Yankee Stadium, El Bronx, NY -- Tino Ongis went to his first ever game at
Yankee Stadium and saw the Yankees beat the Cubs 3-0 behind the 2-hit, 8 innings
pitched by Masahiro Tanaka. What makes this worthy of mentioning is that 25
year old Tino (short for Martino) is an Italian visitor to New York, has been
to several basketball games, but was waiting for the baseball season to begin
before his departure to Bergamo, Italy in early May.
This writer gave him a
crash course on baseball fundamentals after which he said, "Ok, I will
remember," and was very excited the days leading to the game.
The game originally was to have taken place on Tuesday
evening April 15th, but was rained out, so it became part of a Wednesday
double header, and the makeup game was scheduled for the afternoon; it turned
out to be an arctic breezy sunny day with temperature at 43 degrees at game
time.
Great -- as his anticipation of being there was full of an
exuberant enthusiasm that one would only hope would not become a letdown by a
fan of fast moving NBA games and soccer back home in Italy.
By mid-game when asked how he thought of the game so far he
said, "I really like baseball, I thought I would get bored."
In the first inning he witnessed Carlos Beltran's 4th homer
of the season land a few feet below in the famed low porch area in front section
204. Tino had a glove on his left hand even though he is a lefty thrower. The
run produced by Carlos Beltran would be the first of 3 runs allowed by
Chicago's starter righthander Jason Hammel
who would pitch 7 innings of quality ball, only to be outdueled by Tanaka's
two-bunt base hits allowed while striking out 10.
Tino was fascinated by the double play Jacoby Ellsbury
grounded into in the bottom of the third inning. Not yet far along to be
disappointed that his newly adopted team had one of its star players hit into a
double play, but the motion set in play to execute it, he found interesting.
"I like the structure of the game and I loved how the double-play
happened," he observed (I had gone over the play with him after it happened and reminded
him of the baseball lesson of what to expect on the field, which included the
two revised plays).
After watching this writer look behind to see the speed of
Tanaka's delivery on the scoreboard and
other information, Tino began to do likewise to keep track of the ball and
strike count and also keep track of Tanaka's strikeouts.
At one point he said that Chicago with two innings to go,
would not have a chance, until I told him that in baseball anything is
possible. I reviewed the three-outs before a team took the field and the
other came to bat and that a team could keep on batting until the 3rd out was
recorded in their half inning.
"I really like this game, it is not boring, "Tino
repeated several times." And in it there are a lot of actions that are
fast."
He watched with anticipation the game ending on the top of
the ninth. He inferred that the Yankees did not have to bat if the score
remained unchanged.
At the end, it was obvious Tino was a fan. The cold?
"In Italy for a soccer match it is worst."
Waiting to catch the number 4 train, he added, " I
would like to come again to the stadium before I return home, maybe the weather
will be nice again." Thus we have the making of a new fan, at 25 --and
from Italia no less.
To be featured in www.latinosports.com
