by Spencer Ackerman
You can make the case that the defining episodes in Philip Roth novels all involve masturbation, either into chopped liver (Portnoy's Complaint) or onto a gravestone (Sabbath's Theater). For me, Roth's greatest moment of sublime insight into the Jewish condition comes in The Counterlife, when Zuckerman is confronted by a rabid fan in Jerusalem who pantomimes catching a fly ball over the Wailing Wall. He despairs that moschiach is
delaying his return until the Israelis come to their senses and
establish a professional baseball league. "How," he asks Zuckerman,
"can there be Jews without baseball?" Answer that, rabbi. Actually,
George Steinbrenner has answered it for you. On Monday, the Staten
Island Yankees--the class-A affiliate of the Bronx Bombers--will host a
Jewish heritage appreciation night.
There's going to be "traditional Jewish food," raising all sorts of
questions about the ballpark propriety of matzoh brie or kugel. The
main draw is ostensibly the 7 o'clock match up against the Aberdeen
Iron Birds. But since the Birds are at the bottom of the
division--while our Staten Island Yanks dominate with a 30-16
record--the premier attraction looks more like it'll be the Fools of
Prophecy, a multi-instrumental Israeli group. A quick visit to the soundclips section of what I take to be the Israeli version of Insoundreveals that the Fools sound a bit like the Happy Mondays, complete with trippyness and improbable percussion. (No word on Shaun Ryder-esque crack use, though.) Staten Island's
powerhouse season is bittersweet for me. I live in a state of constant
anxiety about the real Yankees. For the first fifteen years of my
life--the formative ones in anyone's baseball fandom--my beloved
Bombers consistently broke my heart, despite the Hall-of-Fame efforts
of Mattingly and Winfield, to say nothing of greats like Dave Righetti,
Willie Randolph (I wore his number 20 in little league), and
mid-megalomania-era Rickey Henderson. The default status of my Yankees
was faded glory, where greatness was too elusive to be reclaimed. I
cursed Dallas Green (yeah, you remember him) for not being Casey
Stengel or Billy Martin. As a result, the 1996 resurgence of what the
ignorant or classless refer to as the Evil Empire has always felt
precarious to me, something I've endlessly agonized over in print.
This blighted season, with the Yanks about five games behind the Boston
Menstrual Stains and in a wild-card chase with the A's and the Indians,
is eerily familiar of my childhood. (Though with a lot more RBIs and
with the greatest closer of the era, who's poised to finally get his Cy
Young Award. But still.) It's
pretty clear my condition is some kind of a Jew thing, though, as I've
learned, Catholics can understand. Roth surely gets it. So, wherever he
is right now, would Johnny Ramone--there's a reason why they play
"Blitzkrieg Bop" at the Stadium. If the Yankees were a band, they'd be
Ramones. And don't try to tell me the Ramones would be the Mets because
of Queens. You're wrong. I recognize
that the Ramones' coulda-woulda-shoulda mythos makes them an uneven fit
for the Yankees, but the never-say-die attitude and the wildly erratic
quality control--from classic to stinker with rarely a middle
ground--prvoes they're a perfect match for their favorite team. All of
which means that the Yankees are the ideal Jewish baseball franchise
(the antisemites of the world will probably agree), as the Fools of
Prophesy will surely recognize on Monday.