What happens when a Dodger fan and a Yankee fan get real – Daily News

So there’s Anasazi Ochoa in LA, a 27-year-old graduate student at USC.

And Greg Durante in New York; he is a 35-year-old occupational therapist who works at a hospital in Brooklyn.

They find themselves on the opposite side of a monumental event that completely changes their mood and is also completely (probably) out of their control.

They don’t know each other, but in recent days they’ve been contacting me via voice memos and text messages because I wanted to know what happens when fans stop being polite and start getting real… while their teams are meeting in the World SeriesS.

She is a Dodgers fan. He’s a Yankees fan. And they’re both incredibly good sports, but for now Ochoa is in better spirits; her team led 2-0 heading to New York for Game 3 of the World Series on Monday.

FRIDAY GAME 1

12:22 p.m., New York

“A lot of emotions are running very high,” Durante said, just under eight hours before the first pitch. “All morning I feel my heart pounding in my chest. It’s still a toss-up between having enough strength to run through a wall or just having a completely incomplete panic attack.”

9:27 am, California

Walking down Exposition Boulevard in LA, Ochoa thinks about a photo she saw of Yankees slugger Aaron Judge taking batting practice in uniform: “What’s going on there? …an intimidation tactic? If that’s what that is, it made me laugh… I have a good feeling about tonight. You know we will strike first, strike hard and set the tone. It’s going to be a good match, but these guys seem very, very unintimidating.”

Hey, real quick. Some background on these two before the first pitch: Durante grew up in a family of Yankees fans, in a house with a special “Yankee Room” filled with memorabilia. “I remember,” he told me earlier this week, “how happy I was in the 1990s when they won those championships (three out of four between 1996 and 2000). like a child again.” He will be at Game 4; I didn’t think for a second about spending $1,000 for a ticket. Had to do it.

Ochoa grew up a Dodger fan… in San Diego. She can thank her parents, lifelong Dodger fans, for that. They also inherited their fandom, especially from their mother’s side, because Anasazi’s grandfather, Roberto, a Mexican immigrant, was swept up in Fernandomania in the early 1980s.

“Fernando Valenzuela’s impact is a big part of my identity as a Dodger fan,” she said of the Dodgers’ stellar pitching. who died last week. “Even though I wasn’t there when he played, as a Mexican-American Dodger fan, that history is passed on.”

Leads her to Friday.

Throughout the afternoon in New York, Durante receives text messages, like this one, from a cousin: “Happy World Series Day. Let’s (bleep) go Yankees!”

Meanwhile, in California, Ochoa says, “I know I said I wasn’t a superstitious person, but I just thought of something: One thing I won’t do is I won’t play Randy Newman’s ‘I love LA.’ alone in my car after we won… that’s only reserved for our wins.

Not a superstitious person – no, not at all – Ochoa said she did, however, feel some responsibility for the Dodgers’ loss in Game 2 in the National League Championship Series: “My fiancé Eric (a Padres fan) had a Brooklyn Jackie Robinson jersey, because as a black man he felt it was important to honor the player who broke the color barrier. He always justified that it represented Brooklyn, not LA. When the Dodgers won the NLDS (against the Padres), he gave it to me, he didn’t want anything blue in his closet anymore… I wore it for the first time (without washing) in Game 2 against the Mets. We got blown out and I wondered if it was bad mojo from a disgruntled SD fan.

7:40 PM Friday, New York

“Thirty minutes and then it’s game time, honey!” says Durante from a bustling Staten Island bar. I picture him rubbing his palms together. “I’m starting to get excited, really excited.”

4:41 PM Friday, California

Ochoa is about to watch Game 1 on her phone in the Chula Vista High School football press box, next to her father, Alejandro, because he is the Spartans’ public address announcer. Oddly enough, life doesn’t stop for the World Series. The Lakers and Trojans games also took place Friday, as did Chula Vista, whose school colors, Ochoa noted, “are also blue and white.”

At 8:43 p.m., his time, Durante texts: “MASSINATE THE UMPIRE.”

Three minutes later he texts again: “Let the record show it was a joke, I don’t want to be arrested for conspiracy to commit murder after this article is printed. But seriously, these inconsistent referees are terrible and ruin the game.”

He then sends a three-second voice memo at 9:47 p.m.: “STAAANNNTINN!!!”

