Yankees Win! Yankees Win!

It is November, with the morning thermometer regularly dipping into the 30s, and baseball season has finally concluded for 2009. Last night, well into this morning, technically, the New York Yankees defeated the Philadelphia Phillies in the sixth game of the World Series. It was an exciting best of seven, won in the new stadium in the Bronx with four familiar faces from the Yankees of the late 90s through 2001. Jeter. Rivera. Posada. Pettitte. And Johnny Damon, the former Red Sox Yankee nemesis, now a member of the pinstripe contingent. And A-Rod, Alex Rodriguez, and the great Hideki Matsui. It was a fun series. Of course one needs to be circumspect around these parts, as Rhode Islanders and Massachusetts are thoroughly Red Sox Nation, and as such, fall into the "ABY" category, that is, Anybody But Yankees. My daughter accused me of being a traitor to my New England roots, but there is a certain time when prudence dictates a loyalty towards players (such as those named above) that tops geography. And there is not enough time for masochism. I sometimes think of The Old Man and the Sea, and how Hemingway's old man knows things are right again when the great DiMaggio and the Yankees are winning the World Series. When like the old man catches his enormous marlin, breaking his string of fishless days, the odds are with him again. His chewed up remnant of a fish lashed to his boat is a sad reward, so I wonder how far Hemingway wants to extend his metaphor, when a mindless tourist calls the great fish a "shark."