They ask me how I could root for them, the Evil Empire as they like to call them here in Boston. ”I won’t hold it against you,” they tell me when they find out I am a Yankees fan, or that my favorite players are not named Ortiz or Youkilis, but rather Jeter and Rodriguez.
“But you live in Boston, how could you be a Yankees fan?” they ask.
“It’s easy,” I tell them. “How could I not? It’s something that I shared with my dad.”
I grew up with the Pinstripes, a passion I inherited from my dad, “Patsy” Perezella, a die-hard Yankees fan. The child of Italian immigrants, my dad had heroes, and their names were DiMaggio, Berra, and Rizzutto, Yankee greats whose backgrounds were similar to his own. Everyone needs a hero, and my dad, like so many others in his neighborhood, had found his on a baseball field in the Bronx.
It’s easy to remember the first time I put on a New York Yankees cap and pledged allegiance to the pinstripes forever. It was the Halloween after the 1977 World Series, and Yankee fever had re-entered the hearts of many a people in southwestern Connecticut, where we called home. It made my dad happy when my friends and I embraced his Yanks and chose to trick-or-treat as our favorite players -- Guidry, Dent and Piniella.
Our shared passion for the Pinstripes continued until his death in 2005, and today, I continue to root for the Pinstripes in his memory.
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