It Is October!!!

My favorite time of the year!  It has nothing to do with the change in trees, weather, or even Halloween.  It is all about playoff baseball.  My competitive juices come out every October. 

My team is, of course, the defending World Champions, The New York Yankees.  As the season is coming to a close how bout the race in the American League East.  The Yanks and Rays both 95-64, with the Yankees in Boston to take on their arch rival Red Sox, who this year are out of the playoff picture, and the Rays in Kansas City to play the Royals.  We will find out who is going to win the East and who will be the Wild Card team.

This is just great, a race right down to the wire before the playoffs begin.  What a gift for baseball fans with the fall classic just around the corner.  I will be wearing my Yankee gear for as long as my Bronx Bombers are in the playoffs.

I like to think I am a “real” Yankee fan.  Growing up in the Bronx, my dad and I would go and watch the likes of Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, and one of my favorites, Joe Pepitone, do their thing at the Stadium in the Bronx.  Just two leagues no divisions, no wild cards, no DH.  The best in the American and National Leagues duked it out for the World Series Crown, and more times than not the Yanks were in the series, and more times than not they won.  Great memories for me of my dad, a plasterer who was dead tired after a day and week of the physical labor, but he found the time to take me to the Stadium, during the season and the World Series.  I miss him so much at this time of year.  When I was a sports anchor in New York at WNBC, WCBS and WFAN, my dad got such a kick hearing about the Yankees of today, and he really got excited when I told him about interviewing Mickey Mantle, the Mick signing a baseball card for my son.  Never asked him to do it, he was just interested in another kid growing up playing baseball.

I guess the point I am trying to make is this is my time of year to escape, not think about the dirty political races, the economy and even my health for just a bit.  My chance to sit back and enjoy life with a big smile on my face.

This is something we can all do for ourselves, a self gift which is really worth having.