N is for NEW YORK YANKEES!  The boys of summer are back baby!  The Yankees are a big part of my family and my marriage. We are a Yankee Family, that's for sure.
When we got married, we went to Vermont for our honeymoon. Friends and family gave us a wonderful suite at a lovely B&B. It was in October.  Before we confirmed the reservation we had to confirm that the Inn had cable TV…it was the play offs and we couldn’t miss that!  May not sound romantic to you but to us it was to us.  When we returned from our honeymoon, my brother greeted us with tickets to see the Yankees play in the World Series…that was quite a thrill.
I am actually not a huge baseball fan. I would never watch a game that didn’t involve the Yankees. I actually don’t mind missing some games early in the season…but when August comes, I get seriously involved. Because I am such a Yankee fan, there are some games I have a hard time watching. For example, I have a hard time watching the Boston/New York series. I always get too anxious. And forget the play offs…I am a wreck! I watch between my fingers as I hold my hands to my eyes.
I love the Yankees but don’t share that feeling with the team’s owners. I never cared for father Steinbrenner; it really angered me that he built the new stadium and limited the number of cheap seats. The new stadium is ok, but I think the Yankees would have been better served by renovating the old Cathedral that was Yankee Stadium.  But there are so many more reasons to love the Yankees…because well,  they are the Yankees for crying-out-loud.

I am a very different kind of fan then my husband. He yells at the players when they make an error. And don’t get him started on Girardi (the manager)…he gets so angry at some of the decisions he makes. Even when I think they deserve it, I wouldn’t yell at the players. Somehow I think that is not being a good fan. Now the funny thing is that my husband only gets angry at two situations: Yankee mistakes and stupid drivers, especially drivers driving slow in the left hand lane. I on-the-other-hand can yell at the drop of a hat. I do have a temper…it rises in a flash but then goes away just as quickly…must be an Italian thing.
Sports fan are pretty good at showing anger…throwing down their caps, screaming at umps who can’t hear them, and of course cursing, lots of cursing. My guess is that with those bursts of anger most sports fans release the emotion and move on to the next play.  But are sports worth getting angry at? If not, what is?
 Anger is a natural human emotion. It serves a purpose when handled well, but how many of us handle anger well?  Not handled well anger can fester and turns into bitterness and hatred. It grows exponentially and takes over; it then takes less and less to trigger our anger.  Anger is a dangerous emotion, one that I dance with too closely. Saying it’s just an Italian thing is a poor excuse. I need to learn to let go of my anger and, more importantly, not got too angry to begin with…I need to remember the words from James:
This you know, my beloved brethren. But everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger; for the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God. James 1:19-20,Well this is a short post because the Yankees are on and they have lost their first few games of the season…but I am not angry!