27.

After suffering through another season of Yankee hating (seriously, sometimes I just can't stand the utter vitriol that accompanies Yankee bashing), and losing touch with the season this summer due to particularly momentous things (um....getting married, hehe), I reconnected with my team just in time to see them clinch World Championship #27.  They were exciting times last night as Game Six came to a conclusion - I often forget the unabashed excitement that comes with being so close to a Championship win.  Counting down the outs....nine, six, and finally, just three away from the clinch.  Honestly, I hadn't quite experienced that excitement since 2001, even though that Fall Classic didn't turn out as the Yankees had hoped.  

And it was in the waning innings of last night's game that brought me back to postseason 2001, as lower Manhattan smoldered after the terror attacks and I (and much of the world) turned to baseball, and particularly the Yankees, in a seemingly endless effort to escape the clutches of the news cycle - words like war on terror, jihad, Patriot Act, the list goes on and on and on.  Hoping to escape the hellish scenes of September 11th that were now, starkly, part of our reality, we turned our television sets to baseball each October night, reveling in nine innings of America's pastime and forgetting the real world that awaited us once the broadcast concluded.  It seemed like I was back in 2001 last night as I watched the Yankees, remembering that October when I was but an awkward adolescent, struggling with the horror of the post 9/11 world, turning to the Yankees for comfort and escape.  

Often, people don't quite get why I could embrace the Yankees as I do.  I receive my fair share of teasing - and sometimes, the joking can become downright mean.  Quite simply, in some strange way, I owe that team a lot.  It was their playoff run of 2001 that certainly helped me to forget the horrors of September 11th and, in a sense, helped me to start to do my own healing from those events.  Often it is said that the Yankees' playoff run helped the city of New York to heal - I know they certainly did that for me too.  Watching the Yankees with my family that October reminded me of the simple things in life, the simple things that became so important in the wake of the 2001 terror attacks.  The simplicity of Yankee baseball in October helped me move on from 9/11 and learn to heal, which, ultimately, paved the way for my life's next big moment - the moment where I met the person of Jesus Christ for the first time.  I won't say that it was Yankee baseball that began my conversion, but the 2001 playoffs certainly put the steps in motion that eventually led to my meeting Christ.  

It's funny how something that seems pretty meaningless in the grand scheme of things - professional baseball - can do so much when the circumstances are just right.  

It feels so great to celebrate #27.... :-)  

A presto.