Friends In High Places

For lifelong baseball fans, there is something special about Yankee Stadium. It is even more special when you have a friend in high places who gets you tickets where you get to move right on down to the front to watch the game.

I knew we were in the VIP section when Robin came up to us to take our order like we were in a restaurant. Robin Pozzi, by the way, is cute as a button in case you don’t notice in this picture. She has been working at Yankee Stadium for a few years and drives from about an hour away to the Bronx to get to work. She has friends from New York who moved to Georgia recently. She thinks they live about 1 ½ hours south of Atlanta. That sounds like some familiar territory to me. By the way, from what I saw, Robin works hard for the Yankees today but she has the potential to own the Yankees one day. As you folks know, I can spot the winners and I have no doubt this young girl is just that. Robin may not remember the score of the game today but she knew my name when the game was over. And I knew hers.


In case you don’t know, we really didn’t come to watch a baseball game although the Yankees won in grand fashion. But the trip was more about a couple of fifty something guys who understand and appreciate the history of this great stadium as it heads down the home stretch of its last season in existence. I can tell you it was surreal to be at the place where Lou Gehrig, fighting a disease that would later be named after him, gave that famous speech when he said he considered himself the luckiest man in the world. And the place where Babe Ruth played and became famous and attracted so many fans that the stadium is called, "the house that Ruth built.” And the place where Don Larson pitched the perfect game in the 1956 World Series against the Dodgers. And the place where Dimaggio and Mantle became national heroes and Maris broke Babe Ruth’s single season homerun record in 1961. And the place where Reggie Jackson hit three homeruns in one game in the 1977 series and became known as Mr. October. And you baseball fans know I could go on and on.


Today it is also the place where perhaps the best baseball player in the world plays. It was kind of neat to be sitting close enough to hear the crack of the bat today when this great player, known as A-Rod, hit homerun number 546. I don’t know how many he will hit before he is done but I can always say I saw him hit one in old Yankee Stadium.

Good stuff.


By the way, I also knew we were in high cotton in the VIP section when I noticed Jim Furyk and his family walk by. Furyk, by the way, has won more than a few million on the PGA tour including a British Open.

But this is baseball not golf. And I couldn’t help but notice most folks didn’t even recognize Jim Furyk today. But he sure did have good seats.

He must have friends in high places too.