my personal baseball traditions

I am a baseball traditionalist. That means I don't like any of the following:

• the designated hitter rule
• interleague play
• wild cards
• metal bats
• astroturf
• light beer

Yes...baseball is a game of traditions. And I, in the days when I went to a lot of ballgames, had a bunch of personal traditions. Here, for no apparent reason, are some of them:

New York, New York
I used to have Saturday season tickets to the Yankees with some friends. At the end of every game at Yankee stadium, they would play "New York, New York" over the PA system. My firends and I always sang along, and I always replaced "I wanna wake up in a city that doesn't sleep" with "I wanna wake up in a barnyard next to a sheep." My friends and I also replaced "top of the heap with "Where's Danny Heep?" I don't know why.

בוא נלך למשחק
One of the most popular tradition at baseball games is to sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" during the seventh inning stretch. I would sing it in Hebrew. It wasn't an exact translation, but it was close enough.

The Chosen One
This was a tradition for minor league games. I would pick one player before the game, and cheer for him as loudly and exuberantly as I could. I remember one particular game -- in Toledo, in 1989. Some friends and I drove down from Ann Arbor to watch the Mud Hens take on the Tidewater Tides. I chose to root for Phil Lombardi, who was playing for the Tides. All game long I would shout encouragement: "Good eye, Phil!" "Great catch, Phil!" "Good hitting, Phil!" In one inspired moment, I reacted to him tying his shoe: "Perfect knot, Phil!" Minor league ballgames -- even AAA games -- are much smaller events than major league games, and one obnoxious fan shouting can usually make himself heard. Ned Skeldon Stadium in 1989 was often a quiet place (IIRC, the Mud Hens that year were not much to cheer for). At one point, things were quiet, so I screamed "God, it's quiet here!" From across the stadium came a response: "Not with you here!" Lombardi rewarded my confidence in him. He had some insanely good game -- something like seven for weight with a bunch of RBIs. As he headed to the dugout near the end of the game, " I called out and asked him to sign a ball for me. "Sure!" he responded, "You're my biggest fan."

Other minor leaguers I cheered for over the years included Mark Carreon, Jeff Bagwell ("Hit well, Bagwell!" was a fun cheer) and Hector Villanueva.

Top Shelf
I used to have Saturday season tickets to see the Mets at Shea Stadium with friends. The way Shea was designed, there were some exposed horizontal I-beams on the undersides of decks. Our seat had just such a beam in front of it -- it was high enough up that it was above eye-level (even for a tall fan), but it wasn't quite out of reach. I noted to one of  my friends  that it was effectively a narrow shelf, and demonstrating by putting a Big Mac on it (yes, I would bring in outside food; don't tell). That Big Mac went uneaten, and I forgot it there at the end of the game. Two weeks later it was still there, so my friend challenged me. Next game, you have to bring a clown statuette to put there. So...how am I gonna get a clown statuette? I mentioned it to another friend that evening, and by the wildest of coincidences, she told me she had a clown statuette that she didn't need. So, next game, I brought the clown statuette and placed it on the shelf next to the Big Mac. "Next game," my friend said, "bring a framed picture of a duck." I complied, and our shelf of junk grew. Each game, my friend gave me a new challenge. By the end of the season we had more than half a dozen objects lined up, starting with a very stale Big Mac. Sadly, our shelf was cleaned off during the offseason and we never revived the tradition.