University of Nebraska Press
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  • Damn Yankees: Twenty-Four Major League Writers on the World’s Most Loved (and Hated) Team by Rob Fleder
Rob Fleder. Damn Yankees: Twenty-Four Major League Writers on the World’s Most Loved (and Hated) Team. New York: Ecco, 2012. 304 pp. Cloth, $27.99.

Rob Fleder invited twenty-four writers to contribute their feelings about the Yankees without devolving into “the never-ending bar-stool chatter that sustains baseball fans,” focusing instead on the “idea of the Yankees” (2). As a result, Fleder brings together the memories and remembrances of many notable contemporary authors (many of whom are familiar names from The New Yorker and Sports Illustrated), including Jane Leavy, Colum McCann, Pete Dexter, and Roy Blount, Jr. While many of the stories are overwhelmingly friendly to the home team, Fleder has compiled a selection that ranges from the introspective to the genuinely funny, from the historical to the sentimental. The result: a collection that simultaneously seeks to dismantle essentialist conceptions of the Yankees, while casually reifying many of the stereotypes, tales, and glories of Yankee lore and fandom. Accessible, funny, and delight-fully [End Page 152] self-aware, Damn Yankees: Twenty-Four Major League Writers on the World’s Most Loved (and Hated) Team appeals to baseball fans of all stripes, not just the “bleacher creatures.”

The contributors to this volume were asked to reflect on the Yankees conceptually, allowing for visceral and, at times, honest and funny reflections on the game of baseball as a whole. Invariably, the trope of baseball as a representation of America weaves itself into the stories, but not always sentimentally. Reading this collection, two things become clear: it is almost impossible to talk about the Yankees without eliciting an impassioned response to “The Boss,” George Steinbrenner, and it is equally unimaginable to talk about the Yankees without talking about the city they call home. New York establishes the binary language upon which fandom relies: it is always about us and them. Steinbrenner, too, represents a challenge to the cognitive dissonance of the average Yankee fan: he is us, but throughout this collection he is unequivocally them. Enshrined in perpetuity in the House That He Built, the legacy of the “brigand shipbuilder from Cleveland” (51) hangs tenuously between the memories of those of us who survived him and the annals of Yankee lore yet unwritten. Steinbrenner’s presence in all but a handful of the narratives collected here should, then, come as no surprise.

While the repeated references to Steinbrenner offer a glimpse into the id of the modern Yankee fan, the strength of this collection lies in the independence given to the contributors. Jane Leavy opens her contribution, “Sully and the Mick,” with an anecdote about how she listed Frank Sullivan as dead in her Mickey Mantle biography. “Mickey murdered the ball, sure,” Leavy writes, “but I killed Frank” (132). Dan Barry reminds the reader that there was a time when being a Yankee fan meant developing a keen sense of humility, as they “fac[ed] two opponents every time they stepped onto the field: the American League team of the moment and the Yankees team of the past” (210). Humor and healing go hand-in-hand, the past ever present, and each author in this collection navigates the past with an astute awareness of the present.

While it is, perhaps, unfair to single out any one of these entries, Will Leitch’s “An Innocent Abroad” captures with nearly perfect candor the message behind this collection. Leitch, like many other New Yorkers, is a transplant, and his experience of leaving home and moving to New York is recounted humorously through the sights and sounds of the bleachers of the Cathedral in the Bronx. With Mark Twain’s shadow looming throughout, Leitch writes of the “communal comedic concertos” (127) with the erudite ear of a fan. Ultimately, Leitch reminds the reader of the real reason New York flourishes: the blue collar community that calls New York City home and that doesn’t easily fit the narrative of the vibrant city of wealth. Ultimately, there [End Page 153] are reasons to laugh with, and at, the absurdity of grown men with painted stomachs. Somewhere along the line, the Yankees became synonymous with Steinbrenner, with the hyperreality of excess, with the money and power and win-at-all-costs attitude, rather than with the people who fill the cheap seats. Leitch reminds the reader that it isn’t that simple.

Rob Fleder brings his years of editorial experience with Sports Illustrated to bear in Damn Yankees as he weaves the varied submissions into a narrative that evokes the entire emotional spectrum. The humorous tone is often supplanted by the sonorous facts of life: the passing of legends, the fears of uncertain times, the mistakes that yield friendships. There will always be new ways for people to find fault with the Yankees or with the inequitable system that has, at times, seemed to favor the large-market teams. There will always be something to be said about a city, a team, or a player with which people will take issue. Ultimately, this is where Fleder’s collection is most successful. Worthwhile reading for any fan, Damn Yankees succeeds in finding the ground between a celebration and a critique, all the while making accessible the bright lights, the big city, and the stories behind the pinstripes.

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