The Yankees have always been a huge part of my consciousness in professional sports. Of course, being a Bronx native does play a huge role in my fan allegiance, but my father’s influence definitely pulled me to what outsiders know as the ‘Evil Empire.’ Every father/daughter relationship has its own special type of bonding. Ours was going to Yankee games and watching the heroes of the 90’s and early 2000s take the field. 

In August of 2001, my parents moved our family to Charlotte, N.C . My father was still working in New York, so he still had to go back and forth between the two cities. On the day of the September 11th attacks, my father was supposed to fly back to New York, so naturally my concern went towards my father because his flight was supposed to leave at the same time of the fatal planes. Thankfully, nothing happened and he remained in the airport for the rest of the day.

When I returned to New York for the first time since the attacks, one of the first places I visited was my aunt’s office. When I looked out the window of her office, the first thing I saw was Ground Zero with an American flag sticking out from the rubble. It was the first time that the attacks became real to me, as in it set into my consciousness, so nothing about my hometown was as I remembered it.

But later on in the trip, a sign of reassurance came along with my favorite team. When I went to visit my grandfather, he said that we had to go to the Bronx to meet a man named James to buy fish. This already seemed odd enough to my brother and I, but little did we know that we would get one of the best surprises of our life.

We waited a few blocks away from Yankee Stadium to meet this ‘James’ with my grandfather. We waited for about 45 minutes until we got suspicious, but then my father appeared from around the corner with Yankee tickets for the evening’s game, which they played the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. It didn’t even occur to us that my father’s middle name is James.

It was the first time we attended a Yankee game since the terrorist attacks, and probably the first time I had seen my father since the aftermath as well.

The Yankees returning to baseball became one of the public symbols of New York returning to normal, but for me it took on a personal meaning at that point. I’m sure all of you have seen the public spectacle that the Yankees put on with the FDNY and NYPD, but when I saw my father, brother and myself together again, watching our favorite team in our hometown, it was just how things used to be. For me, that is one of the little things from my childhood that brought everything into prospective.