Almost Going Home

Mary DeCicco/MLB Photos via Getty Images

It's been four years.

In fact, it's been 1,516 days.

For me, that's a lifetime. Sort of like not winning a World Series in 10 years.

In a Yankees fans life, we count things like this.

So, for the first time in those precious 1,516 days, I'll walk back into Yankee Stadium tonight, thanks to my son.

Sean took a class in sports history and competition in the past school year. Included in the class was a field trip to Yankee Stadium.

"I want to go with you," he said.

You don't understand what that meant to me. Like, it's almost indescribable. We barely have a sports connection. He'll ask how a game went occasionally, but this class -- taught by a hockey coach who I know -- has given us a whole different bond.

I didn't forget his request to go and finally made good on it.

Orioles/Yankees tonight at 7:05 p.m.

Yankee Stadium has always been my home. The old stadium was it. Old or refurbished, it was heaven. My field of dreams.

The new one is...fine. Nice. It's just not the old one.

Being a Yankees fan is...well, it's whatever. Most hate us. Detest us. Despise us.

Winning makes a fanbase an arrogant lot, and I know that.

It's funny to remember that this franchise -- born out of the dregs of the old Baltimore Orioles in 1903 -- was a joke when it first came into the American League.

Though they battled to the last day of the 1904 season, before a team from Boston -- yeah, them -- won the pennant on a wild pitch, the Yankees* of 1903-1919 were actually pretty middling to bad.

* Yes, I know they were also the Highlanders, but as Marty Appel pointed out in Pinstripe Empire: The New York Yankees from Before the Babe to After the Boss, the "Yankees" name was fairly prominent before becoming permanent around 1912.

So when the Yankees -- the little brother to the Giants -- acquired George Herman Ruth in December 1919, the world immediately changed.

They made their first World Series in 1921. They won their first title in 1923, which is the same year that the REAL Yankee Stadium opened.

There have been 26 more titles since then. They didn't go very long without winning, so to a Yankees fan, the years of 1962 to 1977 and 1978 to 1996 were purgatory.

It's been 10 years. They've haven't gone a decade without a World Series appearance since the 1910s.

And if they don't get better pitching, that's going to happen in the 2010s.

So they need to continue to feast on the Orioles, which they'll do tonight at 7:05.

Thanks to Sean.