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37 Yankees My father lay in bed and watched TV, the Yankees games, although sometimes his eyes closed, which he explained once was how he’d learned to follow the team on radio in Bridgeport, and the play-by-play was as vivid for him as the small figures on the screen. He was depressed and now I get it—how the narrow focus on what the pitcher will do and how the batter will try to respond to what he deals from the mound is soothing, blocking out the world’s disappointments. He’d doze off for a while: the games kept going, but these were from ’23 when he was the kid for whom it mattered how Babe Ruth would do, or Wally Pipp on first base who, that year, hit .304, or Lou Gehrig, a rookie who played only thirteen games. The team went on to the Series to beat the Giants. (My father ran to tell his father the news and the old man asked, “Good for the Yid’n?” shaking his head.) It was maybe the last good thing, the last good time my father could remember, a place to float off to. ...

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