My Transformation – From Pinstripes to the Blue and Orange

Growing up in the Marlboro projects in Brooklyn, I was surrounded by the kids of ex-Giant/Dodger fans who loved the Mets. Not me, I was the son of a Bronx boy who I’m told spent as much time in the Yankee Stadium bleachers as he did class.  If there was anything Pellegrino DiDonato loved more than Babe Ruth it was his paisanos like Lazzeri, Crosetti, DiMaggio, Berra, Rizzuto and Pepitone, who actually live about five blocks from our building. I learned to read from digesting, over and over, his Yankee yearbooks that ranged from the ‘30s through the ‘50s.

My first memory of baseball was the 1958 White Sox Dodger series. Soon after I reveled in the 1960 through ’64 teams and remember each like they happened yesterday. Then our world came crashing down.

In 1964, the Yankees were looking to hire Johnny Keane away from the Cardinals but wound up with the fan’s favorite, Yogi Berra. Although they made the World Series, they lost to the Cardinals who were managed by, you guessed it, Johnny Keane.  In one of the more bizarre musical chair episodes in baseball, the Yankees promptly fired Berra and hired Keane.

Obviously, this did not sit well with the Yankee fans and especially Pellegrino. My father just stopped watching baseball. He said he would never watch another game again and stuck to his guns for a good many years.  But with the urging of my mother, he eventually came back and became a rabid Yankee fan again in the ‘70s.

But what was I to do? No way I could ever be a Yankee fan again.  All my buddies were raving about this new fun team that had guys named Gondor, Throneberry and Choo Choo. Loyalty wasn’t an issue. Hadn’t they betrayed Me? It wasn’t like I had $500 worth of team jerseys. No one did.  Also, $500 was about a month’s worth of family income.

So I joined the fun and became a Mets fan. In a few years, it looked like a sweet deal. We had Seaver, Koosman and Ryan and an amazing run in ’69.  You all know the rest of the story.

All I can say now is that I still love my Mets and I am glad my father never gave up on the Giants.