Buy me some peanuts and crackerjacks

So when my dad told me that after going to visit my grandparents next spring, he had gotten tickets for an Indians game, I was, as you can imagine, ecstatic. I got out my softball glove every day for the weeks leading up the game, cajoling my father into playing unending games of catch in the backyard just in case a foul ball came my way. My mother was forced to sit through unending rounds of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” as I eagerly anticipated the seventh inning stretch.

Finally, game day arrived. I’m going to be honest here. I can’t for the life of me remember who the Indians played that day or whether they won or lost, but for the record, neither do my parents. What I do remember is that at the end of the day, I was utterly exhausted but absolutely content. That year the Indians would crash and burn in the American League Division series, as the Baltimore Orioles would dominate the Tribe 3-1 in the series. The New York Yankees would go on to defeat the Atlanta Braves (the team I hated above all others for beating the Indians in the 1995 World Series) in the World Series, the only nights in my memory I was delighted to see the Yankees win a baseball game.

Over the next few months, I would stay up late on summer nights to watch the Indians battle their way back to the World Series once again in 1997. But as my favorite sports teams are wont to do (The Ohio State Buckeyes come to mind), the Indians choked. After clawing their way to a seventh game and sending the game to an 11th inning, the Tribe allowed an upstart franchise, the Florida Marlins, to claim the win.

This heartbreak was followed by Lofton’s trade to the hated Braves, coinciding with my joining a club soccer team, eliminating my summer evenings watching baseball with my dad.

Not even my sixth-grade-girl crush on Vizquel could keep me true to the Tribe.

That one precious outing to Jacobs Field was my first and last trip to a major league baseball stadium. Until today. Because at 7:05 tonight I will be sitting in Yankee Stadium, listening to the national anthem and gearing up for my favorite baseball team to come out and dominate the Yankees, after all the last Indians/Yankees game I watched back in 1997 ended with the Tribe triumphing over the then defending World Series Champions.

And if the Indians lose, well, I probably won’t remember this game in 10 years either.