*Note- The following is an article I wrote on March 14th, 2012 for Yankee Fans Unite, the previous site for which some of us now with The Greedy Pinstripes used to write for before we merged. "Fangirls" existed long before Twitter.
It is now estimated that women make up forty-six percent of
baseball’s fan base and that percentage is growing every day. That’s the
largest percentage of women in a major sport’s fan base in the United
States. That number is up from thirty-seven percent of women who were
included in baseball’s fan base just ten years ago. When I first
joined Twitter, one of the things that soon became clear to me were the
incredible number of female Yankee fans. These aren’t women who just
cheer for the cute players. They’re intense, they’re passionate, they
watch every game, and they know what they’re talking about. Suzyn
Waldman sure isn’t the only woman screaming every time the Yankees play.
The trend of increased participation in baseball’s fan base
was further exemplified just a few days ago when MLB announced that two
women had been chosen to participate in the “Fan Cave” promotion.
http://espn.go.com/espnw/more-sports/7652717/nine-female-contestants-vying-part-mlb-fan-cave
In January, the Yankees held their second annual women’s fantasy camp
in Tampa Bay. Ninety-one women paid close to two thousand dollars to
live a three-day dream of playing baseball while being instructed by
such former Yankee stars as Tino Martinez and Darryl Strawberry.
http://newyork.yankees.mlb.com/nyy/fan_forum/fantasycamp_women.jsp
I’m not sure why baseball has more appeal to women than the other
major sports in this country. Whether it’s the lack of violence or the
intellectual nature of the game, women have embraced baseball in larger
numbers than ever before. As baseball has slipped further behind the
NFL in the television ratings, hope is not lost that baseball can rally
and can close the gap. If baseball does close the gap in the ratings,
the rapidly growing number of women in baseball’s fan base will lead the
way. While many people have found the increased interest in baseball
by women surprising, I’m not surprised at all. I had the privilege of
knowing one of the greatest Yankee fans of all time, and she was a
woman.
In my last article about spring training, I spoke of the education
about baseball that my grandfather William Shepardson had given me in my
first twelve years on this planet. At 1:15 A.M. on this past Saturday
morning, his wife Adele Shepardson, went to join him.
My grandmother was many things while she was here. She was a
daughter, a sister, a wife, a mother, a grandmother, and a
great-grandmother. In addition to helping my grandfather operate his
business, she was also a business owner of her own before it was common
for women to own businesses. She was the first person to take me to the
Baseball Hall Of Fame in Cooperstown. When I was eight years old, my
idol was Thurman Munson. I was about to enter the first rung of little
league baseball and hatched a plan. I surmised that if I showed up for
the first practice with a catcher’s mitt that I would get to play the
position. My grandmother bought me a catcher’s mitt, and I got to
play the position.
For the last thirty-one years and three days of her life on this
planet my grandmother was a widow. When you say it out loud, thirty-one
years and three days, it sure seems like a long time to walk the earth
without a cherished partner. In that period of her life she devoted
herself tirelessly to family, friends, and faith to try to fill the
tremendous void that her husband’s passing had left in her life.
Fortunately for her, my grandfather left her a tremendous gift that
helped her pass those thirty-one years and three days without him. He
left her the gift of being a Yankee fan.
When my grandmother was a very little girl, her father left her
family in an age when that sort of thing was considered scandalous and
stigmatizing. With her two sisters and mother, she moved in with her
grandparents. In a household dominated by women, what she knew about
sports could probably have been written on the back of a postage stamp
with some room left over. That would change when she met and married
the oldest of seven boys in a family where sports dominated life
itself. In the family she married into, if the boys weren’t playing
sports they were talking about them, listening to them, or watching
them. It was a Yankee family through and through. When my grandparents
became one of the first families in town to own a television, dozens of
men would come over to watch the Yankees every time they were
broadcast. My grandmother had two choices. Since she sure wasn’t going
to beat them, she joined them. In an era where far fewer women
were baseball fans than in today’s age, she began a romance with the New
York Yankees that lasted the rest of her life. She was ahead of her
time.
The fondest baseball memory I have with my grandmother occurred on
October 2nd, 1978. After a wild summer where the Yankees looked
hopelessly beaten in the AL East, they had rallied from 14 1/2 games out
of first place to take the lead in the AL East in September. The Red
Sox refused to go quietly though, and rallied back to finish in a tie
with the Yankees and force a one game playoff. At the age of nine, I
sat in the front parlor of my grandparents home with my grandfather and
we agonized over every pitch. My grandmother was too nervous to sit
still, and would walk in and out of the room.
Trailing by two runs in the seventh inning, my grandfather and I let
out a collective groan when Jim Spencer flied out with Chris Chambliss
on second base and Roy White on first. There were now two outs and
coming to the plate was the light hitting Bucky Dent. Bucky Dent
just happened to be my grandmother’s favorite player on that Yankee
team. So when I said to my grandfather “Oh no, we have no chance now,
Bucky Dent is up” and he made a sour face my grandmother scolded us
both. She said “You’ll see!! my Bucky will do it!” As the famous
home run cleared the Green Monster, my grandmother erupted. She danced
around the room, screaming over and over again “He did it!!” as my
grandfather and I smiled sheepishly at each other and at her. She took
me out to dinner after the game. As I sat across from her eating pizza,
she proudly declared to the other Yankee fans who stopped by the table
to say hello that HER Bucky had won the game.
The joy that the Yankees brought my grandmother was immeasurable.
Even in the dark times that followed that 1978 World Series win, she’d
watch every game, often keeping score. In 1995 she saw a young
shortstop play a few games with the Yankees. She declared he was going
to be her new favorite player and would lead the Yankees back to the top
some day. His name was
Derek Jeter,
and the next year she proudly proclaimed that the player she had
declared as “hers” had done just what she said he’d do. She enjoyed
those dynasty years with great pride and enthusiasm. She was
heartbroken when Joe Torre left, and she exulted when the Yankees would
win it all again in 2009.
For over sixty years my grandmother knew the greatest joy of all, and
that was being a Yankee fan. She wouldn’t have traded it for anything.
I don’t know exactly how many games she watched in her lifetime but I
can estimate that my grandmother viewed over five thousand Yankee games
after my grandfather left her. The quality of her life wouldn’t have
been the same without her love of baseball and the Yankees.
So this year, everyone should make it a point to try to introduce at
least one woman to baseball. You might be giving someone a gift that
will last them a lifetime.
