YANKEE LEGENDS & WIFFLE BALL

If it’s not Little League, it’s wiffle ball, probably one of the greatest yard games ever. The ball doesn’t travel as far as a baseball when you hit it, but there is something about a wiffle ball hit and watching the ball travel that just screams “childhood” all over again.

My son is a baseball animal. It’s all he wants to do. If he’s not playing in an organized game, he’s throwing up a wiffle ball in the backyard and cranking it across the yard. On Christmas, there was a sale at Modell’s, a Yankee sponsor. I bought my kid 12 wiffle balls and a Junk ball bat. When March hit. he got the fever for baseball after a long winter’s nap. He was out there and started cranking them over the fence. He has 1 left. They’re stuck in the evergreen trees, they rolled down the street and into the sewer, and he cranked a few across to the neighbor's yard with what he calls his “power swing.” I just can’t keep up.

Now he has a new thing, baseball stances. You’ve seen the guy on Youtube that imitates the players stances of the Yankees players, right? My son has Robinson Cano down, plus, he can stand there like David Ortiz or even do his best Brandon Phillips. He’s a child baseball scholar at this point. I made a suggestion. Let’s watch video of the greats. We watched Yogi Berra and Reggie Jackson and now he’s trying to perfect them as well. I nicknamed my son “The Show” because as his fall ball league is starting and he’s standing in the batter’s box, he’ll give me a look for a moment and then it’s my chance to figure out what stance he’s doing at that at bat. He’s quizzing me; the freaking kid is quizzing me as I sit in the stands, it’s hilarious.

Yesterday, we were in the backyard hitting wiffle balls. He stood in the worn out dirt spot in the yard and said “Who’s this?” Now, my son is lefty. He stood in the imaginary box, and swung the bat straight through the zone about 3 times and the barrel of the bat pointed at me at the end of each practice swing. He then lifted his back elbow up alittle, the bat was alittle higher than normal and he had some slight movement. His right leg was out a bit and it all looked pretty familiar, but I couldn’t place it. “Who?”, I said. “Paul O’Neill.” I got chills.

I was proud at that moment. Paul O’Neill is probably the most exciting Yankee to watch over the years and being part of 4 World Championship Yankee teams, it hit me, my son has never actually seen Paul O’Neill play. What’s my point? Baseball greats carry over from generation to generation in such a powerful way because, the bottom line is, everybody loves a winner. So, it looks like I’ll be picking up a #21 Jersey this Christmas.

A salute to "The Warrior". Your influence has translated to a 9 year old kid in suburbia USA in 2011. Warrior... meet "The Show."

You can’t beat that... you really can’t.

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