Giancarlo Stanton, op Notre Dame product from Sherman Oaksjust hit a two-run, 400-foot home run to put the Yankees ahead, 2-1. Durante also texted, “I changed where I was standing after LA scored their first point. Then HR for Stanton. I’m not moving.”

“Story of the whole season,” says a somber Ochoa in a message at 7:36 p.m. in California, where the Dodgers are still trailing entering eighth place. “Runners on base and we can’t take them home. But I still believe. It’s not over until it’s over.”

You know what happens next.

8:39 PM, California

“Oh my god, Mirjam! An amazing grand slam! Freddie Vrijman! Oh my god!” Ochoa blubbers, screams, cries – then overwhelmed Freeman’s walk-off grand slam in the 10th inning gave the Dodgers a 6-3 victory.

“…oh my goodness, oh my goodness, oh my goodness, oh my goodness! That’s right, that’s right, that’s right!”

SATURDAY GAME 2

I’m not losing Durante, although I would have understood if I had. After Freeman’s heartbreaking heroics, I only hear from him the next morning at 9:27 in New York: ‘What a nightmare. Worst case scenario… Went to bed furious. Woke up furious. Wanting to punch something (but smart enough to realize how stupid that would be).

“I’m feeling VERY pessimistic about the rest of the series. We have to win tonight.”

At 10:23 a.m. he adds succinctly: “I’m dead inside.”

I wonder for the millionth time: Why do we do this to ourselves?

Ochoa sends a message at 8:06 a.m., as soon as she wakes up: “I still can’t believe this happened… I was shaking.”

I say to myself: Oh, that’s why.

Durante gets up from the mat. Drinks coffee and takes a long walk. Calls on his father to express his condolences, and then goes to play volleyball to “get some sunshine and take out my frustrations” and otherwise “distract myself from my overwhelming fear and use all my inner strength for optimism and hope.” ‘

Before the game starts, he informs me, “Last night’s T-shirt didn’t work, so tonight we’re going with a different Yankees T-shirt, a different watch, different shoes and a hopeful attitude.”

Ochoa spends her day doing assignments and hanging out with her fiancé, Eric Fleming, before grabbing a surf and turf burrito at a spot near her parents’ house before the competition started just after 5 p.m. “Keeping it West Coast,” she texts about half an hour before the first pitch. “NYC has bodegas, SoCal has taco shops!”

The Dodgers put up four runs in the first three innings, building what feels, with the Dodgers’ starting pitcher Trading Yoshinobu Yamamotoas a comfortable 4-1 lead.

Durante: “It’s like someone sticks a knife in my heart.”

In the fifth inning, Ochoa says, “If you can’t hear it in my voice, I’m just in a state of bliss. It’s kind of fun to be a Dodger fan right now.

The game becomes closer once the Yankees score and load the bases in the ninth. But the Dodgers come out “aaaand twisting the knife,” Durante writes from The Commissioner, the popular Brooklyn bar where he watched Game 2.

“You know what?” Ochoa says next the 4-2 victory. “It’s exciting, but it’s quiet. We’re ready, I think we’re definitely ready for New York. We were ready for New York.”

Her reaction, however, is subdued because Dodgers is a superstar Shohei Ohtani’s left shoulder was injured sliding to second in the eighth inning: “All I can think about are healing thoughts for Ohtani and that’s it.”

The highs and lows and lows and highs of sports fandom. Proving and disproving Einstein’s theory, as if he figured it out for Dodgers and Yankees fans, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. A winner and a loser.

To the unindoctrinated, it may seem silly what we allow sports to do to us. But what sports does for us, that’s the magic.

Durante’s best explanation: “It is an animal and primal reaction, completely deep-rooted and bordering on uncontrollable. It’s a situation I have absolutely no control over, but the emotions I feel are in contrast.

“I really think it’s out of love,” he added. “I love this team.”

Ochoa wrote: “I watch baseball because of my family roots. The Dodgers are the team that brings us together, amid our hectic schedules and life journeys.

“Baseball gives me hope, brings me joy and reminds me to never give up,” she added. “Despite the countless heartbreaks of recent years, the last words of the late great Vin Scully always stuck in my mind: ‘But you know what, there will be a new day, and eventually a new year, and when the coming winter makes way for spring, ooh, rest assured, it’s time for Dodger baseball again.” ”

Originally published: October 27, 2024 at 12:56 PM