Wednesday, March 25, 2026 |
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"Fine Daddy—I'm a Mets fan from now on." So begins "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the New York Yankees," the perfect story for this MLB opening night, as the Yankees take on the Giants in San Francisco in game one. The statement is a dagger in the boy's father's heart, a sly needling to a diehard Yankee fan dad as only a kid can manage. In this lively personal essay, Kai Schreiner explores the ways we pass team and sports loyalty from father to son, creating bonds, forging tribal identities and, of course, modeling good ball-breaking. In editing the story, I had to set aside my own lifelong Mets fandom, and try to see the world through the (uncomfortable) lens of a Yankee fan. It wasn't easy, but I somehow bore up under the strain. Just don't tell anyone in my family. I hope you like the story. – John Kenney, managing editor |
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A feel-good story about winning, losing, raising kids, the joy of sports, and, well, the Battle of Stalingrad. |
"Fine, Daddy—I'm a Mets fan from now on." There it was, right in my own kitchen, the ultimate Uno reverse card, the dagger in any sports fan's heart: your kid threatening to switch to your team's rival because you had the audacity to ask him to finish his supper. Not that there's anything wrong with being a Mets fan. (I mean, apart from the obvious.) It's just that in my family, we are Yankees fans. End of. You support the team your family supports. And now one of my three sons, eight-year-old triplets, raised from infancy loyal to the New York Yankees and steeped in their legacy—Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Murderers' Row, DiMaggio and Mantle and Jeter and 27 world championships—was threatening to switch allegiances and pull for the can't-stop-talking-about-'86 Mets. They know how to get to me. From my aggrieved tone, you might assume that I'm a lifelong fan myself, raised in a Yankee household, but it's more complicated than that. My path to the Yankees, and even to baseball, for that matter, is in some ways unusual, and at the same time as utterly typical—and typically American—as it could be. I became a Yankees fan in 1999. Yes, the year they won the second of three World Series in a row. I know, I know: How are you going to put up with sports pontification from a fair-weather, pom-pom-waving bandwagon jumper like me? Suspend your judgment until you read to the end. |
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When it comes to replacing your summer essentials, the cooler is often the last thing to go. You tell yourself, "Oh, that old thing can last another year," and it does, but each year the broken hinges and leaks get just a little bit worse. Our advice? Don't let another season go by without replacing your dinky old cooler. Buy one of these at Amazon's spring sale event. Amazon's Big Spring Sale, which lasts from now through the end of the month, has a bunch of cooler brands discounted, including certain Yeti coolers marked down by between 20 and 30 percent. For soft-sided coolers, it's hard to go wrong with Yeti, especially when the normally $325 M20 backpack cooler (available in only one color, but it's a sexy gender-neutral wild vine red) is going for $227, a savings just shy of a hundred bucks. Stanley and Igloo are also among the names seeing big discounts, most notably 40 percent off Stanley's Adventure Outdoor Cooler, bringing it down to a very chill $78.
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When the Yankees bring Thurman Munson to New York after only ninety-nine games in the minors—after playing in Binghamton and Syracuse—he just says to anyone who will listen: What took them so long? He's not mouthing off. He means it, is truly perplexed. What took them so goddamn long? Time is short, and the Yankees need a player, a real honest-to-God player who wants to win as much as blood needs oxygen or a wave needs water. It's that elemental. And wham, Thurman Munson becomes that player. He wins the Rookie of the Year award in 1970. He takes the starting job from Jake Gibbs as if the guy's handing it to him and plays catcher for the next decade, the whole of the seventies. He's named the Yankees' first captain since Lou Gehrig forty years earlier and shows up at a press conference in a hunting vest. He wins the Most Valuable Player award in 1976, and he still wears bad clothes: big, pointy-collared shirts and dizzying plaid sport coats. And since this is New York, the press has an opinion or two. They call Thurman Munson grouchy, brutish, stupid, petty, greedy, oversensitive. It becomes a soap opera: Thurman Munson pours a plate of spaghetti on one reporter's head and nearly kicks another's ass. But the fans—all they see is this walrus-looking guy who plays like he's a possessed walrus. During a game against Oakland, when he commits an error that scores Don Baylor and then he subsequently strikes out at the plate, they heap all kinds of abuse on him, and, heading back to the dugout, he just ups and gives them the finger. Hoists the finger to everyone at Yankee Stadium. That's not family entertainment! The next day when he comes to bat, when his name is announced and Thurman Munson steels himself for a rain of boos, the same fans begin to applaud, then give him a tremendous ovation. |
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