By Amy Tennery
NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York Yankees fans had two things to celebrate on Friday: their team beat hated rival Boston and the season that some feared might never arrive, in fact, did.
The 2022 season was thrown into doubt after Major League Baseball (MLB) locked out its players in December and in March canceled the start of the regular season. Commissioner Rob Manfred announced a detente had been reached nine days later.
“I’m so excited to be here – you have no idea,” said Mary Palma, 55, an educator from Westchester, New York, who braved the serpentine lines outside Yankee Stadium to watch the team’s home opener alongside a sellout crowd of 46,097. The Yankees topped the Red Sox, 6-5.
Palma said she was “depressed” during the rift between MLB and its players and that when she learned a deal was reached, “I was jumping up and down.”
Rainy weather on Thursday kept the Yankees, who were originally supposed to open the season at home on March 31 before the lockout forced a delay, to keep their fans waiting one more day. But seven other MLB games were played on Thursday.
At Friday’s Yankees game, Joe Evans and Rick Sherwood, best friends from Connecticut who have gone to 15 home openers, said they missed the past two due to the COVID-19 pandemic and feared they would miss another as the lockdown threw the season into doubt.
“I almost thought a couple weeks ago we weren’t going to have a season,” said Evans, 58, and the pair said they still felt some “animosity” over the protracted labor dispute.
“How about going back (to) ‘we play for the love of the game, not the money,'” said Sherwood.
“There will still be a little anger … But we’re fans – we forgive.”
Forgiveness may come a little quicker after the Yankees vanquished their archrivals in dramatic fashion, with third baseman Josh Donaldson producing a walk-off RBI single in the 11th inning in his first regular-season game in pinstripes.
The game got off to a disastrous start for New York as four-time All-Star Gerrit Cole allowed three runs in the first inning, but first baseman Anthony Rizzo responded immediately with a 414-foot, two-run homer.
“Rizzo getting the two back right away in the first inning I thought was big,” said Donaldson. “We just kept at it. We just kept trying to grind out at bats … The team resiliency – I think it’s just going to lead to good things in the future.”
(Reporting by Amy Tennery in New York; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
