Synopsis: My Life in Terms of Baseball

PROLOGUE

When I was 6 years old, a large chunk of my free time was spent in my carpeted, low-ceiling basement playing video games. I had a ping pong table and a big back yard to run around in. I had a basketball net that was not installed to regulation in the back corner of my driveway. I had a bicycle and I had friends. But when the choice arose as to what I really wanted to do, it inevitable came down to playing baseball on my Intellevision video game console.

The year was 1981 and the the new hot system just hit kids stores. Atari was out already and all the kids I knew had it. But not me. I didn't want it. My friend Danny had this crazy contraption called Intellevision and I was jealous. It was supposed to be the new hot video game product on the market. The graphics were far superior to anything else out there and this especially held true for their sports titles - especially baseball. Nowadays ti would be laughed at, but back then, it was a revolution.

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In 1980, the Philadelphia Phillies won their first ever World Series title after 97 years of losing. One of the oldest franchises in baseball's long history, they reached the World Series in 1915 and lost in 5 games. In 1950, the famous Whiz Kids got swept in four close games by the New York Yankees. My dad was six years old and hearing him tell the story of that lost opportunity is heartbreaking. From 1976-1979, the Phillies lost three years in a row in the National League Championship Series. They were good, but never great. In 1980, everything clicked and the team that wouldn't say die did just that. They survived a grueling NLCS against Houston and then ripped through the Kansas City Royals to win their first title. My dad went crazy. Philadelphia went crazy. I was only 6 at the time, but for a Jewish kid from the suburbs, I finally had a sense of what Christmas felt like. Even though we lived in a small New Jersey town 30 minutes west of New York City at the time, we were still Phillie fans .

Despite living only 90-minutes from the Pennsylvania border, I was in Yankee and Mets country. Because of my allegiance to the Phillies, there was no way I could ever root for the Mets. Even though I was only 6 years old, I knew this was an impossibility. So that left the Yankees. They were an American League team and most of my friends wore Yankee hats and jerseys to school and I felt left out. I was always one to try and fit in, at all costs. I had no sense of history with regards to rooting for the Yankees. I knew the names Mantle, Ruth, Gehrig, and Dimaggio, but I was too young to remember Bucky Dent's 1978 heroics and I just didn't understand what I was getting myself into.

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During Hannukah 1980, I received Intellevision and my world changed. When I played video baseball alone, there were two teams. The Red Team and The Blue Team. Programmatically, my only option was to control the blue team. And the computer was always the red team. I would keep boxscores for all the games I played, writing down each team's lineup on blue-lined paper and recording what each player did during their time at bat. I played an entire season multiple times and would compile stats for each player. Players like Willie Randolph, Dave Winfield, Reggie Jackson, Graig Nettles, Ron Guidry, Goose Gossage. These became my guys. Willie had speed. Reggie swung for the fences. The Louisiana Lightning had a mean fastball. And Winfield was a five-tool player. In my eyes, the Red team didn't have a chance. I was beginning to love the Yankees.

Of course the stars playing for the Phillies were also living deep in my heart - especially Mike Schmidt. The Phillies were world champs and they had a lineup that was as good as any team. Bowa, Rose, Schmidt, Trillo, McBride, Carlton, McGraw. But of all them, Schmidt was my favorite. He was a sweet swinging third baseman who led the league in homeruns (and strikeouts) regularly. He wiggled his butt slowly while waiting for the pitcher to throw the ball. My dad would emulate him when we played catch in the backyard and I, too, wiggled my tushy once I started playing organized ball. "It was a timing mechanism," Schmidt said in his memoir.

Despite my boyhood man crush on Schmitty, Intellevision forced me to root for the Yankees because i was the blue team. It was that simple. The Phillies had just won the World Series and I jumped off the bandwagon just in time to see the Yankees enter a period of losing that would last 15 years. Who knew that 28 years later, my boyhood teams would meet on the grandest of all stages. The Phillies are the best team in the National League and the Yankees are the best team in the American league. And I am stuck in the middle.