in some cases, rightfully so. The recent success of the team in the Bronx has bred a new generation of fan that only knows winning and has no problem telling their coworkers, friends, and family about how great their team is. These are the fans that get most of the attention because they are the most vocal and the most hateable. I have the benefit of more perspective, and I like to think that I am the rule and not the exception.

I remember there being hope in the early 1980s, when George Steinbrenner turned the Bronx Bombers into the Bronx Burners and signed Roy Smalley and Dave Collins and later let Reggie walk. That hope flamed out quickly.

I remember there being hope in the mid 1980s when the lineup was unstoppable with Rickey, Willie, Donnie Baseball, and Big Dave. Unfortunately, hope only lasted for one half inning as Joe Cowley and Dennis Rasmussen gave hope away one pitch at a time.

I remember there being so little hope in the late 1980s and early 1990s that we clung to any drips of hope that were fed to us, as we cheered the arrival of Wade Taylor, Jeff Johnson, and Scott Kamieniecki.

But the hope that came in recent years was not hope bred from salary, as many, including our owners and executives, have forgotten. Hope was built on the legs of a gangly kid with huge eyeglasses. Hope was built on the left arm of a free agent that was our second choice. Hope was built on a former platoon player from a former world champion. Hope was built through role players who beat out ground balls in losing games. Hope was built on simple sayings, like “We play today, we win today. Das it.”

Hope has passed by the pay stubs of millionaires who were brought in to keep hope alive. The architects of this team need to realize quickly that what makes hope grow and prosper is not what they had once thought.

And that’s why today we are not mourning the Yankee season, and instead we grieve for the passing of hope. I didn’t feel entitled to October baseball, but I hoped for it.

Am I being melodramatic? Yup. Am I being a bit sarcastic? Maybe. But as I look back on my baseball viewing for the last 14 years, it’s not the winning that I cared about or that made the blowhard at work crow after every victory.

It was the hope.

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