The Yanks? No thanks!(New York Yankees baseball club) (Column)

• Author: Barett, Wayne M.

"The YANKS? No thanks!" My handmade pin, its letters

I written in large, bold, black magic marker, was affixed to my T-shirt as I made my way around campus, displaying the biggest scowl seen this side of Sal Magie (the snarling ace of the old New York Giants). The source of my discontent was the New York Yankees, who had won their first American League pennant in 12 years and were set to play the Cincinnati Reds in the 1976 World Series. My anger quickly turned to glee, however, when the Bronx Bombers were swept by the Big Red Machine,

My renewed optimism that the baseball gods somehow were on my side after all ended abruptly just 12 months later, when the Yankees indeed did win the World Series, downing the Los Angeles Dodgers in six games. For years afterward, a picture of devastated shortstop Freddie Patek, his shoulders stooped, head in hands, sobbing in the dugout after a Yankee ninth-inning rally gave New York the 1977 pennant instead of his Kansas. City Royals, hung over my desk, a visual reminder of the very real agony that can descend on athletes and their admirers.

All these memories and more came flooding back to me this year as I stood in the auxiliary press area beyond first base at Yankee Stadium on a cool, comfortable October night. With Halloween less than a week away, I soon was to learn that the Ghost of World Series Past wasn't finished with me yet. The Yankees stood on the verge of another world title, their first since 1978.

As the ninth inning progressed, I thought of my dad on the same site some 32 years earlier, when he and a buddy got last-minute tickets to the 1964 World Series. They ended up triple-parked a while and a half from the ballpark. Running all the way, they still arrived too late to see the St. Louis Cardinals fall behind 3-0. But a grand slam by St. Louis third baseman Ken Boyer solved that problem and the two Yankee-haters were thrilled, while the Redbirds went on to take the Series in seven. The St. Louis banner my dad brought home that day was the first of hundreds of pennants I was to collect over the ensuing decades and still hangs proudly with my ample potpourri of baseball memorabilia.

My mind also flashed back to 10 Octobers ago, when I had stood in another New York City borough, this time witnessing the New York Mets snuffing out the Boston Red Sox in an unforgettable Fall Classic. Like the Braves of 1996, the Sox of a decade earlier had won the first two games on the road, only to have things...