Carolina Alumni Review - May/June 2009

the third, the Yankees pushed across a run and, in the fifth, reality arrived when they took a lead they never relinquished. No one cared. It was too much fun.

Such fun that the game occasionally got lost in the on-field antics. Like in the seventh, when the Yanks were up 3-1. After a strike was called on a Yankees batter, Billy Martin erupted. He sprinted to plate umpire Al Clark and the two went toe-to-toe, nose-to-nose, in a staged rhubarb complete with dirt-kicking and bat-throwing. Clark turned and, in a pirouette that Baryshnikov would have envied, tossed the Yankees skipper from the game. The crowd went nuts. Though ejected, Martin wasn’t dejected; he joined a poker game that had started in the locker room back in the fifth. An envious Reggie Jackson chirped, “Hey, throw me out, too!” Nope. Jackson remained, and in the ninth did what Steinbrenner paid him to do and what everybody there wanted him to do.

The Yankees owner had recently signed

him as a free agent from Baltimore for what at the time was the enormous sum of $2.9 million over five years. Through eight innings he had one single in four trips, but in the ninth he connected with reliever Tom Frazier’s ’ 79 meatball and air-mailed it into the trees over the right field fence. It was his moment, and he milked it. His home run trot included handshakes with every Tar Heel infielder, and it sealed the Yankees’ win, 8-1.

Jackson’s blast allowed him to go full circle. From home to home. Come to think of it, that’s a baseball metaphor for life. We leave home to experiment, to explore, but as we grow older, we try to get back home or to something quite like it. A lot of folks who were at the game that day can relate.

Steinbrenner still owns the Yankees, but with a $1 million gift to UNC, he has created a home of sorts here — the Steinbrenner Family Courtyard in the new Bryson Field at Boshamer Stadium that opened in February.

And that walk-on who wished the rain away? He pinch-hit that gray day and went down swinging but still proudly recalls that he faced “Louisiana Lightnin’” Ron Guidry and fouled one off. That “kid” still wears a Carolina uniform. Today, Head Coach Mike Fox ’ 78 lives in the coaching box along third and calls Chapel Hill home. Full circle.

And as for that wiry redhead? Me. That spring proved to be the turning point in my life, for my days as a student ended and that fall I made Chapel Hill my home as a teacher in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school system.

It’s funny how baseball and life go. Home run. Run home. Twice the Yankees came, won and then left. But Mike Fox and me, we got to stay. We made it home — safely. Full circle.